Scoble posted on IT behavior this morning, and it's something that Roger Grimes should read - probablyu over and over again, until it sinks in:

A Scoble Moment at SAP. He talks about Jeff Nolan complaining about the IT department at SAP who blocked his IM. Oh, I never complained about IT at Microsoft. I didn’t complain when Microsoft blocked Skype. Nope, what did I do? I got EVDO and expensed it. Heheh! If IT turns into idiots, route around them!

That's what actually happens. IT thinks that they are "securing" things, everyone else knows that they are busy preventing the creation of value. Far too many IT departments over-estimate their value to the company, and the plethora of IT directed trade journals help them maintain that thinking.

Here's the thing: IT is a lot like what Ted Stevens thinks the internet is. They maintain the "pipes". If they do a good job, they can help the business create value. If - like too many IT departments - they get bogged down in meaningless standards, and start getting excited about monitoring the activity at every PC - then they are getting in the way, and reducing the amount of value that gets created by the people who actually pay the bills.

For most IT departments, the big thing they should keep in mind is that they are important only insofar as they allow other people to get work done. If their fellow employees think of them as a problem to route around, then they are a problem.

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