My disclaimer this week is that I’m writing about an idea in my head. This is not something I’ve tried and have first-hand experience to report. But I’ve got feeling this idea will hold water if we can determine the logistics to make it happen. This I believe.
Setting context.
When I was a cooperative education student at Georgia Tech I was employed by a company in the northern Atlanta suburbs. The company setup a program that rotated two co-op students through different areas of IT so we could gain exposure and experience with different areas. My counterpart and I rotated different school/work quarters. While he worked one quarter I was in school. Then the next academic quarter we flipped. We had assignments in different groups including telephony, service desk, mainframe services, and networks. The program complemented our education at school and provided us with valuable experience to use when we graduated.
A larger version of this same principle is in corporations that have formal leadership development programs. High potential young employees are selected to go through a job rotation in different departments to prepare them for leading the business in the future. This is often coupled with exposure to international divisions in the business and includes rotations in departments like finance, sales, marketing, and operations.
Today, I was reading through some articles about job trends in Information Technology and I side-tracked onto an article from Fortune Magazine about skills employers want that are not found in a job description. Three of the five employee traits mentioned in the article can be strengthened by a job rotation program like leadership development or co-op rotation. They are 360-degree thinking, cultural competence, and empathy. I believe that these three employee traits are part of the challenge when people talk about the IT group not having alignment with other business departments.
The idea.
Put IT developers through a six week job rotation in the following departments: operations, sales, customer service, marketing, and finance.
The program would be setup put the IT developer on the front line of each department in entry level jobs so they can feel and touch the flow of business in the organization.
Black and White Concept Cartoon Illustration of Head Above Water Business Saying or Metaphor
The objectives are different from a traditional leadership development program because this isn’t a program to develop managers or executives. But the objectives for developing more desired employee traits are the same:
- We want IT developers to be able to see business challenges holistically. This includes the viewpoint of the customer and the company.
- We want IT developers to create solutions that engage the customer and yet fit into the workflow of the business units behind their code. They’ll do this through cultural competence in their organization. Imagine how they might design a solution differently knowing how work is sold, configured, and produced.
- We want IT developers to be able to see business challenges through the eyes of other departments. A good way to break down barriers between departments is to walk a mile in their shoes.
Will the idea hold water?
Just like you, I can think of a hundred reasons why the idea would fail. Executing this idea would be difficult. The logistics of implementing the idea are complicated. Outside of the planning and job content, this idea requires cooperation from multiple groups of employees. For some it would mean slowing down to ‘train’ others. For the developers it would require they learn some skills outside of computer programming. Combine this with the trend that IT developers are becoming highly specialized in a specific area of the business or that IT developers tend to serve on one specific programming team because of technology-use and it would appear the idea has too many holes to work.
But I’m looking to build a more invested employee. I want to create a developer that can write code for solutions across a broader variety of disciplines. This is about employee longevity, long term investment in talent, job rotation, and building patriots to the company’s mission.
I see this like a baptism for IT developers by immersing them in the waters of the business river. When they come up from the dunking, they’ll have a new life with the ability to think more holistically, the ability to see business challenges through different lenses, and the ability to create solutions that are more connected to the business and customers they serve.
Onward and upward!
Photo Credit: Igor_Zakowski