Implications for directors

Your nervous systems interact deeply with your personality

The nature and functionality of the 'digital nervous systems' that permeate your organization profoundly influence the type of organization you are. There are fundamental strategic issues here, which cannot just be left to the 'techies'. Ask yourself: how can we be sure that the systems we implement will help us become the kind of organization we need to be?

Your organization's success depends on the quality of your cyber-systems

In 1999 there was a frenzy of Internet-related stocks in which even soundly based and highly successful Internet-related companies were valued at almost ridiculous levels, and almost any business could be hyped with the suffix .com. This was an overreaction to a fundamental truth - that for many products the web is the primary means of interaction for upmarket customers. Already in 1999 the most important medium for exchange of business information is over the Internet.

Listen to the 'techies' and try to understand them

If you want sound 'nervous systems' constructed then you need to ensure that there is a sound environment in which the construction is taking place. Pressurizing the IT people to deliver according to schedule come what may, regardless of the realism of getting a reasonable system built on time, virtually guarantees poor systems in which the users' real needs are sacrificed to expediency and 'getting the management off our backs'.

Be an intelligent client

Being an 'intelligent client' is arguably even more vital for a cyber-
system than for a building, but harder. Smart suppliers of cyber-systems work hard to try to understand, and be seen to understand, the organizational needs which their cyber-systems are meant to address. But salespeople in computer companies get paid a great deal of money, and have sales quotas to meet. There is no substitute for making a real effort to understand what you are being sold. It is also essential to monitor, in a constructive but firm manner, what subsequently occurs. Clients notoriously fail to manage the operation of large systems-related contracts effectively. The persistent success of companies notorious for taking tens (or sometimes hundreds) of millions of dollars from clients to implement systems that do not work and which subsequent analysis suggests could never have worked strongly suggests that there are many unintelligent clients out there!