Podcast: Business Technology and Human-Speak
Jim Harris in Blogs, Books, Data Quality, Podcasts tagged Business-IT Collaboration, Communication, Marty Moseley, Philosophy, Tony Fisher Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 3:00AM An excellent recent Marty Moseley blog post called for every one of us, regardless of where we sit within our organization chart, to learn conversational business-speak.
This common call to action, perhaps first sounded by the George Colony blog post in August of 2006, rightfully emphasizes that “business is technology and technology is business” and therefore traditional IT needs to be renamed BT (Business Technology) and techies need to learn how to “engage in a discussion of process, customers, and operations, not esoteric references to SOA, Web services, and storage management.”
Therefore, we need to always frame enterprise information initiatives (such as data governance and master data management) in a business context by using business language such as mitigated risks, reduced costs, or increased revenue, in order to help executives understand, as the highly recommended Tony Fisher book details, the need to view data as a strategic corporate asset.
While I do not disagree with any of these viewpoints, as I was reading the latest remarkable Daniel Pink book, I couldn’t help but wonder if what we really need to do is emphasize both Business Technology and (for lack of a better term) Human-Speak.
In this brief (approximately 9 minutes) OCDQ Podcast, I share some of my thoughts on this subject:
You can also download this podcast (MP3 file) by clicking on this link: Business Technology and Human-Speak
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Reader Comments (1)
Good post, Jim.
I agree that the chasm between IT and "the business" needs to vanish. I'd also argue that HR has to integrate itself better into the business as well. In both cases, language is essential, as you point out.
Talking "funny" talk does little to engender respect and effective collaboration. Since we have similar backgrounds, I've also seen first-hand how a lack of common understanding can result in utter chaos.