When I tell people I work in IT, they roll their eyes

Unfortunately, this headline is true.

When I tell people I work in IT, they roll their eyes - mostly, because their own IT organizations are not where they are supposed to be

In our book All Hands on Tech, we explore what sets great tech organizations apart—and how they operate differently.

Here are a few simple yet powerful ideas I’ve implemented that made a real difference:

1. Value Creation: Making an Impact Visible

In our weekly department meeting, everyone had to share at least one improvement that made life easier for our customers.

• A workflow change that sped up ticket resolution by 5%.

• An optimized form that auto-fills key fields.

• etc.

It didn’t matter how big or small—what mattered was measurable improvement.

2. Customer Orientation: Listening Beyond IT

Once a year, we sent out a customer survey to stakeholders, peers, and suppliers. We then shared the results transparently across the organization. Feedback sometimes hurts.
(For German readers: Yes, this is Workers’ Council relevant!)

3. Cycle Time & Impact: Small Team, Big Results

We didn’t need an army of developers. Just 3–4 in-house devs who could respond to urgent customer needs on demand.
(And yes, we would have happily hired 20+ more!)

4. High-Performance Culture: What do we want from our teams

Before our annual performance reviews, we held a workshop to align what we believe is our common understanding of high performance: Examples include

• Openness to share

• Willingness to contribute beyond individual tasks

• Trust—do people genuinely trust this person?

These small shifts had a massive impact and were clearly ‘Out Of the Box’ for the Corporate World.

🥽 Curious to dive deeper ? Here are several options:

📱Book a Call with us - Just drop a note: [email protected] 

📘 Dive Deeper in our Book ‘All Hands On Tech’ - available on Amazon

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