I’m a Texan. Born and bred. And like most Texans, I’m proud of my state. And my parents taught me there are two things you shouldn’t discuss - religion and politics. I’m going to steer well clear of religion, but I’ve GOT to say something about politics.
Up the road a bit, there’s something going on that proves my Law of Inverse Political IQ. The law states that when you get a group of otherwise intelligent men and women into a room, and if that group is a group of politicians, the IQ of the group will fall as the inverse square of the number of politicians present. Readers, I give you the Texas Legislature. Now if you don’t know much about the Texas body politic, I’d like to draw your attention to such items as a legislative attempt to ban “suggestive cheer leading”, or the fact that in the great state of Texas, there is a law making it illegal to milk another person’s cow.
Yeah, we got our share here in the Lone Star State.
But one of my blog topics is management, so I’d like to present you
State Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa.
In a stunning display of micromanagement, Senator Hinojosa has slipped a rider into a finance package banning state agencies from purchasing Microsoft Vista, unless the purchase is specifically approved by the legislature.
To repeat an overused phrase - what was he thinking?
Can you imagine a member of the board of directors of a major corporation setting IT policy for all the subsidiary companies? Because that is what the Senator is trying to do here. This flies in the face of so much management theory, I hardly know where to start.
But I’m going to give it a shot.
I’m sure Senator Hinojosa means well - many incredibly bad decisions have been well intentioned - but in this case, I doubt he has the technical expertise to assess the merits or debits of Vista - especially for over 170 individual state agencies. I’ve checked his bio and he has some impressive accomplishments: Marine Corp, practicing attorney, etc. But I did not find a single item with the title CIO, CTO or any other tie to IT management.
Hence broken rule #1 - if you don’t have the expertise, don’t try to manage it yourself.
Each of those 170 state agencies has someone internal managing their IT shops. Those individuals have the positions their positions (hopefully) because they are competent, experienced leaders. Why Senator Hinojosa feels he needs to lead them on this is a mystery. In fact, if he had checked, he might have found that a number of these leaders were skipping Vista and planning Windows 7.
Broken rule #2 - enable your subordinates and let them manage what they know
And the biggest irony of all is that Vista is approaching sunset, as Windows 7 appears on the horizon. The senator is closing the barn door after the cows got out (at least he didn’t milk them - he’d get arrested).
Broken rule #3 - make sure the policy you enact addresses a real, current or future problem
I suppose I could go on, but that would be like shooting fish in a barrel. And with my luck, that’s illegal in Texas.