A Servant Life

One of the big pluses of being in Singapore is that I get to enjoy Jo's company. Whilst it can get silent sometimes, he does ask (or usually states) good questions, things worth thinking about.

He posed a question to me the other day, "I don't think you should stay in IT too long, as you are in a servant role, and it's not helpful in understanding how to grow a business".

I was initially a bit shocked. But it did get me thinking about it more.

He's quite right, internal IT is all about serving our business, and quite a reactive place. When the business grows, we grow. When the business shrinks, we shrink. It's a place of ideas, yes, but always of ideas to cut costs, not to increase revenues.
Granted, at my company, there is a small group of IT people with a focus on growing the "technology in property" part, but the focus is always on IT serving the business. And especially in construction, where the majority of people think that they can still build a building with just pen and paper.

And the pitfall with the service attitude is that creativity is more difficult to achieve. When IT is in reactive mode, it's comforting to not have to think and just do, just fix the problem at hand. We become great problem solvers for the problems that we can see. But growing a business usually involves fixing problems that are not yet visible, tapping the untapped opportunity.

So I need to think more holistically, and understand how the business wants to grow here. As a start, I need to think of how we can position our IT offerings to enable this growth. Perhaps business ideas will grow from there.

Should I totally step away from this servant life? A part of me quite enjoys this role, so for the time being it's the right thing. I do like the managing people part, that is where I'm learning a lot. I'm sure that will come in handy in the future.