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The human impact of business IT: how to avoid diminishing returns

Diane Morello, Information Age

18/08/2005 11:03:19

Management summary

Globalisation, high-speed information exchange, anytime-anywhere computing, integration of the Internet into people's lives, people-friendly consumer technologies and the blurring of home and work computing all create a business environment in which high expectations and intense work schedules become the norm. In virtually every company, people are being buffeted by seemingly uncoordinated changes, so much so that their threshold for stress and poor judgment is dropping.

Worse, because computing devices have literally become the technological window into most companies (for example, corporate Intranets, e-mail, instant messages, smartphones and personal digital assistants), people look at their computers as necessary but intrusive tools.

In the business workplace, the lack of integration and coordination of many IT systems, tools, procedures and policies is starting to impede people and their work. This strategic analysis report examines the human impact of IT and offers suggestions for managing it. It proposes that the next leap in business performance will come from understanding, analysing and harnessing the human impact of IT.

Strategic Planning Assumption: Through 2009, the failure of companies to help people absorb new applications, technologies and information flows will undercut by half the business value of their IT investments (0.6 probability).

This report explores the impact of technology and information on people in the business environment and examines emerging trends, their effects and the challenges that CIOs and IT leaders face as they champion IT-enabled progress within their companies. Ultimately, the key challenge for CIOs and IT leaders is to eliminate or alleviate the negative effects of IT on people while enhancing and empowering the positive impact of business IT on people.

To address these topics, this report examines the following client issues:  Which innovations will disrupt the workplace, causing shifts in workplace behaviour and technology investment?  Which forces will enhance or hamper workforce performance, productivity and leadership?  How can CIOs and IT leaders use organisational behaviour and evolving worker profiles to drive change?

1.0 Introduction Strategic Planning Assumption: Through 2009, the failure of companies to help people absorb new applications, technologies and information flows will undercut by half the business value of their IT investments (0.6 probability).

Business IT has become the lingua franca of the workplace and the primary means of communicating information, making decisions and accommodating changes. Yet compared with consumer technologies and services, business IT is complex, fractured and "one size fits all". In many cases, it is becoming an impediment rather than an extension of individual and organisational productivity and effectiveness.

The next leap in the business value of IT will come from embracing, analysing and mitigating the human impact of IT. To get there, companies must overcome three looming breaking points:

 The capacity of human beings to absorb technological interdependencies in the workplace  The ability of companies to orchestrate the pace, magnitude and behavioural implications of changes that accompany the technologically dense workplace  The willingness of CIOs and IT organisations to embrace services and behaviours that are emerging in the consumer world and steadily raising the bar for ease, speed and personalisation 2.0 Innovations in the workplace Client Issue: Which innovations will disrupt the workplace, causing shifts in workplace behaviour and technology investment?

When analysing the human impact of IT - that is, when analysing how technology affects people in the workplace and at home - three overarching trends will have significant influence.

 Increasing volumes of digital information: Worldwide, information production increased 30 per cent annually between 1999 and 2002, according to the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems. True, digital information provides access to resources that were inconceivable a few years ago; but converting volumes of digitised data into meaningful information, knowledge and effective decision making is daunting.  The rapid spread of virtual work: Since the Internet burst into the commercial world in the mid-1990s, it has successfully released businesses from dependence on physical place and enabled them to extend their reach globally. Theoretically, people can work anyplace, anytime and with any person. At the same time, virtual work has strained personal and professional bonds and has intensified the pressure to be "always on".  The rising influence of consumer behaviours in business: Historically, companies have viewed consumers as if they were commoners, foreign from people in the business environment. A wake-up call is coming. Consumers are workers, workers are consumers, and their split personality will challenge company assumptions about technology adoption curves, service effectiveness, standards, usability and behaviours.

2.1 Trend 1: Digital information Strategic Planning Assumption: Through 2009, coordination of digitised data flows in the workplace will remain the responsibility of individuals, cutting into organisational productivity (0.7 probability) . A professor at a respected US university once posed a question: Why do teachers continue to use blackboards while the rest of the world goes electronic and digital? The answer was simple: because the pace of writing on the blackboard matches students' capacity to absorb the ideas and thoughts being presented. Given that answer, one can understand why human beings feel so overwhelmed by the flow of e-mail, instant messages, voice mail, mobile phone calls and personal digital assistant (PDA) messages. Simply put, as human beings, we lack the capacity to absorb information, news or ideas as quickly as they come at us. The result is a feeling of paralysis and exhaustion (see Figure 1).

