Directors' Cut: David Taylor on the fear of failure

BBC TV reporter, BBC News 1 January 2000

Never before has journalistic cliché so flourished and thrived out of control. With the beginning of a new everything, all we have to do is make a few wishes, sit back and automatically a brighter future will be ours.

And then we return to work we find that nothing has altered. The external challenge of Year 2000 may be behind us, but as with all successful projects we are now being asked to justify the cost, and whether the benefit was worth the investment. Suddenly everyone in our organisations want to own an IT project, as long as it starts with an 'e', and finally we realise that this year, above all others, we are going to have a fight on our hands to retain our best people.

In a world of fast-moving change, so much stands still.

The new millennium has arrived, and if we are to achieve our plans, our dreams, and our destinies, we need to do so much more than hope. If we want different outcomes, we need to do different things.

We can start by consigning some initiatives and projects from the 20th century into the bin. They will not be remembered fondly.

What real financial benefits, for example, have been delivered by Business Process Reengineering (BPR), the most glaring example of crass stupidity posing as consultancy. This complete waste of money aimed at to improve processes, effectiveness and our very way of working, but in most implementations it managed to achieve just the opposite. The majority of BPR exercises were simply an excuse for downsizing, and one of the principal reasons that so many IT departments are now having to work so hard to regain and rebuild the trust of their people. Even the founders of BPR are now admitting it was a gross, costly mistake - they should hang their heads in shame.

"Continuous Improvement" and "Total Quality" are two rallying cries that have taken us nowhere, and are classic examples of squashing general catch-all standards into unique organisations, while simply providing an opportunity to have a bitch at other departments. How do consultancies get away with it? Do they not realise that it can take a year to get something "right first time"? No-one has that sort of time anymore. Consign all of your massive tomes and manuals to the recycling bin. Hopefully they will re-emerge as toilet paper and provide a far more useful service.

Then we have "best-practice", and "benchmarking". Those advisers that commit professional murder on us by measuring our success against the majority, just to ensure that we are conforming nicely, and not being left behind. According to these companies' perverse logic, IT investment is money well spent if it keeps us in the same league as all of our rivals.

The trouble is, they failed to tell the founders of lastminute.com, or smile.co.uk or egg, whose philosophy and attitude was somewhat different. Better to take action, try things out and achieve 80 per cent, and if you make a wrong turn or decision, simply make a new one. Keep making those decisions until the right one comes along - try benchmarking that one.

Copying other people simply doesn't work anymore.

These initiatives conspired to produce three devastating outcomes - a culture of inaction, loss of trust from our people, and a massive cost to UK PLC.

This is the year for inspirational leadership, visionary thinking and united, positive and decisive action. Never before has so much depended on the choices you make as an IT leader. Continue to address the same challenges with the same "solutions," or break free and forge your own future - taking your organisation where it never dreamed possible, realising that the future is about destiny, and not simply about tomorrow.

Forget best practice - if it works for you then it is worth doing. Put aside the fear of making mistakes, the more you make in the course of discovery, the better. Try something on a Monday, if that doesn't work, try something different on a Tuesday, and if that doesn't work...

The bizarre element of the initiatives that have ill served us in the past is that most people in our organisations could foresee exactly where they were going - nowhere. I have said it before, I will say it again and I will continue to say it to my dying day - people are the key to our futures, our prosperity, our dreams realised. Those organisations who can influence, inspire and ignite their people's ideas, motivation, and loyalty will be those that succeed.

The technology is there - it is simply not about that anymore. The new agenda, the new business age, the new business spirit, is about human beings. What they do, how they feel, who they are and who they become.

Millennium cliché it may be, but your destiny is in your hands, and no-one elses. You are responsible for your future - anyone who believes otherwise is living high in the sky where cuckoos sing.

May your destiny be clear, may your actions be many, and may your leadership be now.

My advice, your choice.