If you can’t beat ‘Grey IT’, just manage it

I thought I’d go a little off topic to indulge in a short rant. Yes, technology can absolutely help you boost your business, but it needs to answer the questions your workers have and must be flexible enough to meet the sometimes unique needs they have for the tasks they do. When tech doesn’t meet those needs, you get Grey IT.

A cry for help

It’s super-obvious when you think about it.

People sometimes use unauthorized applications do so because those solutions work better than the authorized ones. They may also use them as they offer tools that just aren’t offered in your company’s supported technology stack.

While your IT admins may be furious at the use of applications that have not been approved for use on your company’s Macs, iPhones, or other devices, Grey IT doesn’t need to be a prevention problem, because it’s a creative opportunity. Because what’s happening is your users are showing initiative and finding solutions to help them work better.

Your workers are creating solutions (in the sense of using them) to problems that they face getting their job done.

You should listen to them.

In praise of user innovation

The great Eric von Hippel, Professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, calls this “user innovation”, and believes that a vast quantity of value is unleashed in most businesses because of it.

Back to your business and its problem with grey IT, where you see an employee disobediently using an unapproved application, he sees a user finding a solution to a problem that they face.

If that employee saves five minutes a day using that unauthorized app, that’s going to add up to the equivalent of two days in which they can be doing something else for you each year.

How much do you pay them per day?

Because that’s the return you’ll get if you figure out how to approve the application they use or find another solution that does the same thing they’ll also use with you.

[Also read: No, we don’t want to go back to the office – Future Forum]

The professor’s work marries closely with ideas around the consumerization of IT.

Finding solutions people want and enjoy using that also meet the genuine problems they face at work, rather than matching your preconceptions of what those problems should be, is precisely the point.

Leaders attempting to put in place a digital transformation project should speak to their colleagues first, starting with the people doing the job.

If it doesn’t work, they’ll replace it

If they are using unapproved applications to do that job, then that’s a huge hint that your current solutions aren’t good enough, that your IT staff need motivating to improve those tools, and of the real challenges your staff are trying to solve. It’s your actual job to meet them there, listen to and support them, and to ensure that whatever changes you do make respect those needs, and help your people get stuff done.

The challenge of Grey IT isn’t that it can be seen as a threat to anyone’s authority, but that when you encounter it, it represents your creative employees asking for help.

I know you think it is your job to stamp out that use, but it’s not really. First you need to understand what problem is being solved with its use and then you must deliver a solution that is at least equally good to replace it.

Because the sad and inconvenient truth is that, as the people who work for you are humans, you can’t beat Grey IT, you can only try to manage it. And as a manager that starts with one word: “Listen”. Your job is to find the pain points and develop and optimize the employee experience.

The end.

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