Why the IBM System Implementation Approach is IT Centric and Elitist

Executive Summary

• Understanding the IBM systems implementation approach, and why is it so simpatico to how many IT departments like to behave?
• Does IBM’s approach lead to good outcomes, and why is the approach elitist?

Introduction

I observe this perspective quite commonly in IT departments that they have become so tired of the business that they support that they dismiss the concerns out of hand. I call this the IBM systems implementation approach because IBM is probably the most extreme example of a company that does not care about whether its systems improve the user community’s condition. Companies like IBM have a great incentive to take this approach because they are paid to implement systems successfully. Hence, IBM wants to declare that its implementations are successes, and the best and least expensive way to do this is to state that they are and that the problems are the user’s fault. However, another part is that this is the internal culture of IBM and is simply the type of people attracted to work at IBM.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

• This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem. 
• Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers. 

Justification

One way that IBM or IT departments undermine the business’s concerns is that they question their knowledge. This is a concern because IT people are generally themselves not experts in the business process. Therefore, to take the IBM approach, it is essential to consider oneself as a business expert and an IT expert. That is step one that the business neither has invested enough time understanding the system and isn’t managing their business very well. The next step is to decry the users’ intelligence and the managers of the users who are trying to channel feedback related to the system back to IT.

Is This True?

The fact is this is the user community that the implementation has to work with. It’s not functional to undermine the users’ intelligence. Firstly, it’s irrelevant. Even if we accept that it is true, it does not matter because the users are what the company has to work with. Secondly, if the system is, in fact, too advanced for the users, then doesn’t this fall back into the laps of the executive decision-makers who had a responsibility to select appropriate software for their users? Thirdly, my experience has on multiple accounts has shown that most derogatory statements like this about users’ abilities turn out not to be true. In the vast majority of examples, either the system output is not very good, or the system is in some way challenging to use. In some cases, the implementation was so poorly performed that basic master data was not included in the system.

In many cases, the system that causes the problems restricts the users from getting the promised value out of the system because of poor software design. This gets back to software selection and the fact that companies remove users from the selection process. Users should have representation on all software selections since they are going to drive the application. This is not done allows software companies to deliver less usable systems, but which look good in a demo or on paper. My experience is that it is exceedingly easy to fool executives but much more difficult to track users. The less capable an application, the more the sales team wants to keep it away from users during the pre-sales process.

How Different is This from the Microsoft versus Apple Debate?

For years the battle between Microsoft and Apple pitted an IT perspective versus a user perspective primarily. For decades, Microsoft blamed the user, came up with excuses for why the next version would be better, and generally disabled people and companies with low quality and difficulty using the software. Meanwhile, Apple always puts the user experience at the forefront. After years of taking a user approach, there is simply no comparison between Windows and OS X. Those people who are sane and unbiased who have the opportunity to use both prefer Apple. For decades Microsoft essentially won in the marketplace. One of the great reasons was that companies, which primarily don’t care about their employees and wanted cheap computers, went with Microsoft over Apple. This gave Microsoft the volume, and the network effect and, combined with monopoly behaviors, allowed them to lock in most consumer markets.

The software industry conformed around Microsoft, and Apple was almost knocked out of the game. If it had not been for a small group of independent thinkers that were willing to pay extra for a better user experience and were connoisseurs of computers, the rest of us would not have the choice of buying a better operating system today (or the iPod or iPad or countless other great inventions from Apple). But would be stuck using Windows machines exclusively (yes, I understand Linux would be another option, but Linux is not Apple. Has anyone seen groups of excited customers congregating in Linux Stores as they do at Apple Stores?)

This is the problem with allowing large companies to make selections that impact other industries. They tend to choose “practical” short-term oriented solutions that meet budgetary and risk aversion constraints but end up being less capable. I was tortured for years, having to use awful PC laptops provided by my employers. That is until I became an independent consultant and finally had effective and usable computers (MacBooks and iMacs), email (Gmail), and a content management system (WordPress) that no company I ever worked for could provide.

This historical lesson is about perfect an analogy as the past tends to offer up—two different companies with two drastically different orientations. Microsoft’s orientation was to discount what the user wanted and say take it or leave it. The following statement could be described as their overall strategy.

“We will have so much more software designed for us, and so many monopoly arrangements with hardware manufacturers that if you don’t like it…you have no choice.”

This is the IBM pie in the face approach in its purest form. On the other hand, Apple kept focusing on making software that was about enabling the user, not calling the user stupid or seeing them as a mark to be fleeced, but as someone like themselves who wanted something easy and even fun to use. The result, which I am typing on now, is a computer that enables users to do whatever they want. The lesson from this story is clear, make solutions that people want to use, do not dismiss their concerns, or minimize their intelligence, and people will seek you out to use your products.

Elitism

Elitism is a significantly misused word, at least in the US, so in the interest of using it correctly for the next portion of this article, it is vital to spend a moment discussing its meaning.

