American View: Are Vanity Projects Sabotaging Your Strategic Priorities?

Management

I miss the days when the worst thing you could say about a US presidential contender was that they were a bit careless with money because they had too much of it. Back during the (comparatively genteel) 2012 election cycle, the U.S. press learned that then-candidate (currently senator) Mitt Romney’s wife Ann wanted to send one of her horses to compete in the dressage event at the summer Olympic Games. Although the horse story had nothing whatsoever to do with actual political issues, it captured the public’s attention. [1]

Comedian Stephen Colbert had a bit of a field day with the story, acerbically pointing out that the $77,000 that the Romneys had spent training a horse to dance was more money than the average American worker made in a year. [2] Colbert argued that Mr Romney was so rich (because he could afford to pay for freaking horse dancing) that he was dangerously out of touch with “normal” American voters. In 2012, that message resonated with Americans’ cultural need to be considered “middle class.” Whether or not the out-of-touch assertion made a meaningful difference in how people voted is up for debate. Sen. Romney did lose the election, though.

I’m not looking to poke fun at the senator, his wife, or their dancing horse. Not after the cornucopia of scandals that tarnished America’s global reputation under the previous administration. Rather, I want to point out that we often experience the same kind of clueless wastefulness in enterprise IT. As in politics, our own “dressage projects” often come as a surprise to the managers, directors, and executives responsible for our own scandals, just like Mrs. Romney’s dancing horse [3]

Back in 2012 when he ran for president, Mr Romney was estimated to be worth a quarter billion dollars. When you can truthfully discuss having to manage any multiple of millions of dollars, you’re guaranteed to be a bit out of touch with how most citizens live. It’s simple math: when you have obscene amounts of excess cash, you can afford to do trivial things on a whim that an average citizen can’t imagine doing in their wildest fantasies. That’s not inherently evil. It’s not even inherently corrupting. It just is. In America, money equals ultimate freedom – not from want, but from the consequences of your bad decisions. With enough dosh, a toff can waste money any number of stupid things and not suffer so much as a pang of embarrassment afterwards.

For better or worse, freedom from conventional economic restraints creates a shift in perspective. Over a certain threshold, wealth changes how a person perceives the world. Reality shifts as one’s values change to reflect what’s possible and what’s allowed at each new tier of existence.

That, I think, is why the Romneys’ dancing horse story served a bunch of simultaneous (and seemingly contradictory) narratives. First, from the Democrats: that the Romney family was so rich, that they could afford to “waste” money with impunity. Second, from the Republicans: that the Romney family was using their surplus wealth to create good jobs at good wages for people in the underfunded horse dancing industry. Both statements could have been factually true. Oddly, while I heard both of those arguments presented with tremendous vitriol, I never heard anyone express both equally-plausible and completely-compatible opinions as simple matters of intent-free fact. Yes, the Romneys could easily afford to buy a horse dancing lessons.

Yes, the money they spent on horse dancing did go to people who turned that money into food, housing, and (as a necessary side effect) dancing horses. I watched people advance one argument or the other – and take their chosen side way too seriously – based on their personal political and social biases. Also, HORSE DANCING.

I cannot take this subject seriously. It’s as ridiculous to me as a 20 BR mansion, a $10k/night hotel suite, or a block-long limo.

So, what’s the IT hook to all this? ten years ago, I wrote a column – long since gone from the internet – about how some kinds of IT kit are “necessary” to achieve a business objective even though they may be completely inappropriate from a purely technical perspective. I used the BlackBerry platform as my example back then because I’d gotten into tons of spats with colleagues and superiors over the danged things back in the 2000s. In 90% of the fights I’d had, our argument started when a customer came to IT demanding that we provide them with a BlackBerry for completely specious reasons.

One of our executives – We’ll call him “Bob” – was obsessed with the BlackBerry as the hottest fashion accessory. I’d once overheard him comment to a peer how all the hip and happening CXOs at the national headquarters had BlackBerrys prominently clipped to their belts. Whenever our toff visited, he felt like the poorest kid in the room since he didn’t also have the hip new toy. After a few weeks of dropping hints, this executive came to IT and demanded that we procure him one.

Bob’s first excuse was “People need to be able to reach me when I’m out of the office.” That was bunkum because the fellow already had a company mobile phone. He was (at the time) part of the elite top 5% of the company that got his mobile service subsidized.

Bob’s second excuse was “I need to send e-mail while I’m traveling.” That was also bunkum because I knew from experience that the man only travelled on official business twice a year … and always to organisation facilities where he had complete corporate network access.

Bob’s third excuse was: “I need to be able to review my business records while I travel.” That claim was pathetically weak bunkum, because the “records” he claimed he needed to “review” were documents located on our site’s network share, not e-mails. A BlackBerry couldn’t access those servers (and couldn’t display the file types anyway).

Bob’s wearying fourth excuse was: “I need to reach certain company websites while I’m traveling.” That claim was beyond bunkum (I replied through clenched teeth), because the built-in BlackBerry browser – at that time – couldn’t display a simple text-based webpage correctly.

Bob’s purile excuses kept coming and I politely rejected them each in turn. I pointed out that national IT policy was that we weren’t allowed to procure, issue, or support any company kit that wouldn’t do the work required. As you’d expect that policy miffed a lot of very influential people. A few of the Top Men were had already registered their displeasure, as they’d become accustomed to getting whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it, simply by flexing their authority. They didn’t feel that they needed to justify anything to a nameless minion in a support function.

I suppose that sense of entitlement grows naturally out of the experience of ordering your chef, your maid, your chauffer, and your yacht staff around all day. Such people become unaccustomed to hearing any response other than “Yes, SIR!”

