G Bryant McClellan (10/23/2012)
There is a huge advantage in pulling the tekkies out of IT and having them learn part of the business.In another life and century I worked for a major motor carrier. People who did not deal with drivers could take a 2 day course called Driver Reality. We learned a lot. We even got to see people in cars pull in front of rigs in traffic. Fortunately the cars were not crushed since the truck driver would have been blamed. Few if any ever went on to become truck drivers. But we learned an entirely different aspect of the business and returned to the tech world with a slightly altered view of the world.
There would be a huge advantage in having business people pulled out of the area they work in, to spend time in IT.
Of course, the next question is whether they would be competent enough to do so, and if their personalities would allow them to actually gain from it. Recently I had to deal with an end user that felt is was appropriate to grunt every second as I attempted to ask her co-worker for examples. This person was a manager, by the way. I find most end users have absolutely no patience for what we have to go through, and don't even want to answer our questions in order to help them. The preference is to just blame the technical people.
Dave