Andrew WhiteSo I was writing my “book of the month” summary (I post them in my email footer) and in October I finished Edith Penrose’s, “The Theory of the Growth of the Firm”, originally published in 1959 and updated in 1995. Despite being more of a text book, it was good fun to refresh my knowledge of the factors that dictate the absolute size and growth of a firm. All too often I found myself reading the book and thinking about a firm I had worked with, or for, and realized that the theories described are very real and impact our day to day lives.
But as I read the book I was struck by two things: First, I had an experience years ago, upon leaving a firm I had worked for (manufacturer) I then spend several months afterward consulting for them. I found the experience flattering of course, but the idea that came to me was this: Why was it that my previous employer did not listen enough to me when I was employed by them, but since I was now outside the firm, they would pay more than they did previously to get access to the same knowledge? I then generalized the experience with the notion of “company IQ”. As we each join, and leave firms, the overall company IQ changes. This explains why, over many years, firms have to re-learn the stuff they learnt before, and since lost. It explains why we each get asked to consult wit hour previous employers.
The second experience followed on from the first. Given that MDM is a relative new attempt at solving an old problem (how to sustain ‘single view’ of key master data assets across the business for any and all purposes), how long will it take firms to adjust their overall company IQ in order to make MDM part of the natural and standard processes of the firms? Will most firms be limited by the current small pool of users that really understand what MDM means to their business, and will early adopter implementations start to fall into disrepute during 2009 as practitioners get lured away by bigger and higher paying opportunities? How do firms embed these new processes into their standard practices?
My guess is that a proportion of currently active MDM programs will suffer in 2009 as organizational IQ will fall with the exit of highly sought after resources that really understand MDM. The only way to prevent the organization IQ from falling (as it relates to MDM) is to highlight those individuals quickly and ensure that they have what they need in order to keep them on board. MDM is a key initiative, so the need to keep the knowledgeable resources is very important too.
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Category: Implementation Organizational IQ Tags: Implementation, Organizational IQ
