The problems with communication between business people and IT people may arise from right-brained versus left-brained thinking, proposes Barry Devlin, co-founder of consultancy True Heart Work with his wife, Ingrid Hoffman.
Devlin and Hoffman discussed IT versus business relationships in warehouse implementation at the ITWeb Data Warehousing conference in Midrand, yesterday.
Citing a 2008 Gartner study, Devlin said five of the top nine data warehousing implementation problems (misunderstandings between IT and business, IT complacency, outsourcing, overly focusing on dashboards, and a lack of an overall BI strategy) “all have some aspect of psychological relationship issues”.
He argued that many of these problems arise from people issues, such as cultural differences. Devlin believes business people are predominantly right-brained, which is the hemisphere that controls creative thought, while IT people are left-brained, which controls logical and analytical thought.
Hoffman offered tips on communicating more effectively, in order to prevent a communication breakdown.
She said it is the message-receiver's job to mirror what the sender has said, to make them feel understood, and validate their issues. When people feel attacked, she explained, they get defensive or even attack back. She stressed the importance of diffusing the situation by calming the sender.
“Soft issues can be more damaging to data warehousing projects than technical problems,” Hoffman said.
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