According to the University of California at Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems, the amount of new information stored on paper, film, optical media and magnetic media doubled between 1999 and 2002. In 2002 alone, the new information produced in those forms was equal in size to half a million new libraries, each containing a digitised version of the print collections of the entire US Library of Congress. UC Berkeley professor Peter Lyman cautions: "Remember, it's not knowledge, it's just data. It takes thoughtful people using smart technologies to figure out how to make sense of all this."

True, much information is not meant to be consumed or analysed in forms other than as summaries. However, the sheer volume of disparate information flows from disparate sources tends to hamper people's ability to prioritise or handle the actions or decisions that the information spurs.

Action Item: Take inventory of the people whom your organisation serves, both inside and outside your company. Analyse the context in which those people operate, understand their intention in seeking or using information and assess how the IT organisation can help them make sense of the information.

2.2 Trend 2: The rapid spread of virtual work Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2010, 70 percent of the population in developed nations will spend 10 times longer per day interacting with people electronically and virtually than face to face (0.6 probability).

As companies extend their operations across borders, time zones and continents, virtual work quickly moves from being a business "perk" to being a business necessity. The virtual workplace is becoming as common as face-to-face work. Gartner defines a virtual workplace as a combination of physical and electronic work settings that enables people to work at a distance from one another as if they were face to face. It is fuelled by the rapid adoption of broadband technology at work, at home and on the road; by the infusion of mobile consumer devices for anywhere-anytime communication; and by the global telecommunication infrastructure. In the United States alone, the number of broadband households passed the 20 million mark in October 2003.

Worldwide, teleworking is increasing rapidly. According to Gartner's September 2004 forecasts, the worldwide corporate teleworking population of individuals that spend at least one day a month teleworking from home will show a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.7 percent between 2004 and 2008. That population will reach approximately 100 million by the end of 2008. During the same period, the worldwide corporate teleworking population of individuals that spend at least one day a week teleworking from home will show a CAGR of 7.9 percent. That population will reach 41 million by the end of 2008.

With virtual work becoming an organisational norm, systems and applications must be designed to be place-independent; and that demands a different perspective for business analysis, application design, infrastructure and supporting services in human resources (HR) and the workplace. In addition, applications, training, collaborative platforms, tools and technical support must be delivered seamlessly, without assuming a common physical location. Ultimately, IT organisations must serve the time zones and workloads of people distributed around the world. IT organisations also must simplify access to basic services, systems and support so that dispersed people can collaborate with colleagues instantly rather than wasting time navigating the technical underpinnings of tools, networks, passwords and login details.

Action Item: Design services, information, tools and applications deliberately for remote and distributed use. Complement those design issues with virtual training, collaboration systems, communication programs and meeting rooms that satisfy workers independent of physical location.

2.3 Trend 3: Consumer technology impacts workplaces Strategic Planning Assumption: Through 2010, adoption of consumer technologies by individuals will lead adoption by corporate users by an average of 18 to 24 months (0.8 probability).

IT-powered business operations and IT-powered consumerism have begun to converge in a new focal point - the worker as consumer and the consumer as worker (see Figure 3). Consumers have been empowered by improvements in usability, customised services, content personalisation, 24x7 access hours and multiple channel communication (such as phone, e-mail and the Web). In contrast, they feel disempowered at work, trying to reconcile the high levels of service they receive as consumers with the comparatively plain service levels they receive as employees. Closing the gap between business IT standards and consumer IT expectations will contribute to IT organisational credibility.

In consumer services, businesses emphasise usability, personalisation and customer intimacy. Consumers can take advantage of intuitively designed interfaces, effective search mechanisms and personalised services (that is, personalisation by favourites, logins, location or site layout). In the business world, service providers - generally, company IT organisations - emphasise security, central control, compliance, cost efficiency and one-size-fits-all standards. Both perspectives have their sore spots. Consumers do battle with spam, pop-ups, identity theft and technical problems for which they lack adequate skills. Meanwhile, employees must operate within rigid standards, policies and security measures that save money for the company and tighten digital security - often at the expense of individual or team innovation. Action Item: When designing new services, applications or self-serve tools, CIOs and IT leaders should look to the consumer world not only for best practices in usability and personalisation but also for talented people who understand consumer behaviours and can skilfully design consumer-like services. Concerns about total cost of ownership should take into account improvements in productivity and speed of response.

