Choice

The chance to participate in IT decisions (Not the retro Kiwi expression Choice)

 

For us Matrix boffins: You’ll remember the very powerful scene when Neo tells Agent Smith “Because I choose to….”

Instilling the idea that giving our end users more choice is a good thing, has often been one of the hardest points to sell over my career. It comes down to explaining, “giving options to our colleagues does not mean giving up control”. The trend of bring your own device (BYOD) ended when we finally had enough numbers to prove it was not cost effective and reduced productivity as we tried to make the proverbial square peg fit…  Choose your own device, on the other hand, helped foster a sense of ownership and participation in the decision making process.

I’m not a fan of the expression “empowering”, it sounds like I’ve just plugged in my mobile. However, it does help soften the stereotype of IT saying no all the time and give some of the decision making away to the end user.

The relationship between IT and employee engagement is one we often overlook. Today’s corporate employee will be working online, using digital technologies. Their experience will undoubtedly be influenced by the quality of the technology they are using. We should be working with our HR departments to ensure we are offering the kind of solutions that can help get employees enthusiastic about the way they are working. Affording them the chance to make tech choices, reasonable one’s, goes a long way towards creating a flexible and relaxed working environment. Attracting and retaining talent is so important to a thriving business, many of these talented potential employees are asking about the technological landscape in their interviews. When a prospective employee wants to know if you offer remote working, they are mostly asking if you are geared up for it.

There are very few organisations I have come across that can have widespread options at the platform level. Many are restricted to one choice of OS or ecosystem. Big players like Apple, Microsoft and Google offer quite different experiences with their products and generally professional firms require governance that will not allow for all three to exist. The choice I am talking about is within those required environments themselves.  The exception (one that I feel gains traction here) is the mobile phone. With the right mobile device management software in place we can still allow choices across these devices….

Not so much with Microsoft though, their attempt at getting into it with Nokia, did not pan out sadly, such a shame when the flagship Nokia 930 had so much promise.…

Anyone remember the Nokia 8210?