How to not evolve your organization's IT dept.

• Don’t expect excellence
• The last thing that an enterprise wants is for IT systems to run smoothly.  If they did, then support people would not have work to do which in turn leads to layoffs and a bad public image.  The IT dept should strive for barely adequate.  That way bugs will be introduced and all stay employed.
• Don’t open source your software
• The software you write is critical to your business and the data is irrelevant.  The success of your business involves how well the IT department keeps its secrets and has nothing to do with how many products or services you sell.  Open sourced software will also be instantly sabotaged the moment it is released because it is not possible for a person external to your organization to want to make your software assets a success.
• Don’t experiment
• The last thing an IT department needs is to try anything new.  New things cause problems and break, and they cost more money with less return to the business value.  Additional cost will also be incurred when engineers need books or training.  All new ideas must be squashed immediately.
• Don’t plan or design
• The last thing the IT department needs is a direction.  IT people love to wander aimlessly through the hallways or just surf the web.  They also get the best sense of job satisfaction from collecting a paycheck for producing zero output.
• Don’t support your engineers
• Engineers aren’t smart.  They were not hired to solve problems, only to put hands on the keyboard and type pages and pages of computer-understood text.  They certainly don’t know the organization’s systems nearly as well and the person(s) sitting in offices on the top floors of buildings.  Engineers are also certainly never to be interested in solving business problems.
• Don’t care about who you hire
• Talented engineers are egotistic and for some reason like to be compensated for their potential they bring to an employer.  This is not monetarily feasible.  Since all engineers produce at the same pace and level, it is much more economically sound to hire 3 or 4 college graduates for the price of 1 experienced engineer.
• Don’t build an engineering culture
• Since talented engineers are not smart and are expensive, we don’t want any more of them around.  Talented engineers tend to attract each other like magnets.  The IT department must keep engineers as far away from each other as possible or else the organization will get overrun.  Also, all public images of the IT department must be kept as un-sexy as possible to prevent talented and expensive engineers from wanting employment in the organization.  Especially do not market the IT department to anyone, lest engineers learn what a pleasure it is to work in your organization and will seek employment there.