The Directors' Cut: David Taylor on... the new age of IT

"Man is born to live and not to prepare to live" - Boris Pasternak

Everywhere we look, we see the words culture, balance and stress. Seemingly out of nowhere, business leaders are at last realising the importance of releasing the true potential, and total power, of their people.

Everywhere we listen, we hear people say there is more to life than work - indeed, more to life than the life they are living.

Yet, despite the talk, we continue to work harder than ever. In IT, we rush around in circles, on multiple projects with no real definition, and certainly no real benefit. We often look like a bunch of well-meaning individuals stumbling through minefields in pursuit of an ill-defined goal - which keeps moving.

Just as we realise we need to slow down, we speed up. In IT, we have designed technologies aimed at making our lives easier, but which in fact have the reverse effect. Every day we are bombarded by emails, pages and mobile phone calls - and while we are not defending, we attack through the reply buttons. And there is no getaway, because IT has now enabled people to be contacted not on the basis of where they may be, but where they actually are.

We always knew life was supposed to be an effort, but it has become little more than a struggle.

Despite continuous improvement initiatives, and the immense technological power at our fingertips, the majority of businesses don't last, and more people retire broke. Business process re-engineering, total quality initiatives and millions spent on project management training have come to nothing. In fact, they have set us back years in terms of wasted money, misplaced focus and ruined motivation.

However, a big difference today is that more people are aware of this, and are determined to do something about it. The turn of the century brings with it an opportunity to shape a new era of personal and business thinking, based on the simple premise that the future is not what it used to be.

It is a future based on simplicity of purpose, on success being measured not by material possessions, but by contribution, and on people discovering what they really want to do, and who they really are.

It is a way of life in which we take back control of our own lives, in which:
* Companies realise the only way people will give their best, is if they choose to
* We recognise that there are more important things than physical possessions
* We fulfil the demands of our work without being controlled by it
* People are valued as free spirits, with ideas and imaginations unbounded
* Organisations revisit the reason they exist, concentrating on their strengths and opportunities, rather than focusing on correcting weaknesses
* We value and nurture our relationships, at every level
* Humans truly become "Beings" rather than "Doings"

Many leaders now talk openly about this new business age, some referring to it as the spiritual revolution. An easy term to mock, just as aromatherapy, Feng-Shui and the concept of stress were a short time ago.

The great irony for those with a focus on finance is this: by releasing people's energy, by aligning individuals more closely with their organisations, and by improving the real quality of life for their staff, companies are bound to improve their bottom line.

A key question is how IT will fit in with this new way of thinking. Some predict that the "disenfranchised" 60 per cent of the population, who have never used a computer, will lead this new age. They say it will be symbolic of a huge backlash against our lives being taken over by technology.

I make a more positive predication. IT will play a leading role in shaping this future, being so integral to every part of our lives. The breakthrough from IT's negative perception will come when IT, per se, ceases to exist. That will happen when the TV and PC become one, when the Internet can be accessed in our living rooms through the only piece of technology everyone really trusts, enjoys and is comfortable with.

In business, IT departments' futures will be more positive than their past. Instead of being seen as a way of cost- and job-cutting, IT will be the main tool for company growth. And when people's imaginations are freed from the self-generated corporate barriers, our ideas will have a chance of catching up with the technology.

Many thousands of people are realising there is more to life than their present realities, and that to reclaim their true selves does not mean having to "drop out". Indeed, quite the reverse. It means reaching new levels of energy, focus and contentment.

As with human beings, so with organisations, who are at last waking up to the fact that without their people, they are nothing.

Somewhere deep beneath the layers of dust, fear and limiting beliefs that have attached themselves to our lives, is the feeling that there is more, so much more. That our lives to date have been but a blade of grass compared to what we can be. I urge you all to throw off those layers, and start to discover who you really are, no matter how well it may be hidden.

* David Taylor is the former head of IT business services at Cornhill Insurance and now president of the UK IT directors' association, Certus. He is also CEO of IT Turnaround (http://www.dtaltd.co.uk )