3.0 Disruptive effects Client Issue: Which forces will enhance or hamper workforce performance, productivity and leadership? Strategic Planning Assumption: Through 2007, uncoordinated streams of changes - induced or channelled by technology - will increase distractions and lower people's productivity, eroding the expected benefits of business IT investments (0.7 probability).

The three overarching trends shaping the human impact of IT - digital information, virtual-work reality and consumer influences - lead to three large disrupters: thrashing, judgment devaluation and excessive e-contact.

• Thrashing describes the feeling that many business people have of switching so frequently among systems, applications, channels, inputs, interruptions and changes that they spend all their time switching - not working. • Devaluation of judgment emerges from a world in which decisions, conversations, ideas and opportunities must fit into narrow screens, prescribed application fields, scripts and fairly immediate time frames - often diminishing the judgment of front-line workers and dissatisfying customers. • Excessive e-contact: The penetration of broadband communication, smartphones and mobile computing yields an explosion in inputs, reduces the need to meet face to face, and weakens the social and knowledge bonds that constitute corporate culture. Low-risk electronic contact has replaced face-to-face contact as people pursue "asynchronicity".

Caveat: The three disrupters are manifestations of personal behaviours, and in that context, people need not be victims. They can take control of their own behaviours: They can dedicate time to certain projects while remaining offline, they can seek new roles that permit them to exercise judgment, they can call people for person-to-person conversations rather than feel obliged to use e-mail. Although many companies put intense pressure on people to be available at all times and to meet unreasonable or arbitrary deadlines, control is in the individual's hands, even to the point of switching roles or companies.

3.1 Disruptive effect 1: Thrashing Business, personal, professional and technological changes all seem to occur at once, with decision makers and functional leaders announcing their changes separately and apparently without coordination. Between changes imposed by others and the electronic stream of incoming requests, messages and interruptions, business workers feel as if they have lost control. They feel unproductive, stressed and anxious.

Simply put, IT has failed people. True, it has been a terrific instrument for machine-to-machine communication, it has automated the steps of many processes and it has yielded corporate cost efficiencies. However, when it comes to making people effective - that is, helping them control their own environment, giving them more time to do work, enabling them to navigate services and applications simply, and finding information - it has failed. Indeed, although human beings are expected to switch nearly instantly between domains of thinking, activities and business rules, their computer toolsets provide few or no support mechanisms to ease switching. The result is known as thrashing - that is, people trying frantically to execute too many tasks at once without spending enough time to accomplish anything meaningful (see Figure 4).

Thrashing: - Overloaded systems wasting time moving data into and out of memory rather than performing useful computations - Moving wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything useful - Trying frantically to execute too many tasks at once and not spending enough time on any one task

The average knowledge worker in a Fortune 1000 company sends and receives 178 messages daily. The mind takes 0.7 seconds to switch attention from one thing to another.

The average Web surfer has one finger on the mouse, so grab his or her attention in 10 seconds. Source: Gartner Research (January 2005)

Action Item: Investigate how work, usage, service and behavioural patterns vary depending on people's roles, business areas, proximity to others and locations. Analyse how frequently people need to veer out of their workflow to find, register for and activate a tool or service.

3.2 Disruptive Effect 2: The devaluation of judgment Strategic Imperative: Strike a balance between support systems that improve operational efficiency and those that reinforce people's decision-making judgment. Too heavy a focus on efficiency will undermine individual contribution and productivity.

A weary traveller arrives at the customer-service counter to request a flight change. The woman behind the counter asks the traveller for her name and identification and then enters the name into the computer. Within seconds the service representative announces, "Sorry, we have no such person by that name on the list." The traveller responds, "How can that be? I'm right here." The rep replies, "The computer doesn't have you listed, so I'm afraid I cannot help you." Anger and frustration soar when the traveller realises that the service rep - despite having asked for identification - has not looked at the identification and has entered the wrong name into the computer. The service rep ignores the traveller's protests and instead believes the incorrect information in the computer.

That case - and hundreds of others - illustrates the over-dependence on computer applications as proxies for common sense and good judgment. The technology-intensive workplace often shrinks people's capacity to exercise problem-solving judgment. A company's verbal commitment to empowering employee decision-making prowess gets tested in the face of efficiency-focused software, which tends to squander judgment and decision-making discretion in favour of efficiency. In the computer-driven workplace, people routinely face quandaries (see Figure 5). Do they respond correctly or instantly? Should they be creative, or should they respond to mountains of "administrivia"? Should they communicate the changing patterns in customer response or simply wait to react? Should they delight their customers or should they adhere to policy? Generally, the tools, applications and success metrics are so narrowly designed, so tightly prescribed and so unimaginative that they intrinsically discourage judgment and decision making.

