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March 14, 2003
I'm a genius, you're an idiot
Like many who grow up in the technology industry, I was educated early on that technologists are the people who really "get it", and the sooner we can convince the rest of the world how smart we are, the sooner they'll get out of our way and let us do our jobs, and then everything will be better. Technologists usually identify sales, marketing and executives (and sometimes "users" and "customers") as the targets who stand in the way of the Right Way.
I don't think technology is the only field that promotes this kind of perspective. I'm sure doctors develop a similar perspective about patients and nurses, and sales people about engineers, finance managers about the people who spend money, executives about technical people.
I've worked with strong technical teams. I've also worked with executives, sales people, managers, marketing and end users. I found the technical perspective had some validity (technical people can come up with solutions, for better or worse), but it was too black-and-white, too either-or for me. I enjoy understanding the "other" perspectives, and advocating for the people who use technology (we are all technology users at some level, so I found the pure technologist perspective is often self-defeating).
Politics is probably the most confusing and frustrating aspect of relationships, especially to technologists (though I hear it from all across the spectrum). Political science was one of my favorite topics in high school and college, and continues to interest me.
I have a fear of politics. It's not that I don't understand politics, or that I am afraid to engage in the political aspects of a project. In fact, a lot of my interest in understanding other perspectives can be considered political. I'm more concerned about how politics will change me, how it can affect my ability to think critically, take risks, change what I do and what the organization does.
Politics has a slippery slope, that it can easily become the end instead of the means, and it can easily create self-serving individuals and organizations. Better understanding of political risks can paralize individuals and organizations, and make them unwilling to make changes, take risks or engage in important dialogues, because of political risks they perceive (or just fear of political impact). People can get caught up in seeking more power through political means, instead of using that political power to help the organization be more successful. People can also get caught up in spending their time reinforcing their current position (and as a result, the organization comes to a stand-still as well), instead of taking risks that can propel them and their organization to higher levels of success.
I will often deliberately ignore the "political realities" of a situation, because I think they inhibit my ability to see the situation for what it is, instead of what everyone thinks it is. This lets me take risks that I would otherwise be afraid to. And it sometimes gets me into trouble. Through experience, I hope I can get better at minimizing the downside without also minimizing the upside.
It would be nice if there was a right and wrong, or someone really smart that could tell us all what the right choice is. There are plenty of people who claim to be able to do that, but I have yet to see it happen.
Technology is the means, not the end, so inherently the success of technology is determined by those who decide to use it and become more successful by using it. Technology is at the intersection of users, technologists, managers, buyers, sellers, business motivations, technical advantage, politics, finance and all of the other factors that make up individuals and organizations. A successful technologist has to be at that same intersection.
Posted by pete at March 14, 2003 9:21 PM