IT Impedance Mismatch?

I stumbled upon an interesting slide deck, Information Technology Team Dynamics. It summarizes some work sponsored by the Defense Systems Management College in the US Department of Defense.

The deck provides a reasonably detailed picture of work done to analyze team dynamics in IT organizations relative to several personality classification methods.

It's an interesting read for those interested in the topic.

It presents some thought provoking findings. A few in particular caught my attention.

• Preference for intuition was 40% higher in the study group than the MBTI national sample
• Preference for thinking was nearly twice the percentage found in the MBTI national sample
• Feeler and perceivers were underrepresented relative to the MBTI national sample
  

Put another way, the study group seemed to have a higher concentration of people that exhibited an

• increased preference for abstract theoretical information over concrete sensory information
• increased preference for rule-based decisions over consensus based decisions
• decreased comfort with changing course when new information is available
  

These are at direct odds with situations in which

• previous working theories are disintegrating under new market conditions
  
• new information is capable of arriving at ever increasing rates

It would be inappropriate to apply these to IT as a whole, particularly given that the application of Myers Briggs requires some subtlety and care. The basic analytical process can, however, provide some interesting food for thought when mapping out longer term strategies.

How many IT organizations are fundamentally mismatched to the problems they face?

Does IT Hate Itself?

James McGovern poses another round of IT introspection questions in Enterprise Architecture and Holistic Diversity.

His questions provoked a question in my thoughts.

Does IT hate itself?
(and no, I don't mean James - I mean IT :-)

Is hate characterizing it too harshly? Possibly, but it's hard to escape the observation that IT as a whole persists in a variety of self-destructive behaviors.

• Creating processes that predispose the organization to technical and political silos
• Systematically devaluing personal contribution and self worth
  
• Chasing initiatives as if on some whirlwind tour of self-help programs
  
• Listening raptly to vendor sermons and emptying wallets into the collection plate
  

If this were a person we would probably be concerned.

So why the self-destructive behaviors?

• Is it the result of abuse during formative years?
• Is it guilt for past indiscretions?
• Is it a symptom of some form of Borderline Personality Disorder in IT culture?
  

Is this the key to formulating a strategy for an increased focus on people rather than processes?