After summarizing my own experience of architecting IT initiatives, I have developed the following pretty straightforward metrics to put the people issue in a structured fashion from one perspective, and hope it can provoke IT leaders to solve people challenges more systemically and methodically.
| Agreeable | Capable/Marketable | Knowledgeable | |
| 1 | Y | Y | Y |
| 2 | Y | Y | N |
| 3 | Y | N | N |
| 4 | N | N | N |
| 5 | N | Y | Y |
| 6 | N | N | Y |
| 7 | Y | N | Y |
| 8 | N | Y | N |
Agreeable: your people (employees and contractors) agree to your vision and the new initiative. They want to work with the rest of the team to move forward.
Capable/Marketable: they have the right skill sets, mindset and experience to make the vision and the new initiative to happen. More often than not, people who are capable are also marketable, which explains why I put them together.
Knowledgeable: they are SMEs and/or domain experts of your existing systems and/or business.
There will be 8 combinations of the above.
People in row 1 are those whom you should cherish the most. You should trust them, empower them and rely on them. If they are being scattered in multiple existing teams and being drowned, you should consider taking them out to form a core team or COE of your new initiative, which will utilize their full potentials to influence the rest.
People in row 2 are usually new consultants or new hires. You should figure out the fastest way possible to onboard them systemically and encourage the people in row 1 to mentor them. So they can apply their know-how to your specific situations.
People in row 3 are those whom you should train and coach, and make them become valuable players.
People in row 4 are those you might need to work the hardest to not allow it to happen that they might feel threatened by the new vision and the new initiative, and slow the new initiative down.
People in row 5 are those you should unite and spend extra effort to make them move to row 1.
People in row 6 are those whom you need to figure out ways to utilize their knowledge to help the new vision and new initiative.
People in row 7 are often long time employees whose have lagged behind the new things due to some reasons. You should re-equip them.
People in row 8 are probably the hardest to decide. Depending how much energy and time you have left after helping people in row 3 and 5, you might be able to figure out the right ways.
A leader should also conduct some statistical analysis. Even simple ones will be very helpful. You can summarize the total number of people from both vertical and horizontal views and build distribution curves using these numbers. There must be gaps between your desired curves and the current curves. For instance, in most of large companies with long history, the number of people who are in “knowledgeable” category usually are very high due to the simple fact that these companies have longer stretch to use IT and as a result, have more legacy systems to maintain and support. If the new initiative is to use newer technologies to create new systems that will replace the legacy systems, people in this category may not have the adequate skills and experience. And yet, their domain and existing system knowledge will be imperative to the new initiative.
By examining these two curves, you will need to come out a plan to methodically shift the current curve to the desired curve. Needless to say, this is not an easy task but is among the most essential excise if you want the new initiative to succeed.
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