To be sure, those quandaries are not new. Some are evidence of bad management, others theoretically illustrate why companies employ intelligent, thinking human beings in the first place. The question becomes: Are business applications and tools designed to encourage or thwart independent decision making? In many cases, the design of an application - its fields, its focus, its intent - thwarts discretion in favour of maintaining the scripted answers.

The solution is balance. Although some applications, services and tools are appropriately designed to support policies and curb unpredictable responses, an equal number of services, tools, applications and user interfaces should be designed to encourage discretion, easy access, judgment, customer satisfaction and knowledge sharing.

Action Item: Analyse the roles, decisions and information that characterise classes of roles and users. Design processes, applications, services, Web sites and tools to support people's judgment. Be brutally honest about requirements definition and application design.

3.3 Disruptive Effect 3: Excessive e-contact Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2010, knowledge workers will spend 80 percent of their time working collaboratively and not necessarily face to face (0.8 probability).

Globalisation, innovation-focused knowledge work, Web-enabled business processes and digital communication have theoretically freed knowledge work from physical location. Work becomes place-neutral, and collaboration becomes defined by virtual partnerships rather than by physical proximity. However, advantages are matched by disadvantages.

The flexibility and convenience that virtual work affords are offset by a lack of connection, missed opportunities and brainstorming by appointment. In the article "The Dehumanised Employee" (CIO magazine, 4 December 2004), author James Hoopes makes a convincing point. "Thanks to IT and the instantaneous global reach of today's large companies, many of the management decisions affecting employees are made from a great geographical and organisational distance, which offers managers the temptation to ignore the human beings affected by their decisions." As people become accustomed to the low-proximity electronic world rather than the high-proximity physical world, another odd behaviour emerges: People prefer to communicate by low-risk e-mails rather than speak face to face. Social skills and leadership skills evaporate.

Certain guidelines should be followed when managing the electronically intensive business environment:  When people work with others who are located elsewhere, they all are working "virtually," regardless of whether they work at home, in hotels, in satellite offices or in headquarters. In other words, not all virtual workers are sitting at home in their pyjamas.  Virtual work requires the redesign of many traditional services, including training, workspace management and conferencing. Delivery of services and tools must change from place-dependent to place-independent.  Collaboration and brainstorming need well-designed, intuitive tools. Every time people must invoke another application, enter another sign-on or hunt for another password to set up a brainstorming session, organisational collaboration and innovation lose out.

Action Item: Analyse the various work styles in the company, and build a portfolio of processes, services, systems and settings that will sustain social and knowledge networks and cultural affiliation. Seek assistance from internal and external sources to understand and classify the type of work.

4.0 Accept the challenges in managing the human impact of IT Client Issue: How can CIOs and IT leaders use organisational behaviour and evolving worker profiles to drive change?

New technology is not necessarily the answer to disruptive workplace trends and their high- impact effects. The answer - and, frequently, the higher business value of IT - lies in well-designed processes, strong information design and a solid understanding of business processes and culture.

Five strategies will help companies harness the positive human impact of IT while reducing the negative impact. Two themes underlie the strategies: mitigating the pernicious effects of information and technology overload, and infusing IT strategies with consumer attitudes.

 Understand and orchestrate changes. The impact of IT on business workers will swing positive when CIOs, HR directors and business leaders together orchestrate business and technology changes, timelines and impacts. The focus should not be on big changes only, nor should it be on technology changes only. Poor management of innumerable small changes coming from multiple angles will undermine success and credibility.  Set the stage for grass-roots information management. Personal knowledge networks and personal information management are poised for takeoff, as knowledge workers create information indices for their laptops, lasso colleagues through peer-to-peer collaboration products and establish affiliated e-communities among dispersed peers.  Embrace a consumer focus. Business IT requirements and consumer IT flexibility are headed for a showdown, and CIOs and IT leaders must create a truce that balances compliance and flexibility as appropriate. Prohibiting consumer IT in the workplace or failing to support it officially will not make it go away, but it will widen the rift between IT organisations and the people they serve.  Cloak technical complexity. No CIO or IT leader can justify the time that knowledge workers waste trying to navigate the technical underpinnings of operating systems, browsers or intranets. Usability and service bundling will shrink the time wasted and go a long way toward reducing total cost of ownership.  Anticipate multigenerational needs and preferences. The technology elite - spanning ages from the early 20s to early 60s - is gaining ground, already representing 30 percent of the US population. Attraction, retention and productivity depend on appeasing numerous parties.