Perversion of the Word Elite

It is unclear when this began precisely, but Nixon was well-known for disdaining “elites,” which were primarily large and influential media outlets that opposed his policies. Nixon was generally poorly educated, read very little, and was more a tactician than executive in mindset. He had a quick reductionist mind but had difficulty with abstract concepts. Feelings of inadequacy about his ability to perform the president’s job most likely lead to his mental instability and the hazardous and illegal activities he approved.

Richard Nixon was one of the early proponents of misusing the term elite or elites. It’s doubtful Nixon was ever accused of being intellectually elite. However, by definition, he was part of the elite as he was a long-time senator and, of course, president. There is something quite strange about a member of the elite, who was entirely disinterested in sharing power or compromising (another characteristic of the elite’s negative definition), calling other people elite or elitist. For instance, imagine the King of France in the 1850s criticizing a political opponent because they were elite. That would be just as strange.

Since Nixon, the term elites has been used as a derogatory term for people how are not in agreement with the conventional wisdom or find the arguments for sure, generally conservative policies as unconvincing. However, it is crucial to recognize that this is not the actual definition of the word. The word has two general meanings. One is an accolade, which is to be good or in a top-ranking, and the other is pejorative, which is related to the aristocracy.

“Elite – noun – hobnobbing with Southport’s elite: best, pick, cream, crème de la crème, flower, nonpareil, elect; high society, jet set, beautiful people, beau monde, haut monde, glitterati; aristocracy, nobility, upper class. ANTONYMS dregs.” – Apple Dictionary

From this, it can be seen that the modern usage of the term elite or elitism is not correct, as it confuses negative and positive attributes while making the term generally negative. The negative use of the word applies not to people or groups who have achieved a certain status or position of influence because they are, in fact, “elite” at what they do but because they inherited a situation through no achievement of their own.

Elitism in IT

Self-centeredness is the most basic of human cognitive features. Royalty, through the ages, convinced themselves that the allocation of resources that they enforced with private guards and their military was the correct or resource distribution in that society. The extreme wealth of royalty in all cultures, along with their apparent lack of value add combined with the severe and easily altered poverty of the people they mostly owned, shows how flexible the mind is in rationalizing logically unsupportable positions. Both IBM, many of the major consulting companies, and many IT departments follow the approach that users should use the system they have designed and that their inputs and rights should be minimal. These same people will tell you how much they support democratic principles. IBM is one of the great proponents of this IT-centric view of the world. When individuals who work in IT or for IBM dismiss their users’ concerns and insult them and their capabilities, they are engaging in the form of elitism, which is quite dysfunctional. It’s also circular in its logic and highly self-centered. To agree with the users would mean having to analyze many of the decisions that lead to the users having a system they don’t like and one they find ways to workaround.

Are IT Decisions Generally Good?

In a word, no. The decision-making in companies concerning information technology is, in general atrocious. The software I see selected is often the worst of what is available, but it is selected. After all, it has a brand because someone has a relationship with someone, or they don’t understand what they are choosing and are not motivated to delegate the analysis to someone who does. The very fact that companies continue to hire large consulting companies to perform their implementations makes it crystal clear that companies do not understand how to manage their IT dollars. I can walk into any company and have a better IT infrastructure than they have, directly in the choices I have made for myself. One of the differences is having more expensive hardware, but others understand technology better. Many of my tools, like Gmail and WordPress, are free.

Decision-making in IT is so bad that it has led me to read books on irrationality’s evolutionary reasons. One book which I am reading titled The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God by neuroscientist David J Linden describes how the brain is just an organ that was designed in a somewhat haphazard manner (as is all biology), with new parts grafted on to the older parts. In a rush to self-indulgently praise “human intelligence,” we misunderstand the organ’s limitations and imbue it with properties that it, in many cases, does not have. As stated in the excellent book Understanding Stupidity, there are enough books to fill a library on intelligence, but almost nothing on stupidity.

IT decisions in companies are so bad that I have turned to neuroscience studies and evolutionary biology to understand why decisions are made the way they seem to be.

Therefore, to witness IT’s decision-making and then to hear IBM or IT, in general, degrade users is either absurd or surreal. I am not sure which.

“Why can’t the users understand what a fantastic system we have created for them, it must be because they are stupid. It certainly must be, because we have created such a great system for them.” – Typical Quote from the Follow of the IBM Approach

The Self-Centeredness of the Business

This is not to say that the business is not often self-centered as well. Indeed, not everything the user community wants is possible, and in some cases, they are not advisable for one reason or another. The company is typically trying to meet their executives’ needs to defend their old decisions, associate with major brands, and seek advancement far more than they are to bring anything of quality to the user community.

Conclusion

The approach of IBM, many IT departments, and others in diminishing the business’s requests is simply another form of insensitive elitism that goes quite a far way back in history. It is no longer considered fashionable to wear powdered wigs and decry peasants’ stench or the inability to find a properly motivated slave. But it is considered perfectly acceptable to insult the capabilities of many people who do the real work in the company. Simultaneously, this may feel good in the short-term and brings an intoxicating feeling of superiority combined with the reduction in cognitive dissonance as to why users don’t like the system one designed or implemented. It is ultimately counterproductive, and in most cases, based on faulty assumptions which are easily disproved. It is, however, a very effective way of providing not particularly good systems while feeling good at the same time.