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by Bruce Morris
Big corporates (and other dinosaurs) frequently ruin the own development efforts by estranging their best employees.
Corporates still don't 'get it' about the Internet. The big corporations that have the powerful brands and funds to make powerful, profitable ecommerce Internet businesses seem to shoot themselves in the foot more often than they get it right. What it boils down to is that the Web culture that makes for a great Internet development team is simply indigestible for most corporates - they just can't stand to see Webbies having fun, being creative, turning corporate culture and imperatives on their heads - even if it does make lots of money.
June 5, 2000
You've probably observed this scenario several times already. Someone high up within a big corporate realises they'd better get going on this Internet stuff - it's going to be important after all. So a weekly meeting of high-level managers is established wherein the powers that be talk about the Web and the important things they should be doing with it that they read about in a magazine or heard about from another executive they sat next to on the plane. Nobody wants to take responsibility for a serious Web project but they want to make sure such a plum doesn't end up in their rival's empire either. So nothing much happens. After meeting like this for about 6 months, almost accidentally authorisation is given to actually hire someone from outside the organisation to head up the Web project. Accidentally the person they hire 'gets it' and works hard to build a development team and a site for the company appears - in spite of the backbiting, corporate politics and high-level empire building. The site looks good and the Web team are heroes.
Of course actually selling the company's products through the site can't be done at first due to a myriad of internal objections like (and this is a real quote from a real corporate numb-nut) "why should we want to have orders coming in from the Internet? We can't handle all the orders we're getting to our call centres already." Eventually such fools are shouted down as a few of the smarter managers realise it's easier for a computer to take an order than it is to build and staff a new call centre. So eventually the company starts selling its products on the new Web site and orders pour in. Turns out to be the cheapest and most efficient way for the company to handle orders. The Web team are again heroes.
Even though the site has been up for months, the company sends out a press release trumpeting their 'new' site and its success. All the former internal nay-sayers are on hand for the the ribbon cutting. The Web team gets a new budget. It's a good budget and shortly afterwards it's announced the Web team is being moved from the IT department to the marketing department (or maybe the other way around).
The Web team has grown rapidly by hiring internal misfits and outsiders with strange-coloured hair. They're doing a great job adding relevant content, building community, making the site sticky and efficient. Most of the team members are handling bigger jobs than they expected they would be doing at such a young age. It's the best team to work on in the company since they all get good PCs and unlimited net access and hey, it's the Web and that's cool! They don't have to ask permission to download a new shareware Web development tool. They're paid better than usual, work long hours and actually seem to enjoy their jobs.
Some upper management think things are a bit loose down there and that the team needs to be 'straightened out' a bit. Jealousy rears its ugly head among management. The guy they hired to head up the Web team gets to go to board meetings and people listen to him. All the IT staff are trying to get transferred to the new Web team. The marketing department thinks they need to be telling the Web team how they should be doing things - after all, this is just a bunch of techies running this site. What could they possibly know about it?
Rather than leave the golden goose alone the corporate starts fiddling with it. After all, it's just not seemly for the goose not to wear a tie every day like everyone else has to do - everyone knows you do better work if you're dressed smart. So far the corporate has only done small things to screw up the award-winning Web team that grew up almost by mistake. But now it's obvious that the Internet is vital to the corporate's future. So they send in the adults. "Great job kids! We never thought you'd be able to deliver something as well thought out and professional as this. Of course it's sloppy and doesn't conform to our IT standards so us adults are here now to fix all that. You kids go back to bed or whatever you were doing before all this started - we're going to be running things properly from now on - with controls and all that."
The suits arrive and they don't 'get it'. They want the Web team to get rid of their big monitors and use small ones like everyone else. If you need some new software fill out several forms and wait for the IT department to look at the software and make sure it won't bring down the corporate network. Since Java surely has to be a security risk all Java must be taken off the site. The new corporate Web oversight committee must review all content destined for the Web site. The Legal Department must review all content before it goes live. Requests for content review can take up to two months. The New Product VP doesn't like some of the things he sees on the main page of the site so it gets redone. Of course the new version is not as good and traffic falls off. The IT head informs the Web team that IT will be taking over the Web servers and putting them on their VAX system. About two weeks later the brilliant, entrepreneurial guy they hired to build the Web team resigns in disgust (he wasn't a team player anyway). Other key team members also leave. After all, they now have enough experience under their belts to get jobs with real dot coms and get stock options (the corporate only gives stock options to a small group at the top - will the Web team ever get stock options? Hell, no! If they gave options to the Web team everyone would want them). It's no fun anymore anyway. The adults really don't want anyone doing anything that hasn't been discussed and approved well in advance.