4.1 Challenge 1: Manage the impact of change Strategic Imperative: Get a grip on business and IT change initiatives. Build coordinating checkpoints to ensure that leadership problems, cultural effects and "change fatigue" do not derail the objectives.

 Premise: Organisational productivity rises when workplace changes are in harmony with business changes.  CIO action: Work with senior leaders to orchestrate change, analyse the social impacts and establish a context for change. Most people have heard the comment "change is the only constant". For CIOs and IT leaders, being successful at managing change means understanding not only how people will respond to change emotionally and behaviourally, but also how they themselves respond to change. One thing is certain: No matter how soundly CIOs, HR directors and business leaders think they manage change and prepare their organisations, they fall short. Why? Because they have not yet learned to orchestrate harmony into multiple changes, effects, meanings and timelines.

CIOs and IT leaders should concentrate on several change thrusts:

 Actively solicit and investigate changes in business areas and technology decisions.  Identify and understand interdependencies and the effects on employees and other parties.

 Identify not only big changes, but also small changes.  Develop and reward empathy - the ability to stand in someone else's shoes.

Action Item: Work with HR directors and business leaders to identify, understand and analyse business and technology changes. Never overestimate people's change readiness.

4.2 Challenge 2: Support grass-roots information management Strategic Planning Assumptions: By 2009, personal knowledge networks (PKNs) will be the predominant channels for knowledge management in companies (0.7 probability). Nevertheless, through 2007, fewer than 10 percent of companies will formally support them (0.7 probability).  Premise: The fractured way in which companies approach information management will compel people to develop their own solutions.  CIO action: Support personal knowledge management. Learn why individuals depend on it and which tools and investments support it.

Digital information, thrashing and e-contact can bury knowledge workers under tons of data, e-mails, files and messages. Sadly, workplace technology lacks intuitive ways for people to filter, arrange and coordinate information so that they can retrieve and analyse it quickly and accurately. To counter that overflow, people develop their own PKNs for networking, knowledge sharing and collaboration - using Web logs, instant messaging, wireless PDAs, personal taxonomies, ad hoc collaboration tools and other personal knowledge tools (see Figure 8). PKNs make workers more productive, so companies forcing workers to use only enterprise e-workplace systems rather than PKNs will see a decline in productivity.

In dispersed companies, knowledge workers also seek a sense of belonging, which they build through workplace communities. Interest in communities is nearly universal, extending to commercial, government and social organisations. Communities leverage intellectual capital, engage peers in new initiatives, focus service-oriented work on creation and innovation, simulate face-to-face social exchanges and increase learning. People connect with others face to face or virtually, gravitating toward common interests, social structures and informal groups that enrich them. Today's distributed workplaces build communities through teleconferences, Web conferences, e-mail or other electronic means.

Action Item: Deliberately integrate PKNs and community-like tools into the company's approach toward managing information and knowledge. Improving support for PKNs and communities will help the company capitalise on people's intellect, ideas and energy.

4.3 Challenge 3: Embrace a consumer focus Strategic Planning Assumption: By 2012, the mode of information supply of the 20th century - push - will be superseded by pull, where information will be sent on demand or filtered by user profiles (0.6 probability).  Premise: Consumer-like behaviours and expectations will steadily reshape workplace services.  CIO action: Integrate consumer-like services, tools and design into technology planning and policies.

UPS, FedEx and Amazon, for example, all give customers a sense of control because their Web sites provide timing and shipping information. Amazon also recommends items to customers based on previous buying patterns, feedback and community-like interests. Those three companies set the standard for customer service, and the high expectations they generate carry over into the workplace. In each case, the company uses customer profiles or service options to personalise the experience.

Service satisfaction is based on several dimensions, all of which CIOs and IT leaders can adopt to give internal managers, process owners, teams and front-line workers the tools, systems, interfaces and information they need. The dimensions include:

 The amount of time and effort involved in using the service  The individual's control of the situation (that is, real or perceived control)  The efficiency of the process  The amount of human contact involved  The perceived effectiveness of the service

Unfortunately, most companies have substantial room for improvement (see Figure 9). The challenge comes in understanding how, where and whether consumer-like assumptions and expectations can translate into business IT practices that improve effectiveness and productivity. The goal is not necessarily full customisation, but rather a customised delivery by roles, preferences and intuitive design.

