Viewpoint

Information systems issues facing senior executives: the culture gap

Kit Grindley

Price Waterhouse Consultant and Professor of Systems Automation, London School of Economics, London, UK

The development of necessary business skills in IT professionals, and the appropriate role and structure of the information systems function, have long been seen as key information systems management issues’-4. In addition, the questions of what motivates IT pro- fessionals and what their relationship is with their business colleagues have been the focus of much research effort over the last decade5-9.

As a result of some recent surveys”. ‘I, it is clear that IT directors in the UK identify the ‘culture gap’between IT professionals and business colleagues as a key factor in limiting the successful utilization of IT in their companies.

Introduction: the culture gap

There are the cultured and the uncultured (and we all know which group we belong to!). These are emotive terms; strange therefore that ‘uncultured should be chosen by IT directors, who are universally concerned to befriend users, as one of the terms to describe the users’ lack of progress. In one recent survey, 47 per cent of the 100 members of the joint Price Waterhouse and Financial Times IT Directors’ survey panel said their main problem was the culture gap that existed between their IT professionals and the rest of the company. These directors represent a 20 per cent sample of the top 500 companies in the UK. This alleged culture gap problem scored 5 per cent more mentions in the survey than any other problem.

Who are the uncultured?

This is the sort of question that immediately invites another one: what is the culture gap? Figure 1 shows the

This edition’s viewpoint is a version of an article which appeared in the Price Waterhouse Information Technoloav Review 1991/92 IUD 16-19). edited by Kit Grindley. and a paper presented by him at rhe Warwick Business SchooVComshare Executive Briefing ‘Harnessing information systems for management control and commercial advantage’ held at the University of Warwick on 4 September 1991. Additional material has been taken from his recent book. Managing IT at Board Level recently published by Pitman’O. In this paper. Professor Grindley raises some key questions regarding the relation- ship between IT professionals and their business colleagues (ed.).

response to this question, and indicates that more IT directors feel that it is those who do not belong to the ‘computer club’ who are the uncultured. 55 per cent state that the culture gap is best described by the statement that the IT potential for improving business performance is not appreciated by top management. This is hard-hitting stuff: something likely to cause a culture gap if it was not already there! Fortunately. the second most popular description of this particular problem presents the other side of the coin. An impressive 40 per cent say the gap is caused by the failure of IT professionals to appreciate the business implications of their own technology. It seems, on balance, that neither side is to blame - or perhaps both are!

‘The culture gap is caused by unrealistic user expectations fuelled by misleading IT advertising’

‘IT management need to explain terms and issues as simply as possible and not try to blind line management with jargon’

It is the frequent use of the word ‘side’ that indicates the existence and importance of the problem. Stop referring to Us and Them,’ cry the reformers. ‘We’re all part of the business. aren’t we? It is salutary to remember that there was a time when this was doubted. When IT people were accused of belonging to an invisible computer university, showing more loyalty to the computer than to the business, they responded by talking of the user managers as backwoodsmen, unwilling or unable to recognize the realities of the twentieth century. Well, it is now nearly the twenty-first century, and most believe that the problem (albeit expressed and manifested in much subtler ways) is still there. Here is an illustration:

‘I’d like to think the culture gap was closing. But when I asked my staff recently what business they were in most replied “the computer industry”, as opposed to music or entertainment which is our business’

And another, from the other perspective:

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SYMPTOMS

IIT potential for the business not appreciated by top management

/TEJ Busrness implications of IT not appreciated by IT staff

WBusiness people have difficulty understanding and appreciating the worth of IT people, and absorbing them within the organization

p?J Business people have difficulty trusting IT people as ‘one

of them’

wit is not appreciated that the arguments for centralization and decentralization in the business differ from the centralization and decentralization arguments applying to IT

mPowerful decentralized departments pursue local interests without appreciating the IT need for centralized coordination and infrastructures

-The separation of power (vested increasingly in IT specialists) from the responsibility for results (remaining with the users)

Figure 1. Recognizing a culture gap. (Source: Price Waterhouse/Financial Times IT Directors Survey 1990).

‘The transition to computer systems for manage- ment information, operating the business and gaining strategic advantage, is traumatic for any manager who has been with the company for a long time. This is when he becomes aware of the culture gap, and will try to avoid IT because he does not feel confident about it’

IT specialists are special

To be fair, there were some (5 per cent) who dismissed the problem as unimportant:

‘I don’t acknowledge that this culture gap is greater or more significant in the case of IT than in the case

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of any other specialist function in a business: such as finance, engineering or marketing’

Another interesting group (8 per cent) dismissed the problem to some extent, saying that, while their company experienced a culture gap, it was normal for professionals in any field to know more about their subject than the layman. That was why there were there.

