There's more to be said about how our innate human need for status and hierarchy affect the relationship between IT and the business, as I began to explain in my last post. http://blogs.cio.com/node/585

I talked about how service functions like IT and HR are inevitably lower in the hierarchy of groups inside companies than business groups. Talk all you want about alignment and melding IT and the business together into one happy family, but we are hard wired to put individuals and groups into hierarchies. But doing so inevitably causes resentment among the people and groups that occupy the lower rungs.

It's not fair. It's harder to major in computer science than marketing. Maintaining and building IT systems is harder than selling widgets. You get the idea.

But it's always IT's job to just get over it.

IT people won't ever be able to get over it, as long as they are at a lower rung of the hierarchy. Fairness runs too deep in us--and just about every other self-respecting mammal: Scientists did an experiment with monkeys who shared the same diet and loved it. But when they took one of the monkeys off the standard diet and gave it something new, the other started getting jealous. He went on a hunger strike and starting hurling his beloved food at the handlers. The new diet wasn't better or tastier, just different. What mattered was that it wasn't being shared fairly.

I think there is a deep sense of unfairness felt by anyone who has to serve others. It's why call centers have reliably high turnover and it's why IT people often try to isolate themselves from the business. The business compounds the sense of unfairness by criticizing IT. But IT's retreat into systems isn't a failure, it's natural, human. Engaging with business people who always look for IT to serve is just a humiliating reminder of IT's lower status.

And what most business people fail to realize is that they are as responsible for this retreat as IT people. Chalking it up to geekiness or stereotypical shyness is a crock. That's the hierarchy talking--a sense of superiority that comes from being in a more dominant group. Trouble is, that's natural, too. Apes, wolves and every other social animal beat on those lower in the hierarchy to assert their dominance, to demonstrate their status to others in the group and sometimes, just for the hell of it.

But there's another more positive trait hard-wired in us that can counterbalance the nastiness of our obsession with status and hierarchy. It's called empathy. We share it with every mammal down to the lowly rat. One experiment put two rats in cages where they could see each other. Every time one of the rats pushed a bar for food, it caused a shock to be delivered to the other rat. As soon as the hungry rat recognized the connection, he refused to push the bar. Chimps will literally starve themselves to death rather than deprive others in their group of food.

Unfortunately, our tribal identification with groups doesn't help our natural sense of empathy. In fact, it blocks it. Chimps won't starve in the name of feeding someone in another group; they're more likely to kill them for whatever food they have.

Empathy between groups and individuals in different groups is not natural, but it can be learned. It just needs conscious and active attention. It has to be planned.

Call centers with lower turnover rates train their employees to have a much higher empathy for customers than they would have naturally--and certainly more than the jerkiest of callers deserves. They are also trained how to diffuse and avoid confrontation. This doesn't just improve service; it gives the employees a better sense of self-worth. Happy customers are less likely to exert hierarchy and more likely to apologize for doing it after their natural impulses have been killed with kindness.

I don't get the sense that many IT departments do this kind of training.

I know that businesses don't do it, at least in terms of the relationship with IT.

Empathy comes from standing in someone else's shoes--really standing in them, not simply describing what the shoes look like. That's why the best companies have job rotation programs. That's why IT people who have served a stint with the business can be so effective. And business people who have served a stint in IT can be the most reliable advocates for IT with their business colleagues--if they actually got their hands dirty while they were there, rather than simply acting as management figureheads for visiting the wrath of the business upon an "underperforming" IT group.

Co-location can also help things tremendously, if it is managed well.

But if you don't have the resources or patience to do this in your company, you can elevate the status of IT without having to reorganize the company. I think there's something to be said for separating IT into a hierarchy of groups, which the consultants at McKinsey call a widespread trend. One group handles demand, and the other handles supply. The demand group has a high motivation for standing in the shoes of the business, because they handle the higher-level strategy, budgeting, architecture, business process reengineering and portfolio management. The supply group can focus more on the hard-core IT, away from the prying eyes of the business, though they will still need call-center style training in how to handle nasty users.

I think it can eliminate one of the biggest complaints that the business has: confusion over roles. If you can separate IT service from IT delivery, you can build empathy better than if people are doing both jobs at once. If someone hates you because you can't keep his PC running, he isn't going to cooperate in standardizing the architecture, sharing databases with other departments or contributing people to a new application project. The experience of the broken PC colors his judgment forever and reinforces his sense of hierarchy, superiority and mistrust. Why should I invest in this project when IT in this company is so unreliable?

But if he engages with someone from the demand side who understands his business and clearly is not responsible for handling network outages or balky PCs, there is less confusion and mistrust. I think it also raises the IT person to more of a co-equal status, diffusing some of the hierarchical instincts, while also diffusing some of the sense of unfairness experienced by IT people.

What do you think?

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