Really Bad Ideas

1/ The competition is hunting your market ... and all you think you need is IT, while the real problem is your business model.

2/ Downtime is an additional expense ... that hurts but doesn't kill. The cash you don't have right now to pay your IT and the personnel for maintenance does kill.

3/ Equipment wears out and will fail ... so more IT will wear out more and fail more. is it the right time to buy new IT in its current lifecylce?

4/ Worker Productivity is critical when staff shrinks ... and when staff grows, and when it stays the same. It's critical anyways. And productivity might have nothing to do with IT but with empowerment, trust, responsibilities, process.

5/ Runnind older systems longer increases cost ... NOT - they're paid for. They only increase "cost" if they're down, need expensive maintenance, are not "productive", etc. Old systems that work are GREAT! How do you think telecoms make money on voice calls?

6/ Outside project resources are cheaper ... if you need them, if it's not cash-out-of-the-company, if you can let go the people who are on board for that job, if the job actually gets done more efficiently and effectively, if the stuff you get sold on will not be sold to you because they're closing the doors and in two weeks tumble weed will blow through their customer service.

7/ Current applications require more computing resources ... and you have lots of computational power available as the number of customers basically declined by 30% and systems are spinning free. Plus you have all the computational power from the virtual machines on the machines of employees you had to let go.

8/ New technologies can save money ... if they do. (Yeah, that was lame). But do you have the cash for the "new technologies", what's the Net Present Value, should you rather spend the bucks you have left in service innovation, should you hire some smart people you can get now for a reasonable price as the economy is down, etc.

As in the slide deck, these are some generalizations, I know. But it shows that during these times - I call them wealth of economic opportunities - it's easy to grab for stereotypes, one-size-fits-all rules, and the simple message. Some things are inherently complex, whether you like it or not. You can simplify them, but that's as if you would say "Twitter is nothing more than a database, anyone could build it." :) Oh darn, did I say that out loud?

I'd think the key is in examining decisions in depth. The value of the slide deck would be in precipitating discussions - certainly it goes against the grain, against the impulse to stop all discretionary IT spending when the business outlook is negative.

YMMV - but we should think before hypermiling our way to work. :)

Yep, I exactly took it like that - and I liked it for that. As I said in my original blogpost over at http://www.playoutintelligence.com/2009/02/04/it-not-critical/ I took an equally generalizing stance - and I didn't hear the audio track of the presentation...

Did you also read Daniel W. Rasmus' response at http://future-of-work.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!C07907DBA0E3BEA6!1268.entry ?

BTW: in the meanwhile I saw 2 companies that closed their doors over IT upgrades to "innovative New Media Business Intelligence Dashboards" they couldn't support, maintain, or pay for; and I saw 2 companies that completely turned around with a more efficient and productive IT.... darn, eh?

If you're not sure what you're hunting, a quiver of sharp arrows will be no help. Once you know what you really should be after, sharp arrows are incredibly critical, especially if you've decided to go after a challenging animal.

In times of change (like now) it pays to take a fresh look at what you're hunting and how. There's little doubt you've got to make sure you have the business model and offerings that fits the changed times first before you optimize your operations.

But then you need to be sharp on execution or it's all for naught.

cheers