Although the original team managed to get huge traffic to the site with no marketing budget, the huge new, multi-million dollar Web marketing budget is only drawing in a pale shadow of the traffic the site used to get. One of the Marketing Director's pets is put in charge of the Web team. He promptly gets rid of that damn techie with the messy desk (the one who built the Web servers and ran them for 6 months without a burp) that's been making the IT Director mad and outsources all the technical development. The servers crash the next day and monthly stats are unavailable. Traffic to the site is levelling off. The hockey stick starts to look like a piece of wet spaghetti. The Web team budget is cut since it was ridiculous anyway. The Marketing Department gets the Web marketing budget and spends it all on banner ads on Yahoo and one big TV campaign. Neither campaign generates much traffic but the spikes crash the server.
The HR Director sits next to someone on a flight back from the coast who tells them all about this cool intranet they just paid an astronomically expensive management consultancy firm to build for them. He pulls about half the Web team off to work on a poorly-defined intranet that will transform the way the corporate does business and communicates with its colleagues (the people who work there). Much of the Web team's time is taken up in meetings with vendors trying to sell strategy consulting and 'solutions'. Hits to the site keep on going up and there are still plenty of orders so the site is still seen as being a 'success' even though the competition just announced their site has five times as much traffic and sales (their site launched 6 months after yours). The Web department is down from 20 people to 10 and most of those are new. The magic seems to be gone somehow but IT and Legal are now pretty sure the Web team won't do anything too stupid. They won't do anything too wonderful either.
So what's the deal here? Why do the corporates squash the talent they unwittingly built in favour of 'don't get it' suits? There are a couple of reasons, the main one being that the decision makers don't get it. They haven't been in the Web trenches, don't love it, are a bit scared of it and kind of wish it would go away. The idea that young upstarts who haven't paid 20 years' dues in the corporate trenches being anything other than trainees sticks in the corporate throat. Once you get near the top of the hierarchical pyramid in the corporate world, empire building, back-stabbing (read 'office politics') are the usual tools for advancement. The Peter Principal (people tend to get promoted one level beyond their level of capability) works on all levels - especially up high. Many corporate decision makers are over their heads.
The nature of a large corporate demands conservatism, conformity and sameness - it's needed to preserve what the corporate has built up. The corporate bosses are jealous. The entrepreneurial nature of Internet development does not mix well with the corporate ethos of preserving the status quo. The corporate powers cannot handle the youngsters (even if they are Internet gurus and the key to the future of the company) getting high salaries, stock options, flexible working conditions and star status. After all, they just learned on the job, didn't they? “We hired that bunch, so if they leave we can hire another just like them.”
So those people leave and the corporate Web effort becomes ordinary and uninspired because you can't hire people “just like” the old team because the experienced Webbies are working in small dotcoms for big salaries and stock options. The famous technical skills shortage is real but the real shortage is in people who have done it before and are good at it. There are plenty of people just out of school or who have read a book about Java that are looking for jobs in Internet development. Wannabes. The corporates hire wannabes who will take months or years to become as good as the people the corporate just squandered. The best people, the ones who not only get it but the ones who have done it and know how to do it will not come to the corporates - they know what that's like and avoid it like kids avoid green vegetables.
This is why the Amazons and other small start-ups are eating corporates for lunch on the Internet. Corporates have the advantage of power and brand (but not necesarily money) but even those advantages are fleeting. Amazon and many start-ups have built a powerful brand and have more money slopping around than do many of the corporates. Plus they are willing to spend it to buy market share. They have a cool corporate culture, money enough to offer great salaries, stock options, etc. They're going to get the best job applicants. The Amazons of the world don't have to hire wannabes. The corporates are churning out thousands of qualified, experienced, get it-type people and running them off with their stifling corporate culture. Snappy competitors are snapping them up.
So do all corporates screw up like this? It sure seems like it. The only way IBM managed to develop the personal computer was by setting up a completely independent group in a completely different building, town and state from the rest of the company corpus. All alone and unfettered the group did brilliant work, developed a world-changing product and reported back to base. So what did IBM do then? Promptly applied all their old-world big corporate methodologies and lost the PC market to the likes of Dell, Gateway and Compaq because they were too slow and hide bound to continue innovating. Exactly the same way corporates are screwing up their Internet development efforts today. Those who fail to read history are doomed to repeat it.
So corporates: figure out a way to insulate your Internet development teams from the rest of the company. Let them break the rules and get the job done quickly and imaginatively. And then for the hard part: try to keep things that way after the site launches. Keep the adults at bay. Keep the empire builders far away. Promote the clever person who built the team to VP level even if they don't fit the corporate model (hell, especially if they don't fit the corporate model). Give them good budgets and autonomy. Let them make mistakes. Let them do something stupid sometimes. If you can keep an entrepreneurial team insulated within the corporate space you just may see your company successfully through the wild technological changes that are taking place. Developers: avoid corporates like salmonella. Quit now! They'll never change. All your late night, heart-felt efforts to do a really good job and build something great will end in heartache. Find yourself a start-up that gets it and get on with the job the way you know it should be done (you're right, you know). If you already work for a corporate get the hell out of there!
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