It is in considering this view and confronting it with the fact that, after thirty years of applying IT in business, an overwhelming majority of companies (which can happily assimilate accountants, lawyers, plumbers and the canteen manager) have been unable to absorb either the computer or computer professionals into their culture, that we can conclude there is something more to this gap than just not understanding IT jargon. A clue to what this might be is provided by the comment ‘their knowledge threatens mine’ made by one user manager.

One of the main causes of the culture gap is change. IT cannot be taken in isolation; each advance involves the recipient in changing his behaviour. By definition, a machine is going to do part of your job, and control is going to be exercised in a different way. To this extent, culture gap is a euphemism for threat. The gap exists, because those comfortable with the existing culture do not want it changed.

‘What I do affects what everyone else does. It cuts into empires, work patterns, how decisions are taken, even the ownership of information. Everyone resists it. I was appointed because of previous failures. But as I succeed, so shall I be assassinated

Changing someone’s job, responsibility, prestige: these things are key to IT resistance. Astonishingly, many IT professionals are still surprised that they are not welcomed with open arms, and believe they would be, if only users understood. It is, however, because the users understand only too well, that enthusiastic IT evangelists encounter such wooden hostility.

The plot thickens

Although the culture gap is cited as the number one problem, Figure 2 shows that each of the top six IT management problems has culture gap connotations. Lack of corporate objectives for IT is almost an alternative way of saying that top management does not understand or simply is not interested in IT issues or the opportunities it can provide. ‘User knowledge gaps’ and ‘IT professional knowledge gaps’ speak for themselves. ‘The time taken to produce computer systems’ reflects a fundamental culture change, how- ever. The detail needed to engineer a computer control system represents another world to someone used to managing through a human chain of command. And the fact that assessing computer benefits resists traditional measurement techniques means a new approach to investment decisions is required. Another look at Figure 1 shows two endemic problems as contributing to the culture gap. The rationale behind which aspects of IT should be centralized and which decentralized is not appreciated, and there is a reluctance to absorb IT people into the business.

Journal of Strategic Information Systems

K.GRINDLEY

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~Culture gap between IT and business professionals

[iiiiiiiiil Imprecise corporate objectives for IT

MTime taken to develop IT systems

I:i’ii.i::iiiiii”iiI Users’ knowledge gaps on IT

m Intangible nature of IT benefits

m IT professionals’ knowledge gaps on business

Figure 2. IT directors’ problems. (Source: Price Waterhouse/Financial Times IT Directors Survey 1990).

Hidden agenda

Losing opportunities to exploit IT for business ad- vantage is held by most IT directors to be the worst result of the culture gap. Figure 3 shows three related problems: artificial justification methods, putting in the wrong systems and over-concentration on cost- cutting applications. Together, these amount to a more serious consequence. They reflect a three stage syndrome:

1. Accused of providing insufficient return on investment, the IT director, aware that computer systems on their own cannot advance the business, and that improved information on its own has no value, attempts to put artitical values on the intangible benefits. In other words, since the business culture is to perform cost/benefit analyses he attempts to measure the unmeasur- able.

2. Disillusioned by these attempts, his board colleagues become cynical and demand the ‘bottom line’. The only bottom line benefits the computer can provide on its own are to reduce costs: by saving clerks or, ironically, cutting its own budget.

3. These cost-saving applications are popular with the board. The IT director is thus reduced to preparing cost/benefit statements showing doubtful savings, and proposing non-strategic systems, meanwhile putting in the vital systems he believes will ensure the company’s survival by means of a hidden agenda.

Closing the gap

It is not to be expected that any IT director is going to put his/her job on the line just for the sake of a little

-NB : Some respondents mentioned more than one effect

0 Losing/seriously delaying IT opportunities to gain competitive edge

m Forcing the justification of IT investment by the artificial measurement of intangible benefits instead of backing judgements of business needs

WPutting in wrong or ill-conceived systems

m Frustrating and adding a burden to IT management but not seriously harming the company’s present or future performance

BForcing over-concentration on cheap solutions and cost cutting

BDenying you the opportunity of ‘brainstorming’ IT business potential with top management

@@Forcing over-concentration on short term payoffs

Jeopardising the future of the company (e.g. by failing to install adequate core systems for survival)

m Making your position as IT executive and policy maker ineffective

Figure 3. Culture gap efects. (Source.. Price Waterhouse/Financial Times IT Directors Survey 1990).

want of culture. Figure 4 shows that quite a number are prepared to hang on in there until IT comes into its OWIl.

