Today, I was reminded of a particularly wasteful trend in Information Technology. Every business person who genuinely cares about the profitability and success of the company they work for  should  do everything they can to reverse or eliminate this trend entirely. I am referring to the abhorrent trend of IT "management by familiarity." Over the time I have been observing a particular company, they have had no fewer than 3 IT managers come and go. Each has run the IT group for at least a couple years, up to much longer reigns. Each IT manager, in their own way, was knowledgeable and reasonably competent at their job.

Yet each, upon assuming the role, did the following things:

• Each initially spent significant time speaking to peers within the company about their IT needs and concerns.
• Each spent little time, if any, understanding the history of the current IT environment from any of the existing staff familiar with it.
• Each then "divided" the existing infrastructure up into basically two buckets - technologies and vendors they were  familiar with, and those they weren't.
• Each then, utilizing the criticisms heard from their user communities and operating typically in an initial "grace period" where more budget and staffing were afforded the "new guy," initiated projects to "fix" relatively minor problems by replacing unfamiliar solutions with familiar solutions. This was often driven by peer pressure to show swift action combined with a self-driven desire to deliver "quick hits."

This example company is neither the first, only, or, sadly, the last company I have seen or expect to see such behavior at. I have witnessed millions of dollars spent in replacing storage vendors, switching server brands, replacing network providers, and so on - all unnecessary expenditures. In nearly all the cases, smaller incremental changes could have rectified customer concerns. However, the "brand" of the technology was already tainted internally within the company. Take the classic example of mail systems. Whether your organization is a Microsoft Exchange shop or a Lotus Notes shop, almost certainly some portion of your company's employees (including managers and executives) came from companies where the other mail product was in use. Each time a problem arises with your current mail system, some one almost certainly suggests switching to the other.

The deeper issue here is probably tied to an analysis of our throw-away consumer-oriented society. Leaving that long discussion aside for the time being, these "brand" technology changes are costing businesses around the world millions to perhaps billions of dollars annually. Avoiding this trend requires both more technology-literate business leaders and more reflective IT leaders. Every IT leader should seek to understand the history of the environment they inherit. It is an old cliche that "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it," but it is also nearly universally true. Every business leader who either offers criticism of any IT service or requests a new or enhanced IT service should make the time to take an active interest in and understanding of what they are criticising or requesting.

Ask questions about any proposed changes. Are there simpler changes that may achieve the same or nearly the same results? Are there incremental approaches, versus wholesale replacement of systems or technology, that alleviate sore spots or provide some or all of a new request? Most business leaders seeking to purchase goods or services outside of their own organization would seek more than a single proposal for comparison (or should!).

Seek the same of your internal IT organization and you can reap the benefits of more affordable and valuable IT solutions with less waste.