Action Item: Incorporate consumer behaviours and expectations into information planning and access paths for managers, employees and outside workers. Choice, personalisation and convenience will improve acceptance of new tools and systems and increase productivity.

4.4 Challenge 4: Cloak technical complexity Tactical Guideline: The modern workplace requires a solid understanding of its focal point: the knowledge worker. Many services and applications, however, reduce workforce effectiveness by concentrating on improving efficiency at the expense of effectiveness.  Premise: The less time people spend negotiating the technical underpinnings of tools and applications, the greater their productivity.  CIO action: Concentrate on usability and service bundling.

One day, a fairly resourceful professional needed to convene a brainstorming meeting on the spur of the moment. She needed to contact five people, make sure their calendars were in synch and set up a Web conference to share some documents. In practice, however, she had to juggle calendar applications, audio-conference tools, new user registrations, cryptic sign-ons and insulated Web conferencing tools, many invoked in haphazard locations on the corporate Web site. The meeting never took place. Why? Because the process of brainstorming was derailed by a tool infrastructure that inserted obstacles into the process. The technical underpinnings were distracting and disruptive.

Knowledge workers are victims of too many tools, too much information and not enough concern for how the information and tools are presented and deployed. To paraphrase Edward Tufte, an information designer and Yale University professor, "Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information" ("Envisioning Information," Graphics Press, 1990).

Action Item: Balance technical effectiveness and usability. Know the user and what he or she needs by role, service and application, and understand the urgency, speed and requirements of the respective roles.

4.5 Challenge 5: Anticipate multigenerational needs and preferences Tactical Guideline: The "technology elite" - spanning the ages of 20 to 60 - makes up 30 per cent of the US population. Potential employers must anticipate a new level of technology diversity, Internet interactivity, information exchange and online experimentation.

 Premise: Demographics will reshape the expectations and usage of workplace technology.  CIO action: Redesign workplace technology strategies for empowering and attracting multiple generations.

Many companies are nearing a moment of reckoning. Simply put, will they have what it takes to compete, retain and find talented people as demographics change during the next 10 years? According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, consumer technologies - Internet, cell phones, DVD players and wireless PDAs - are commonplace for the so-called technology elite, which constitutes more than 30 percent of the US population (see Figure 11). The technology elite crave IT, readily exchange information with others electronically and lead technology adoption.

Pew defines three categories of technology elites:  The young tech elite are active Internet surfers, are comfortable downloading and posting information and exhibit cutting-edge online behaviours, including buying online content.  Wired GenXers look to the online world as a way to get things done. They buy things online, do work-related research on the Internet, do online banking and have started buying and downloading content.  Older, wired baby boomers use the Internet largely for information gathering and less for experimentation. They spend considerably more than average for information services.

Action Item: Redesign workplace technology strategies for multiple generations. Prospective employers must move swiftly to close the gap between corporate IT standards and techno-savvy generations or lose appeal. Attend, as well, to the physical needs of older workers (that is, sight, hearing and ergonomics).

5.0 Conclusion To assist CIOs and IT managers in managing the human impact of IT, Gartner offers three recommendations.  Put yourself in people's shoes as consumers of business IT. Harness people's experiences, remove the impediments and understand their needs. Empathy and usability will be the watchwords here - empathy toward consumers' mostly negative experiences around business IT, and usability in the way that services, systems and tools are measured. Tools, technology and services that are created but seldom used erode not only investment value, but also IT organisation credibility.  Balance user flexibility and technical compliance. Which services and applications can afford flexibility? Which must reinforce compliance? Although every company needs to protect itself from hackers and virulent e-mail, not every application, service or tool needs to be protected as if it were a digital lock box. Adopt a balanced approach to enabling and protecting. Too heavy a hand on enabling may open the company to threats; too heavy a hand on protecting may inhibit usage and undermine the investment. Work toward making technical underpinnings invisible as a way to increase both usage and return on investment.

Exploit the consumer perspective to improve the non-economic aspects of productivity - convenience, speed, choice and usability. Steady advances in consumer technology put business IT in a poor light. Many business IT investments designed for usage by human beings are, in fact, unproductive and disruptive. Workers - that is, workers one minute and savvy consumers the next - will cease tolerating rigid standards as digital information and virtual work take hold.

Acronym Key: CAGR compound annual growth rate HR human resources PDA personal digital assistant PKN personal knowledge network

Diane Morello is a vice president and research director in Gartner Research. She covers numerous areas including workforce strategies, people-oriented resource management, the impact of outsourcing on people and organisational change management.