Mengapa Kebanyakan Perbincangan Tidak Menyusun Pilihan Alternatif?

Introduction

In many companies, the IT systems that support business operations (Business IT) are chronically understaffed. The situation, where hiring can’t keep up and top talent burns out and leaves, constantly makes one feel that “now is the toughest it’s ever been.” While this state is often discussed as a mere hiring difficulty or talent shortage, it is more accurate to say that Business IT is structurally designed to be understaffed. This article organizes why Business IT is always understaffed, not as a people problem, but as a consequence of management decisions and IT design.

Business IT is Born with “Speed as the Top Priority”

Much of Business IT is born in contexts like launching new ventures, responding to rapid growth phases, or seizing market opportunities. At this stage, the top priority is consistently growth speed. Judgments like “make it work now,” “get it running somehow,” and “fix it later” were rational from a business perspective.

Why Designs that Rely on People are Chosen

When speed is the top priority, the most reliable choices are “adding more people,” “relying on talented individuals,” and “getting by with ad-hoc solutions.” Designing takes time, reproducibility cannot be created immediately, and there is no room to solidify processes in IT. Consequently, Business IT is designed to be people-dependent from the very beginning.

Scale Expands Without Designing for Reproducibility

The problem lies in the fact that this people-dependent structure is carried forward even after growth, organizational expansion, and business maturity. When a business scales without designing for reproducibility, the following situations occur:

• Decisions keep increasing
• Exception handling proliferates
• Processes that only specific people understand remain

As a result, the total workload inevitably exceeds human processing capacity, creating a state of chronic overload.

Understaffing is a “Result,” Not a “Cause”

In this state, symptoms such as “not enough people,” “hiring can’t keep up,” and “the team is burning out” appear. However, these are all phenomena that manifest as a “result of not designing for reproducibility.” Adding more people will not resolve the understaffing unless the fundamental design changes.

Business IT Easily Becomes a “Work Multiplier”

Originally, IT was meant to be a tool for “reducing decisions,” “incorporating exceptions into the structure,” and “reducing human intervention.” However, in Business IT, as tools increase, data grows, and integrations become more complex, the total volume of work itself increases. This is also because the objective function (what is prioritized) remains fixed on “speed.”

The More Talented the Person, the Sooner They Reach Their Limit

In Business IT operations, people with high judgment, quick contextual understanding, and flexible adaptability are highly valued. However, this simultaneously creates a structure where work concentrates on that person, they become irreplaceable, and cannot take breaks. As a result, the more talented the individual, the sooner they burn out and leave the team.

What Management Judgment Was Lacking?

The crucial point is not that the team overexerted itself or that the IT staff didn’t work hard enough. What was lacking was the management judgment regarding “how long to rely on people,” “when to switch to reproducibility,” and “who is responsible for making that decision.” This is a fundamental issue related to IT strategy and Digital Transformation (DX).

The Only Way to Resolve Understaffing

The way to resolve understaffing in Business IT is not by increasing hiring or outsourcing. What is needed is a “shift in the objective function”: identifying the decisions being handled by people, incorporating them into the structure, and solidifying them with IT. In other words, shifting the priority of IT investment from “speed” to “reproducibility and scalability.”

The Next Question to Ask

The question here should not be “Why don’t we have enough people?” The question should be “Why didn’t we change the premise of relying on people sooner?” In the next article, we will examine why IT begins to break down during growth phases and how this understaffing structure leads to technical and organizational failure. To build a sustainable systems strategy, confronting this fundamental question is essential.

tuk membuat keputusan. Ini mengukuhkan tadbir urus bukan hanya dalam struktur organisasi atau rangka kerja undang-undang/perakaunan, tetapi juga dalam proses membuat keputusan harian.

Kesimpulan

Sebab utama perbincangan tidak maju adalah kerana tiada pilihan alternatif yang disusun. Pada saat beberapa cadangan disusun, perbincangan berubah dari setuju/tidak kepada perbandingan, dan keputusan pengurusan akhirnya mula bergerak. Untuk meningkatkan pengurusan risiko dan kualiti membuat keputusan, memasukkan “struktur perbandingan” ini ke dalam mesyuarat adalah sangat penting.