The School Band Bought The Orchestra
Recognise This One?
A company that has gone through a sequence of takeovers and management changes with an interesting side effect that and each time it’s IT systems have gone from bad to worse.
It seems to be a common theme. A startup with great dreams and aspirations doing all the right things. A ten year plan, a target IT architecture, the establishment of corporate data models, formal methodologies and the building blocks to get them from the tactical roll outs they need to get revenue running in the door, to the type of architecture they would need long term.
The School Band
To create an analogy, our up and coming startup is like a collection of music lovers with big dreams. They wanted their own symphony orchestra. They knew they could do better than the established players. They know they have to grab a collection of musicians and get them to do some quick and dirty gigs, the odd wedding and some busking in the mall. But the coins in the hat will pay the way while they turn themselves into a worlds best in class organisation that has high levels of stability, the ability to rapidly and cheaply adapt to audience demands and the ability to cost effectively changes over the long term.
At least that was the plan over a decade ago.
The trouble is that our aspirational orchestra started to become successful. It could be seen as a competitor to the established players and became attractive to others with lots of money, but with different goals and aspirations. Eventually along came a high school band with rich parents who bought our up and coming orchestra.
The school band wanted to do things their way. They had always made their own instruments and have never had a need for formal methodology or process, after all they are an effective monopoly in their own town. It didn’t matter if they missed a note or two, the audience has to put up with it, or do without music. They couldn’t understand the need and particularly the costs associated with best in class instruments, conductors and scores. They have never needed them. So in the interest of cost cutting they impose their way of doing things on our up and coming orchestra.
They put their friends and relatives in all the best chairs, remove any dissent and go their own way.
January 16 2009 | Economics and Infotech | No Comments »
