IT Strategy by Tinker Bell

In our house, Friday's are "Pizza and a Movie Night."  Tonight, my girls chose the 2008 Tinker Bell movie.  Spoiler Alert!  The plot goes like this: Bell discovers that her fairy talent is tinkering - building the tools that other fairies use to do their work and change the seasons on the main land.  Tinker Bell struggles with accepting her talent for a while.  She rejects her own talent and tries to learn the other fairies' talents instead.  Eventually, she discovers that she's really a very innovative tinker fairy.  Her lack of faith in her own talent causes her to put the arrival of Spring at risk.  Then, by embracing her talent and flare for innovation, she's able to lead the other fairies with her inventions and save Spring!  As a reward, she also discovers a way that tinker fairies can perform a valuable service in returning lost things to children on the main land during the changing seasons.

Hopefully you already see the comparison between tinker fairies and typical IT co-workers.  The tinker fairies are an invaluable support team that work behind the scenes to make sure that all the other talent fairies can do their work effectively.  They deliver a great service, but that rarely drive real change in how work is done by other fairies... until Tinker Bell comes along, that is.  She spends time understanding what the other fairies do, what their challenges are, and applies her inherent tinker-talent to fundamentally change how they do their work.  Wow!  That's and innovative IT co-worker!!

At the same time the kids were watching Tinker Bell, I was reading Business / IT Fusion by Peter Hinssen.  I can't speak for Peter, but I think Tink would make a great IT 2.0 co-worker.  She's got the talent to see how her tools and materials can come together to solve problems, and she has a great ability to understand the challenges that the business of the fairies is confronted with.  Her innovations don't just make the existing processes more efficient, but drive them to be all together different processes.

My recommendation:
Read Business / IT Fusion.
Watch Tinker Bell.
Don't tell anyone that you got your IT strategy from a Disney movie!