All Hands on Tech

13Genesis

Like all evolutions, in the beginning there is darkness and chaos. In the beginning of any enterprise’s journey to an established set of practices, policies, and rules, there is a chaos of various small projects and experimentations. These projects are mostly operating in the dark, often intentionally, keeping IT and leadership out of the projects for fear of them laying claim to the effort or simply putting an end to them.

The chaos phase is not necessarily bad, only uncoordinated. Citizen ingenuity sprouts up everywhere, and most companies will find it necessary to assess the citizen efforts that already exist and determine how best to enable them. The genesis section is about starting strong and having a destination in mind.

In this chapter, we will use three forks to help us to think through the decisions you will make (or have already made) during the genesis stage. After the discussion of the forks, we recommend a few best practices to fill the gaps between where your organization is now and where you want to go.

Genesis Fork 1: Submit or Just Commit

Our original name for this fork was “Prohibit, Submit, or Commit.” We abandoned “Prohibit” for length and for practicality. You are welcome to try to prohibit citizen development, but you are highly unlikely to succeed. As tools become more pervasive and easier to use, there are just too many ways for citizens to circumvent your defenses and bring the latest technology to work. The “2024 Work Trend Index Annual ...