Smart Companies
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I've been working for about 5 years now and have been in three companies. The first company (about 100 people) that hired me out of university was a VERY SMART company. There was "Vision" and "Mission" and a "Quality Statement" that most of us knew (and even believed). There were quarterly business reviews where we saw what was going on in all parts of the company. At one point, early on, the SW group realized that it's people weren't super happy, so they started to actively work on that problem. The results... they built a very open culture. Individuals were encouraged to take (calculated) risks and learn from mistakes. We adopted agile development when I was there. And a bunch of other cool stuff.
Company 2 NOT SMART. The ruthless pursuit of the quarterly numbers lead to cutting corners and looking the other way. I only stuck that place out 8 months.
Company 3 is actually satellite SW development group within Company 1. Unfortunately, the culture building & strong leadership from Company 1 didn't translate to company 3. I'd have to say Company 3 is NOT SMART, but has potential.
So my point is that a company overall can be a smart company. But within its own walls there can be some smart and not-so-smart groups.
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I work for a smart company, Bryan Cave LLP. I think Bryan Cave is smart because of the culture and how it welcomes diversity. People are respected for their work and dedication. It doesn't matter about your race, gender, political beliefs, religion or sexual orientation, if you are talented you can succeed at Bryan Cave. They also invest in the professional development of their employees. Each year I have gone to the PASS conference and attended other local classes and events. They expect a lot, but they have helped me grow a lot, too.
Aunt Kathi Data Platform MVP
Author of Expert T-SQL Window Functions
Simple-Talk Editor -
The fact that you say that shows you have no idea about the NHS. The words 'fixed' and 'quickly' are not often put together in a sentence concerning the NHS!
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I noticed the same differences since I'm a "weekend warrior" with the government and work in the private sector during the week. The best theory I can come up with is that to succeed in the private sector a business has to be proactive -- anticipating and dealing with issues before they become big issues. Government is mostly reactive -- for the most part they have to react to existing conditions after they're already big issues.
Of course that's a good thing, since most people wouldn't want the police kicking in their door for some crime they anticipate you'll commit at some point ("Minority Report" anyone?)
BTW - I noticed in the rankings that they assign a "knowledge value per employee", but it doesn't appear to single out groups of employees (i.e., IT, marketing, etc.) According to this ranking, the guy who says "Would you like fries with that?" contributes as much to Burger King's "smartness" as the guy who administers their distributed database servers, who contributes as much as the VP of Sales, etc.
This ranking doesn't seem to really measure IT-related activities and employees specifically. It's hard to directly measure the value of good IT people in most companies, since we don't usually do sales, marketing, etc. Basically we don't usually contribute directly to the bottom line (of course there are always exceptions, and really big ones at that). We do, however, always support the decision makers and the people who do contribute to the bottom line. It would be far more interesting to me to see a methodology for measuring the impact that IT departments have on businesses.
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Mike,
Sometimes it is too late to be reactive (9/11). However, proactive government has not been mastered in the West yet (Iraq).
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To rate the smart companies based on the finanical performance, I am sorry I totally disagreed with that.
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I think that rating companies as smart because they have a values statement and a mission statement and the usual goals-orientated performance guide, does not indicate anything other than them jumping on the marketing badwagon.
I was in government for 12 years (a railway department in Australia) who had all the pretty values statements and things like that to make employees *think* that the company had direction and a respect for employees but in reality they did not.
Essentially, the catchphrases (or "wank phrases") used by marketing equate to:
"World's Best Practice" - "Do it my way".
"Values Statement" - How we want employees to act while middle and upper management can still play their pathetic and childish games of office politics and enforce workplace behavioural policies against the workers only while our managerial buddies can do what they like.
"Vision Statement" - What the company would like to be thought of by other organisations but have the same chance of achieving that as the Cheshire Cat does of becoming the CEO.
"Lead by Example" - Only when it suits our purposes.
In short, government departments are full of morons who prefer to ignore their actual jobs so they can run around looking for dirt on anyone and everyone so that they can carry tales back to management to make themselves look good. When the other members of the team don't carry their "share" of the load (that is: filling the hole caused by the non-performing politico), those employees are considered to be bad performers.
The other reality of government departments is that they are generally full of people who are either totally disinterested in doing anything constructive and just want to coast along -or- people who are truly good at what they do but have had their self-confidence destroyed to the point that they don't think that they have marketable skills for anywhere else.
Government offices are NOT and NEVER WILL BE "smart" companies. Case in point - look at the ultimate bosses: Ministers! If a company is only as good as it's boss then it's plain to see why every single government department runs so inefficiently and makes decisions that could only ever come from a dedicated moron.
I'm now in private enterprise and the change in environment is wonderful. If you're in government & IT and you think that you're being held back - MAKE THE MOVE - you won't regret it.
A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
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No need to add anything
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