I work for a large insurance company in their strategic information
technology architecture area. My role is to help translate the strategic
business plan into technology programs that will enable the business areas
to achieve their plans. My role shifts between 1) Helping the strategic
business units to clarify their strategic planning statements (and
underlying assumptions); 2) Developing an overall picture of the
technology infrastructure as it needs to be in 5-7 years, then
communicating it in business understandable form and technical form; 3)
Developing more detailed technical designs that can be used to actually
build the infrastructure; and 4) Helping to build the infrastructure.
Along the way we, I work closely with a couple of other people, have had
the opportunity to use a number of the "soft" skills like dialogue, causal
loop diagrams, mental models, etc. to help us understand the underlying
assumptions that even the listener may not know that they are
stating/using. I should mention that my organization is very highly
hierarchial and does not provide an environment where, outside of my
immediate team, dialogue would be allowed/understood/valued. So one of the
unoffical challenges we face is using technology, and its change force, to
open up the organization to new non-technology tools that can be sources
of leverage. I actually find the people side of the changes to be more
fascinating and challenging, but that seems to ruin a lot of people's
mental model of technologists so our challenge of introducing
non-technology change is significant.
I have noticed that the majority of the subscribers to this list tend to
be OD, change management consultants, psychologists, etc. If anyone else
on the list has a similar job/background to mine I would enjoy trading
stories/experiences.
I do tend to be a very practical person so most of my thoughts will tend
to focus on the current state and how best to transition to the desired
state.
Thanks for all of your thoughts - I have often been challenged.
-- Bill arch1@texas.net (Bill Mitchell)