Something that leaped out at me in Chapter 6 of "Delivering Digitally" was part of the ITAP case study. While the chapter is about infrastructure, I found it notable that the case study said, "The ITAP project leaders recognized that in order to achieve their aims they needed to address issues of cultural and structural change" (p.98).
This resonated with me because from what I have experienced, infrastructure change comes about and is successful only to the extent that "cultural and structural change" (of an institution, an organization, a company, a group, even a class) can happen.
The issues of infrastructure are ones that my own organization has been dealing with for about two years now (at least educational infrastructure, anyway). With funding getting tighter and tighter, it has been harder to raise money for some of the types of educational programs we have done for several years now and which have been very successful. Many of my colleagues and I had been urging (politely of course!) our CEO that we could do more of this type of work in house (that we had the expertise and just needed some of the hard tech that the chapter points outs as needs--servers, etc.). Although he never came out and said so, I don't think he believed us.
But here we are two years later, and after pushing for and achieving some cultural change (small-scale pilot projects demonstrating success which I believe increased confidence) and some structural change (a couple of my colleagues and I are in higher-level positions now), we are now working toward some infrastructure change!
Has anyone else seen this dynamic at work? Can you share any examples? Or are there other dynamics that could be at work in situations like this? What do you think?
Oh yes, I've witnessed this dynamic for many years in our organization. We are in the midst of it right now. I work for a "wellness" company which aquired a "disease management" company earlier this year. We have had some serious culture change so we can finally start to change our infrastructure. Until we can get everyone on the same page and understanding where we want to go as a company, no one could agree on what we should do to consolidate and upgrade our infrastrucure. Through many meetings and continued discussions, I think we are finally heading in the right direction. This process has been much slower than anyone has wanted, but necessary to ensure we don't waste resouces in the infrastructure development.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think I have firsthand experience with these issues, but I do remember reading several newspaper articles that said telecommuters are less likely to receive promotions, a fact that seems to be related to a company’s structure and culture. I imagine workplace cultures have been changing, with more telecommuters advancing, because even workers who visit an office five days a week now use more and more web-based communication and conferencing tools.-JD
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