Training, both formal and on the job, to create today’s panacea of the ‘hybrid manager”2.‘3, came in for a mixed reception, viz:

‘The hybrid manager’ bandwagon is ill-conceived and unhelpful - I know many other IT directors who think the same. The current campaigns on this are out of touch with reality. Our major agent for change is IT strategy masterclasses structured to bring home to senior directors that there is a problem with both benefits and threats to their business. Generalized IT training for executives is a waste of time. It must be focused on their needs as they perceive them’

Near the top of the list is the big stick technique. It is perhaps a quibble to note that the stick does not cure the culture gap; it drives IT into the business of ignoring it. The popular big stick is the CEO. If the

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0 Whittle away at the problem by slowly gaining IT converts each time benefits materialize

m Get the chief executive to support and insist on implementing IT strategies

m Initiate ‘hybrid manager’ interdisciplinary job changing

m Implement formal director, management and senior IT staff training

mRecognize ‘timing’ is of the essence and delay strategic IT proposals until they fall on fertile ground

m I have been given insufficient power to remedy the problem effectively

m Put your job on the line unless chief executive supports IT proposals

Figure 4. Popular remedies. (Source.. Price Waterhouse/Financial Times IT Directors Survey 1990).

person at the top supports an IT project, it is likely to take off. In addition to holding authority, chief executives have, by virtue of their position, two important immunities to the culture gap. They are the only ones whose job is not affected by major IT projects. And they are the only ones who can truly take a cross-departmental view.

My boss doesn’t understand me

Some IT directors believe in a quick cure. The remedy is in our own hands, they say.

‘IT has to stop feeling sorry for itself, and mis- understood’

However, so deep and so ingrained is the culture gap, in the opinion of many, that only time will eradicate it. It is a generation gap, they claim. The young understand the information revolution. They accept the shift from the material to its electronic representation. Most important, they have nothing: no career, no hard-won experience and no tricks of the trade to lose.

Figure 5 shows that over a quarter of IT directors believe that despite training, awareness programmes and example, the current generation of managers will never fully accept the role of IT in their work. They pin their hopes on the new people who will be doing those

Percentage of respondents

I::j: 2 years j-314 years

w6 years -more

Figure 5. Length of time needed to solve culture gap, according to respondents.

jobs in five or more years’ time. The majority, however, are unhappy with the waiting game:

‘There is still the erroneous beliefthat computers are for the young. Senior management is hoping their junior staff will solve all their IT problems. But we don’t have that amount of time on our side’

Concluding remarks: overcoming the problem

Recent research amongst IT directors in major companies ‘“. ” shows that one of their top concerns is measuring the benefits of IT investment. It is the culture gap, however, that is the cause of board level insistence on having value-for-money statements, instead of accepting IT investment on a business risk basis as is done in all other areas of investment.

‘To maintain market share, he believed he had to open 17 more offices. Now this decision is just as hard to measure as any IT project. Yet somehow we allowed him to defend his business judgement in that area. What it amounts to is that we go paranoid if anyone goes into the board room with a proposal that has a technology label on it’

The research reveals an even more worrying aspect. The insistence on measured benefits leads, in 39 per cent of the cases studied, to an admission of hidden agendas:

‘I ride in the systems we need on the back of the systems they are prepared to accept’

The problem is that IT often remains a mystery, even an irrelevance:

‘What managers don’t see is that they’re only as good as their information’

What is truly informative is often hard to identify14. Certainly, what we don’t want to add to is the already major problem of data overload.

The key point is that the culture gap can be overcome, not cured but overcome, by those who have both the responsibility for IT and for achieving business results. This marriage of responsibility closes the gap, as far as these people are concerned. They know, and are prepared to use, the capability of IT; they

60 Journal of Strategic Information Systems

K. GRINDLEY

Is there a culture gap in your organization? How big is it? More important, does it show or is it something you can safely keep quiet about? To find out, all you have to do is (i) choose any number of the following alternatives on which you have views, and (ii) say whether you feel the statements (all genuine quotes) associated with them are true, false or just plain silly. (There is no score. Nor does it matter particularly which boxes you have ticked. The point of the game is to go on playing it until all members of the board tick the same ones.)

