- As I am tired all the time to plump with the customer ..! - said one integrator
In this article, I would like to share my observations and reflections on how the approach to IT decision making has changed.

Many engineers have become CIOs, managers, or owners of companies, and because of their past experience, they have retained an interest in the technical part of the infrastructure they now manage, rather than tightening their screws. Now they tell their admins what to twist. And it happens that the first person, poorly versed in IT, but he has his friend (and this is not his CIO), who understands IT - and he advises / does not consult with him? And how do managers with different IT past make decisions? How was it before, and how now? That's what I'm trying to talk about.

Consider the main decision-making scenarios:
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1. The first person, due to various reasons and personal preferences, herself determines “what kind of iron / cloud we take”, without consulting with those who will work on this piece of iron / cloud.
2. The head consults with the CIO, and he can consult with the admin “what we take”
3. The head says to the director: “Vasya, you need to work, choose what you need to buy there, just so that it is not very expensive”

Consider it seems like the perfect option when a manager consults with a CIO.

The strengths of this option are: - the main resultant is asked about what he will most need to deal with later.

Weaknesses: the administrator or the engineer, may not be aware of what has emerged at all, may have varying degrees, one cannot speak narrow-mindedness, but a person cannot just keep up with everything. And how, then, to improve business processes?

On the one hand, a lot of things appear - and there is not enough time to follow everything - there is not enough time, because you also need to work. On the other hand - the standard laziness and the desire to not touch - also has not been canceled.

In the book “The Russian Model of Management” this moment of the hyper-activity of administrators and stagnation is well shown, and here is the dualism of our soul — between these two extremes — strong tension and strong relaxation. The only question is that the tension cannot drag on - the forces are not enough for everything, but the stagnation can drag on, and for a long time.

Therefore, such a supplier of “everything new” may not be an individual, but individual companies (service contractors), who have much more resources to be in the trend of all new technologies that have emerged: for example, a hosting provider can be such an “admin” in the trend of everything new ”and implement, test and offer the best solutions to our clients, from those that appeared in the field of their technologies.

It is clear that the standard approach to decision making is not. We will consider the second pole - when (informal) schemes are our everything, the schemes, schemes, schemes are the most varied of good (for someone) or not so from different points of view.
Why did the image change, or the sample that is taken to make such decisions?

With the development of the economy, sooner or later the question of project management will arise, naturally project managers turn to the practices that are closest and accepted all over the world, not because they are the best, but because they are global and therefore will work with international integration in any country, with any mentality and with any climate (because the same PMbook takes this into account). This is of course about the Western methods of project management, and about the Western approach to management. So many IT representatives who are involved in project management are gradually beginning to adopt project and western thinking when they say that yes, the relationship is good, but the relationship with a partner is not the result, the result will be something else, but not the relationship itself by oneself.

And in this paradigm there is no place for nepotism - of course, it always has been, and it always will be, but this pattern of approach will no longer occupy a central place.

Disclaimer: I by no means say that cronyism is bad, no, it is and always will be - it is a fact, of course, there are cases when it works better than any PMbook, but it does not always and not everywhere, like it it was considered before - and this approach was applied both to the place and to the place. Then the society (and business) was different and more closed. And it is this model that has disappeared because of its disadvantage.

In Machiavelli, in his writings, it is well written why the tech sovereign wins - the one who trained his army, and the warlords will train their officers, the one who taught to manage their nobles, and they will train their officials, etc. In a word, the one who gave a pattern of action - and the same principle works in business, for example, the one that says, but I think that taxis should be like this: clean and beautiful, and cost no more than before - and this one will win, because everyone wants to drive cheaply in clean and beautiful taxis with polite drivers - and no more.

IT spending
Speaking about the common signs of mentality, we can safely say that they are very related to the IT sphere.
The township of our management is expressed in 2 extremes:
- under the microscope, consider any 5 kopecks spent on IT and immediately wait for a return on investment (planted an apple tree - and wait for apples for tomorrow)
- “road and in a bahamas” - with a wide hand as a sower to sow money in expectation that they will ascend exactly - after all, he sowed a lot, it should bring a lot of money ...

I spoke with a man who works very closely with the Chinese in the field of IT. And he speaks about the common opinion that the Chinese are by nature hardworking - a myth, they just have a society like this, they are put in such conditions - that they have absolutely no place to go from work. In Chinese stratagems, a case (case) is described, when one founder of a clan prescribed a headline for all his descendants to achieve the goal of becoming an imperial surname. And that's all, absolutely all descendants carried out this strategy for 300 (!) Years, and in the end it happened. Imagine what a planning horizon !? (That's why the Chinese can wait for the right moment for centuries).

I communicate with the PMmi, who have very large projects, and I say: well, because we have it all the way - through godfather / matchmaker / brother - how do you work with this? They say - yes, we work, if necessary, but the fact is that with the technological approach (the same PMbook) the question of some kind of left schemes or something else simply does not arise - it simply does not exist for such a soil, everything is incomprehensible externally, it becomes “zapadlo” to do so. Although most recently, “everyone did that”.

