April 4, 2005 (Computerworld) --
Fred Held was CIO at Mattel Toys Inc. for most of the 1970s. He recalls the day a gung-ho marketing executive, apparently having just read Popular Science, asked, "Can we put a chip in every product, hook up to spy satellites and track where everyone goes, so we can really see who buys our toys? We could check which stores have too much inventory and transfer product accordingly." Disregard the fact that the technology was at least three decades away. The marketing guy was proposing to insert a Cold War espionage-inspired tracking device in every Hot Wheels car and Barbie doll sold worldwide. Can you say "worst public relations calamity ever"? Needless to say, Held -- who is now a partner at Tatum Partners, a professional services firm in Atlanta -- declined. "You have a great deal of foresight," he told the exec. "This isn't quite possible right now, but we're going to keep an eye on it." Thus the marketing guy went away flattered, and Held turned him down cold with no ill effects. This is by no means an easy thing to do, and since Held's days at Mattel, it has only gotten tougher. In today's corporations, IT is supposed to be an enabler, a conduit rather than a gatekeeper. When a line-of-business executive proposes a project, IT is supposed to make it happen. Unfortunately, some of those ideas are too risky, difficult to justify given the company's overall IT picture or just plain hare-brained. But the IT executive who says no may be putting his career on the line. The key, according to CIOs, project managers and other experts, is to ask for and provide facts until the person who made the request is forced to acknowledge that the idea won't fly. 'Press Statement' Method "You need to get everyone to recognize risks and alternatives," says Jerry Luftman, author of Competing in the Information Age: Align in the Sand (Oxford University Press, 2003) and a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. "You can't just say no, put your hands over your ears and walk away. You want to get them to recognize why the answer has to be no; that's the trick." This diplomacy may not come naturally to many in IT, a discipline long known for bluntness. Carolynn Benson, a senior consultant at Bedford, N.H.-based Ouellette & Associates Consulting Inc., says that in training courses, she teaches clients to say no with a "press statement" -- a positively worded refusal. "The way to say no is with options," Benson says. A typical hell-no press statement might begin, "IT is committed to helping
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