I am seeing quiet clear pattern in I.T enabled companies. Usually I.T enabled jobs are quiet repetitive, like call centers where they need less thinking. Lets say that a guy starts a call center with 10 employees and his earnings is x rupees. If he scales up and has 20 employees he can hope to earn 2x rupees. That’s simple math.

Its like a prisoner breaking bricks or stone in a prison. You have 10 prisoners and they can break 1500 bricks a day, have 20, they must be able to break 3000 bricks.The brick breaking process is methodological, disciplined and clean.

Now take an archer in a battlefield galloping and aiming his arrows on the enemy. The enemy is no fool. He will be clad in armor having only few weak spots. The archer should be extremely skilled to place his arrows on the right spot. You can’t expect that an archer in 30 minute battle can down 20 people, then he can down forty in an hour of battle.

The movement of an archer in battle will look chaotic, but what looks chaotic is nothing but responding to dynamic changing situation. There is a discipline and skill under what looks to be chaos,

Usually the programmers and engineers in a company will be doing something that hasn’t been done before (by them at the least). Things are new and you are put to find innovative solutions. The behavior of them will look chaotic as they respond unknown unknowns turning into known unknowns which then turn in known knowns. But like an archer the skill they obtained by practice and freedom they have will dictate them to look for an aim and shoot at their target.

The problem I see is many I.T enabled companies are finding it difficult to grasp why the technology team is producing less positive results despite having hardy, skilled people. They must realize that there is a difference between a prisoner breaking bricks and a free and chaotic archer in the battle field.