InformationWeek

May 1, 2000

In Today's World, It's Adapt Or Perish

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here's a wonderful place on 34th Street in Manhattan that goes by the name of Brew's. It is an establishment that has been in operation on the same site for more than 70 years and, as such, it has seen its share of change.

In the early days, Brew's (Brew, by the way, is the surname of the original proprietor and not some trendy microbrewery appellation) began with hand-pumped beer taps; a large, mechanical cash register; and cold, hard cash as the only imaginable means of payment. Yet Brew's has made it through changes that have affected its core business--the provision of food and drink to hungry and thirsty people--as well as marketplace changes that have seen its neighborhood undergo commercial and residential upheaval.

It is striking how some organizations like Brew's adapt to change easily and transparently to all but themselves, while others find it nearly impossible to tailor what they do--and how they do it--to take advantage of opportunities that change has set at their feet. Note that I used the word "tailor" and not terms such as "implode" or "remodel" or "reengineer," which have been used (with some accuracy in many cases) to describe the process by which organizations can effect an orderly evolution from what they are today to what they need to be in the future.

Brew's has made it look easy, while the process for many other companies is proving to be absolutely brutal, at least based on what I've been hearing from attendees at recent InformationWeek roundtables. For instance, in Los Angeles recently, a question about outsourcing drew a furnace-faced, vein-popping reply from a gentleman I know to be thoughtful, mild-mannered, and insightful. In a vehement tone, this IT executive launched into a tirade that was heavy on "we" and "they" ("they" in this case being corporate management) rhetoric. In a nutshell, he loudly proclaimed his management "nuts" for expecting him to do all "they" want on the budget "they" give him and that if he ever proposed outsourcing, he'd in effect be giving management carte blanche to gut his staff at a time when he needs more internal resources.

While our L.A. guest was singular in his tone, he is by no means alone in such thinking. When it comes to investing and deploying new projects, IT executives cite a litany of objections that range from "it's not part of our core business" to "our customers don't need us to do that" to "they won't spend a dime unless I can prove it will improve profitability within a certain time span."

Never has it been truer that the rate and pace of change are posing twin inseparable dilemmas. Never has it been truer that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, especially--again, according to InformationWeek roundtable attendees--when that limited knowledge is possessed by management overseers who set organizational technology policy based on what's been covered in an airline magazine. Alas, never has it been truer that a company's future can accurately be foretold based on its adoption and embrace of changes wrought by and through technology.

Whether it's Brew's preserving its physical presence and decades-old ambiance while transforming its operations, my crusty attorney grudgingly using E-mail to communicate with clients, or Wal-Mart doing what Woolworth's couldn't (or wouldn't), the lessons of the immutable "adapt-or-perish" imperative are perfectly clear.

The shame of it all is the needlessness of the debate, which is too often framed in terms of "us" and "them." Exacerbating the problem is the growing realization among rank-and-file IS/IT managers and directors that the very mobility they lament among their junior-level staffers and the "star" CIO types at massive enterprises is available to them as well.

The "20 years with the same outfit" types who quietly have become the hearts of their organizations are growing increasingly restive. Presented by management with one headache more than they have aspirin tablets to cure, these silent cores of their organizations are beginning to show themselves to the door and their departures are creating losses for their companies that can't possibly be measured on the bottom line.

Lou Bertin is an industry consultant. He can be reached at Lou.Bertin@gte.net.


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