Cory writes:

The dirty secret of corporate IT is that its primary mission is to serve yesterday’s technology needs, even if that means strangling tomorrow’s technology solutions. The myth of corporate IT is that it alone possesses the wisdom to decide which technologies will allow the workers on the front line to work better, faster and smarter — albeit with the occasional lackluster requirements-gathering process, if you’re lucky.

The fact is that the most dreadful violators of corporate policy — the ones getting that critical file to a supplier using Gmail because the corporate mail won’t allow the attachment, the ones using IM to contact a vacationing colleague to find out how to handle a sticky situation, the incorrigible Twitterer who wants to sign up all his colleagues as followers through the work day — are also the most enthusiastic users of technology, the ones most apt to come up with the next out-of-left-field efficiency for the firm

What a wonderful way to sum up how an organization’s IT department can stifle innovation. The unfortunate thing with technology is that it changes so fast it can be difficult to maintain a status quo. As an organization struggles to reduce the labor associated with time consuming tasks like removing malware from an employee clicking on a link in an email forward, they tend to resort to Draconian measures to lock down and “manage” their workstations through ridiculous policies, big brother monitoring tactics and obtrusive firewalls. While most of these issues can be proactively solved through communication and education, preventing employees from being able to experiment or learn new technologies only serves to create a culture of apathy and complacency.

Generally, there is resistance to new technology by IT leaders either through ignorance or paranoia. It took me forever to realize what the point of Twitter was. However, once I was able to spend some time to understand what Twitter does, it was fairly simple to understand how to apply ways to use it as another channel for outreach for an organization. Great IT leaders aren’t adverse to the changes in technology, and know how to understand a process and apply technology to it. I always say it is important never to put the technology before the process, but sometimes it takes some brainstorming and tinkering with technology (especially these new media and social media sites) to see how it can be leveraged to improve a way of doing things.