I’ve been recently working on a multi-company research project on Managing IT in Recessionary Times. In support of that project, I have taken advantage of every CIO conversation I’ve had lately (probably at least one such conversation per day for the last month or so) to ask about how this recession is impacting their company and their IT organization in ways that are different from prior economic downturns.
The responses have surprised me – not so much for their content, but for the passion and emotion behind the issue, and the degree to which many of these CIO’s highlighted the same issue as the #1 challenge they were facing that felt quite different this time. To be clear, there were some exceptions, but the majority have told me that their biggest challenge is engaging their IT talent. It seems that people are so distracted by the economy, and by fear for their jobs and for their retirement savings, that they were having a hard time knuckling down and doing their jobs.
Is Lack of Employee Engagement Counter-intuitive in a Recession?
On the face of it, I think this is counter-intuitive – you might expect people to really work their hardest and ensure they are “invaluable” in their positions, and should be the last ones to be shown the exit door. But this is not the case in most IT organizations I have probed on this issue. The reality in most cases is the fear and concerns for their livelihood are so dominant in many people’s minds that they are having a hard time performing – even though they recognize that this might well be self-defeating.
I’ve used motorcycle analogies before (see Zen, Motorcycles and the Art of Organizational Change Management) and another analogy comes to mind here. There’s a phenomenon well known to motorcyclists (or at least it should be if they want to live to be old motorcyclists!) called Target Fixation. Simply stated, a motorcycle tends to go where its rider is looking. If you are overly focused on an obstacle you want to avoid, there’s a very good chance that you will steer right into it! (As an aside, my wife and I rented Segway’s a couple of years ago on vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. It was a great experience, and a wonderful way to cruise the marina – until my wife experienced Target Fixation first hand. Once she had mastered the Segway (not difficult, but certainly different from just about any other form of transportation) and was feeling comfortable with it, she managed to steer it straight into a tree! I was a few yards behind her filming our little marina excursion on a camcorder, and I could see exactly what happened – a pure case of Target Fixation, as she saw the tree, and literally steered into it – inexorably fixated on this hard object!)
So, the danger I believe for any of us, is that if you let the economy and the uncertainties dominate your thinking, you will increase your chances of becoming victim to it. It is what it is – focus on those things you can do, and don’t allow water cooler gossip and the constant drum of recession woes get to you.
(Cartoon courtesy of Zealize Limited.)
Filed under: Change Management, IT Management Tagged: | employee engagement, IT and recession, recession
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