Hidden Agendas Occur more often than you think
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| Author | Content |
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| phsolide Jan 18, 2006 5:33 AM EDT |
Anyone who has worked in an RBOC (which were all composed of multiple pre-1983-breakup Bell Operating Companines) knows about hidden agendas scuttling major, major projects. Indeed, almost all big corporations have independent, warring units, sometimes from acquisitions or mergers, sometimes from geographic dispersal. I think the "IT Manager's Journal" article misses out on a big, big factor: payoffs. Why do companies like to have "approved products lists" and move in-house projects into vendor-provided software, despite the multiple obvious, crippling structural deficiencies such things almost always have? Because it puts decisions about what vendor to use in the hands of a middle manager, who can easily take some kind of payoff to choose a particular vendor. In the stories I've heard from middle managers deep in their cups, the amount of a monetary payoff can be surprisingly small: $200 or $300. Visits to topless bars seem like another standard, yet small-cost payoff. If now-defunct "Brill's Content" magazine can be believed, this sort of thing (paid visits to Redmond) is how MSFT controls the press it gets. The "IT Manager's Journal" story also misses an equally important side-effect of what happens when a hidden agenda is only partially exposed: utterly demoralized IT working units. Let's say that a Finance Director very obviously favors one vendor of credit card processing services over another. IT people will try to figure this out, doing research via goole or what have you. If the only conclusion is that the Finance Director has some undeclared financial interest in the favored vendor, then the IT working units involved will loose morale, and turn out inefficient crap, or just fail rapidly. That's what the Finance Director wants, as now he or she can point to the failure and declare that the favored vendor can do the work cheaper and better. |
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