True

Planning v. playing it off the cuff 0 ‘The most powerful directors have got themselves into their position because they’re very good at resolving problems. But they won’t solve them for tomorrow. because they rather like problems coming up. If there are no problems coming up. they’re not doing their job

Specifying detailed procedures v. 0 setting objectives ‘The culture gap is really a planning gap. Two lines in the corporate plan can equal 40 000 lines in a systems spec. The problem is for users to articulate their needs at the level of detail needed by a systems engineer’

The long-term view v. the short- term view ‘The most difficult thing is renewing the basic IT infrastructure. when management is only interested in dealing with the immediate. short term business concerns’

Intangible benefits v. tangible 0 benefits ‘The business calls for bottom line. But no-one can put a measured value on information’

False Silly

0 0

cl cl

0 Cl

cl cl

Distributed processing v. political 0 decentralization ‘The trouble is the decentralization of IT has followed the decentral- ization of the business. That’s the wrong driver. The logic of what part of IT should be under user control has nothing to do with politics’

Systems’ rigidity v. flexibility ‘Most users think that changing a computer system is a question of shouting at it

Knowledge v. responsibility ‘An IT man prides himself on his knowledge. He’s paid for what he knows. But IT knowledge doesn’t count for much in the business. There. the people who matter are those who take responsibility for business results’

Systems integration v. decentra- lized autonomy ‘The principal problem is no longer the automation of processes. It is the communication of information between processes where we’re screwing it up at present’

IT is a key resource v. IT plays a support role ‘We have to recognize that what constitutes success in a company is not how it uses its production or selling resources. but how it uses its IT. Few can Eraso that. While thev

cl

cl

don’t. we car-v on behaving as * though the makers and the sellers form the business. and the IT department is there just to support them’

IT feasibility studies v. IT Cl justification studies ‘The key is to convince them that the return on IT investment is not the IT executive’s problem’

q

Figure 6. Check your culture gap

have business improvement objectives: and there is really no reason whatever why such people should not be IT directors.

‘In an intellectual sense, most managers clearly perceive the potential of IT. But they must also feel good about what IT actually delivers. We need to concentrate on providing friendly and simple solutions to the problems they own and recognize’

The most popular solution is virtually to conduct a continual PR exercise: to keep whittling away at the problem in a very practical way. by constantly pro- viding examples of what IT can achieve. Small examples at first. low cost, quick to implement: and always directed at a problem recognized by. and currently concerning, a senior manager. ‘Show them IT can give them what they want. That’s the first step,’ said one IT director. ‘Then, when they’re finally listening, show them it can also transform their business.’

References

Brancheau, J C and Wetherbe, J C Key issues information systems management MIS Quanerly Vol No 1 (1987) pp 23-45

in II

Parker, T and Indundun, M Managing information systems in 1987: the top issues for IS managers in the UK J. of Inf Tech. Vol 3 No 1 (March 1987) pp 34-42 Neiderman, F, Brancheau, J C and Wetherbe, J C Information systems management issues in the 1990s: WP-91-08. Management Information Systems Research Center. University of Minnesota (November 1990) Watson, R T and Brancheau, J C Key issues in information systems management: an international perspective 1nJ &Management Vol20 (1991) pp 213-233. Reproduced in Galliers, R D (1992) op. cit. Couger, J D and Zawacki, R A Motivating and Managing Computer Personnel John Wiley & Sons, New York ( 1980) Lyons, M L The DP psyche Datamation Vol 31 No 16 (1985). pp 103-I 10 Couger, J D Motivators versus demotivators in the IS

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environment J of Syst. Management Vol 39 No 6 (1988) Technology in the 1990s British Computer Society, pp 36-41 London (1990) Ferrati, T W and Short, L E IS people differences NIS Quatierly Vol 12 No 3 (1988) pp 427-443 Henderson, J C Building and sustaining partnerships between line and IS managers: Management in the 90’s Working Paper MITN 89-078, MIT Sloan School of Management (1989) Grindley, K Managing iT at Board Level: The Hidden Agenda Exposed Pitman, London (1991) Crindley, K (ed.) Z~fo~ation Technology Review 1991/92 Price Waterhouse, iondon (1991) _ Earl, M J ~anugement Strategies for rnformat~on Technology Prentice-Hall. New York (1989) Palmer, C and Ottley, S From potential to reality: hybrids - a critical force in the Application of ~nfo~ation

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Galliers, R D ~nfo~ation Analysis Addjson-Wesley, Wokingham (1987) Galliers, R D Information Systems Research: Issues. Methods and Practical Guidelines Blackwell Scientific, Oxford ( 1992)

Editor’s Note

If you have an issue or argument that you wish to air, please summarize your views in a paper of no more than 1000 words in length and submit it to the Editor- in-chief.

62 Journal of Strategic Information Systems