Nobody Knows - Feel My Pain
Nobody except the general staffers in most organizations actually know how the business works. Kind of like a car, people understand (sort of) how to drive and fuel one to go from A to B, but beyond that most people couldn't even draw a rudimentary picture of how it actually works. It's the same in business. The businesses that figure out how to increase the overall level of understanding throughout its operations are the ones that generally do well.
Within a business most everyone is under the impression that their particular area of responsibility is the keystone function that makes everything work. They don't need to understand the rest of the business because those things are stupid, ineffective, unnecessary, etc... Most everyone is dead wrong.
Everything has to work together to make a business go and that can't be optimized if nobody understands what's actually going on. As a rule, the person who answers the phones or the customer service people, general, unskilled staff, know better than anyone how it all works. That's how 'shadow ware' sneaks in, forgotten people trying to make their work easier, faster, etc...
They're forgotten because other departments are too focused on their own tasks. Management doesn't understand, sales doesn't understand, ops & finance don't understand and IT doesn't understand. They don't understand because nobody ever bothers to ask general staff.
It's all down to communication. If you don't understand what your CEO or Sales team do, that's a failure on their part. If you don't understand what Finance does that's a failure on their part. If you're in IT and people don't understand what you do, that's a failure on your part.
I wouldn't expect everyone to be interchangeable, but everyone needs at least a basic understanding of what's going on throughout the organization. When people don't have time to explain what they do, or can't articulate what they do in an audience friendly way that's a really bad sign. That usually means that person doesn't even understand their own job, much less someone else's. When we invest in a company the overall level of business operations knowledge that is displayed throughout the organization is one of the things we look at the hardest and the longest. That's because that is what's going to make or break that company.
Not getting the tools you need to meet your responsibilities? Then it's on you to brush up on your sales skills and get that solved. It doesn't matter what department you're in, if you need something and understand the business well enough to articulate why you need it then you should be getting it. If you're not then you need to look inside yourself and figure out how to get it. If you can't do that you're pretty well resigning your self to your current position for the rest of your working life.
From the Executives all the way down to interns, everyone should understand not only what they do, but what else everyone else does. If you don't know then how can you possibly expect to be able to support those people? You end up delivering a flame thrower to paint a natural gas pumping rig, and that's exactly what happens. It happens so often that 83% of workers (apparently) feel they don't have the tools they need. That's a failure on their part and IT's part. Part of successfully making and maintaining tools, of any kind, is understanding enough to be able to anticipate what will be needed next and communicate those needs in a way that sees the resources to do it delivered. If you can't do that there's a really big problem, and you can only see it if you look in a mirror.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