I wasn’t having it. Officially, because violating policy would get us all in trouble (and possibly get us fired for wasting company funds), but mostly because I didn’t like Bob’s entitled attitude.

Eventually, Bob demanded that IT find a way to deliver him his precious BlackBerry, legally and above-board. I offered to get him a non-functioning one to use as a prop so he could fit it (and so that we wouldn’t be required to support it). Bob insisted that he had to be seen sending and receiving emails on his ultra-tech device.
I was angry, but I did as I was ordered. I directed my NetOps and Telecomm teams to liaise with the national office to craft a legal and above-board solution. They crafted a secure, in-house server solution that would satisfy all the security requirements. We delivered the resulting purchase order to Bob for his signature, and he balked. “Thirty-five thousand dollars for a single phone,” he shouted, “is ridiculous!” Bob wasn’t wrong; the entire idea was ludicrously wasteful.

I explained that the cost of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server license, the cost of a dedicated server to host it, a year of cellular service, and the handset together made for a pricy bundle. It was, however, the only way to ensure that we complied with our company’s draconian security regulations.

I knew Bob well. The man was arrogant, out-of-touch, arrogant, condescending, arrogant, grumpy, and (dare I say) arrogant. His sense of entitlement was the strongest that I’d ever had to deal with. I was confident that Bob was going to shuffle funds around in the departmental budgets to scrape together the $35k he needed for his shiny toy and demand that we live up to our dare. Two years prior, Bob had swiped $10k out of my budget at the end of the fiscal year to pay for a top-of-the-line stereo receiver for his conference room.
I left the purchase request with Bob and went about my day, convinced he was going to slash the IT department’s operations budget out of petty spite just to get his “I’m one of the cool kids, too” fashion accessories. From Bob’s perspective, his organisation was flush enough with cash that “we” (overall) could afford to waste the cost of an average family sedan on a useless plastic status symbol. We braced for impact … and nothing happened.

Instead, the top executive of our region got wind of Bob’s plan and viciously crushed it. The Big Boss had come from a different – and underfunded – site and was always uptight about wasteful spending. He wasn’t having it. I can only imagine how their convo played out:

“But I neeeeeeeed it!” Bob whinged.
“You don’t need it; you only want it,” the Big Boss probably chided.
“But all the other executives have one and I don’t!”
“So what? If all the other executives jumped off a bridge, would you jump off too?”
“Yes! Then they’d all think I’m cool!” etc.

To be fair, I’ve known some truly cool rich people. The best are the ones that could be entitled jerks and choose not to.

In the end, the only “need” in play was that Bob – always insecure and competitive – wanted to appear successful to his peers. It was no different in that respect from Mrs. Romney wanting to enter her house in the Olympic games. Getting a BlackBerry or winning an Olympic medal wouldn’t bring about any lasting or meaningful change; Trading money – a meaningless and consequence-free resource for the rich and powerful – for social clout.

These days, you can swap out the terms “BlackBerry” or “dancing horse” for “multi-cloud” or “AI” and little will change. When rich, powerful, and out-of-touch leaders mingle with their peers, each wants to be held in high regard. That makes sense: success comes from connections and favours. The more that others like you, the more they’re willing to help you. It’s a completely different game from the daily grind that working class folks experience. The toffs at the top are willing to waste huge piles of company money on tech they don’t need just to score some social cred. That’s because social cred is almost always more valuable to them than other people’s money.

That, then, is why so many enterprise IT “initiatives” are technobabble vanity projects. Their strategic utility is questionable (at best) even though the resources they consume would be better allocated to critical (but unglamorous) processes. These vanity projects – or “dressage projects” in my lexicon – are the bane of every CIO. “Success” in implementing them weakens the infostructure and breeds resentment, while “failure” implementing them often leads to abuse and reprisal. Resistance to them is grounds for starting a vicious political feud. There’s no way to “win.” That’s why so many CIOs give in. They spend the cash, waste everyone’s time, and take the hit to team morale knowing no good can come of the endeavour.
This is one of the main reasons why I gave up my dream of becoming a CXO: I realized that I llack the political savvy and persuasiveness to talk a executive out of their deranged “dressage project” demands without starting a war. I barely managed to win over Bob by eventually getting him his BlackBerry once the tech was approved. Even then, we held each other in compete until the day he retired … all because I wouldn’t give him a useless toy that he felt he felt he was entitled to when he first demanded it.

To be fair, our spat was never truly about the cost or practicality or legality of the technology; it was a fundamental incompatibility in our worldviews. Bob believed that he needed the prop to effectively interact with his equally out-of-touch peers; us denying him was seen as a personal attack. Whereas we say his obscene waste of cash and the addition of a long-term support burden as an unacceptable diversion of finite resources away from critical systems. Our irreconcilable perspectives came down to one foundational belief: Bob thought we had all the money we’d ever need and could afford to waste some. I believed we didn’t and therefore couldn’t.

Honestly, I’d have been far more willing to buy Bob a flesh-and-blood horse instead of a BlackBerry. Once all the showing off was accomplished, a dancing house could still carry a rider, plow a field, or pull a wagon. We could convert to deliver some kind of useful output. The only use we had for a used and useless $35k BlackBerry handset was as a paperweight. For that offence, I’ll always consider Bob a horse’s asset.

[1] As the entire world saw from our last two presidential dumpster fires, American elections rarely have anything at all to do with actual issues. They’re spectacles, manufactured from manipulated emotions, red herrings, and self-destructive spite. We’d probably be better off delegating executive power to our pets.
[2] Recall that we still hadn’t dug our way out of the Global Financial Crisis at the time.
[3] Typing that never stops being ridiculous to me.

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