2000's Leadership Vacuum

2000's Leadership Vacuum

Please Note: This article first appeared in InformationWeek, March 16, 1998 on page 147.See an image of the article here.

Our industry's leaders must end their silence on this pressing problem and take a stand before the new millennium arrives

Every IS professional knows that projects without visible support and commitment from top management have greatly diminished prospects for success. Besides lots of empirical and anecdotal evidence, it's almost one of those self-evident "truths": Ask yourself--if it's not important to your boss, is it important to you? If this "truth" applies to the year 2000 problem, then the current absence of top management leadership bodes ill for the success of global year 2000 efforts.

"Hold on," you say. "The leader of the most powerful nation in the world just created the President's Council on the Year 2000 Conversion. That's the pinnacle of top management leadership." True, President Clinton did publically show his support for year 2000 efforts by creating the council. However, when it comes to high-technology matters, the public has much more confidence in Bill Gates than in Bill Clinton.

According to a recent study that measured the public's confidence in various institutions, insurance companies rated lowest at 16 points, followed by lawyers (20), state government (29), and public schools (33). On the other hand, the medical profession earned 200 points, colleges and universities 308, local police 325, and research scientists an impressive 500. But at the high end of the scale, the public rated their confidence in high-tech companies at 750!

Sadly, the leadership of the IT industry has been mostly silent when it comes to the year 2000. Oh sure, companies are selling products and services to help their customers deal with the problem. But to the best of my knowledge, not one leader of a top-tier IT company has said anything publically about the importance of global year 2000 efforts. It's no wonder that at least 25% of their top management peers in other industries aren't taking the problem seriously when Bill Gates, Lou Gerstner, Steve Jobs, Andy Grove, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell, and all the rest are tight-lipped about it.

Until the high-tech industry acknowledges the seriousness of the problem it created, the public won't really acknowledge the problem, either. And if the public doesn't get it, then the government surely won't get it.

An upcoming study by the Society for Information Management's Year 2000 Working Group, which I co-chair, examined nearly 200 enterprises representing more than 10% of the U.S. gross domestic product. Less than half of these projects are beyond the planning stage and are actually being implemented. This, despite the fact that the year 2000 project directors in these same enterprises estimate that more than 70% of the project lies ahead after plans are completed.

Likewise, when asked to rate their degree of completion on a scale of 1 to 10, these project leaders from enterprises with average annual revenue of more than $4 billion gave their projects an average score of 2.5, up from 2.4 a year earlier. Worse, they reported that on average they were devoting only about 50% of their own time to these efforts, up from 31% a year earlier.

I'm not surprised, given the high-tech leadership vacuum on year 2000. But I am very concerned. If the risks we face are one-tenth as grave as they appear to be, then people supposedly in the know, such as the CEOs of IT's top companies, have a social, ethical, and moral responsibility to speak out. And if they aren't in the know, then they have a social, ethical, moral--and probably legal--responsibility to become better informed.

It's embarrassing to be an IS professional and watch Bill Clinton take the high road on a problem we own, while our industry's leadership is tongue-tied.

What will it take to change this? I don't know. I just hope it comes in time.

Leon A. Kappelman, Ph.D., is an associate professor of business computer IS in the College of Business Administration at the University of North Texas, and co-chair of the Society for Information Management's Year 2000 Working Group. He can be reached at kapp@unt.edu.