In any field, IT is not an exception, such a development scenario can be improved level and approach to decision-making. Suppose there are several players, and they all work about the same, somehow following the same pattern of maintaining partnerships: thumping with the customer is one of the examples.

Not everyone likes it, but everyone is afraid of being a pioneer and making mistakes in calculations. Over time, this paradigm becomes very inconvenient and uncomfortable for many in this market - but everyone suffers, because what? - afraid to change something. Then, the disadvantage of some basic model (“everybody works that way”) becomes more and more obvious, it is simply not economically cost-effective - whiskey (and the rest that comes with it) is very expensive, for example. Then someone's patience bursts, and one day he says - and I don’t work like that any more, period. And if this mood is really in the air, then immediately after him and other players in the market immediately change the approach to work and to decision-making. There are dinosaurs who say - and we will work in the old way at least that - yes, they will remain, but they will no longer have such a market share, as it was before. It’s like driving a cart in an age of electric cars — you can, reliably, but not that.

Manufacturability always wins

No matter how the workers in England crashed the machines - they, these soulless and technological monsters, won, no matter how our taxi drivers (now in Kiev) got alarmed with the launch of Uber, and now they send sms every day - it all looks like the agony of a dying man. Uber, even in spite of any fakapy, still win - just because it is more technologically. Any solution that has automation (which is why IT is developing) is the solution that wins. (Unless, of course, there are any other factors. For example, the collapse at the dawn of the development of Zeppelin's sky - this was a social shock at that time, and after this collapse, planes that were economically unprofitable at that time began to develop the sky.)

Similarly, precisely in the sphere of decision making and in management, technological effectiveness is winning. After all, if the practice of project management would not need them, they would not have been implemented by entire large holdings.

At the beginning, with the crony approach to business, the personal moment is very important, but this is also a bottleneck - the human factor. Best of all, when a person does not work, but a technology, or rather a person develops a technology that works.

The personal aspect is very unstable, today is friendship, tomorrow is a fight. It is best to deal not with the seller, but with an online store - chose what to buy, ordered, bought, brought - very little personal contact - and a huge time saving.

With the “thump with the customer” model, a lot of resources (and health) are spent in order to make a decision - a lot of strength and energy is spent: on the part of the customer, partner, provider, etc.

What is manufacturability in general, and adaptability in management?

Manufacturability, I mean not stuffing something with something super-mega-cool, I understand by adaptability: getting into the right part of the picture of the world of modern society. As V.K. Tarasov - a picture of the world of any person - a tough thing through which it is impossible to pass - in the mind of someone - this is a concrete wall, and in the mind of another - this is a curtain (although it may be disguised as concrete). Therefore, (without) rephrasing the classic we can say: thinking (being) defines control.

The IT sphere, as a part of society, still copies that way of thinking and acting, which is generally accepted everywhere in society, no matter what smart books anyone reads, you can always hear “something in books, but in life”.

It all depends on the structure of society. With the change of society - thinking changes, and changes the approach to the management of anything. The decision-making culture also changes accordingly - it is not beneficial for making decisions to drink with each client - there is not enough liver, it is not profitable to come up with schemes - you can get lost in your own legs, it is not profitable to lie and cheat someone - trust will be lost.

A paradoxical situation has arisen, in which a super-technical sphere - IT - was managed on a knee and decisions were made and made from the ground up. Some companies still believe that this is necessary. But many have long been cramped in this paradigm, and they still move on to more technological and design-oriented decision-making patterns, i.e. and IT decision-making is also moving toward adaptability to management and decision-making.

And then there are people who try to use roooboo in ours, such a real, such not ideal, life, with localization for us, what is “written in books” - and then a small, imperceptible change - everything changes.

In no case do I pretend to the ultimate truth, these are my thoughts-observations.

Total
When making decisions, it is better to make a bias towards greater civilization and avoiding “sticking-on-personal-relationships-avidly”. Thus, not giving ground for all sorts of “schemes”, despite the fact that you are very good friends with someone, does this not mean that you need to go and rob a bank with him? That is, I want to say that if you have tried all civilized methods of cooperation, and nothing helps, and you can’t turn to anyone else, only then you can turn to schemes - but not immediately work only in this way, and not otherwise. Not afraid to try - new approaches with new customers. Small changes in consciousness lead to big changes in everything. Project thinking, project approach, when we do not immediately divide or do something, and now we are developing a technology by which we will do something.

Transparency in relationships and in business - works according to the “bad now - good then” model, that is, it’s better to quarrel at first, ashore, about everything, and only then to sail than to be discovered in the same boat - “we thought you would ... "," and we thought that you were ... - and yet where could you get from a submarine? ". And only then, when everything was done or swam - you can already drink! :)

Books mentioned in the article:
V.Tarasov “The art of managerial struggle”
36 Chinese classic stratagems

What else can you read on this topic:
F. Juliens “Treatise on Efficiency”
A.Prokhorov “Russian management model”

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