“Being a business winner means you need to work hard and play hard,” said the chief executive at a recent breakout session.

It was motivating stuff. I immediately thought of how I could use his paradigm shift to push the envelope. Thankfully, everyone else in the IT team wanted to hit the ground running ­ and we were able to brainstorm about quick wins.

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, you cannot afford to sit on the fence. So, the first game changer we implemented was an integrated Web 2.0 solution that the team could use to leverage low-hanging fruit.

Then we took some of those ideas offline, so that we could touch base and think about future synergies. Keen not to drop the ball, I took some of our showstoppers to senior management.

And what a session that was. Ken ­ - my right-hand man ­ - put a stake in the ground and ran our concepts up the flagpole to see who would salute.

“In terms of scalability, your best-of-breed vision could bring a lot of value to the table,” said the chief executive.

But going forward, I was eager to manage expectations as we moved to the next level. There’s no “I” in “team” and if you are going to maximise customer satisfaction, everyone has to work together as they think outside the box.

We’d recognised that people are our best asset and knew the resulting piece could architect a bright horizon for the business.

Speaking honestly, I’d given 110 per cent and knew our model could push the organisation from good to great. Then someone from finance stuck their nose in and asked what improved ROI we could expect from the system.

“It is what it is,” I said. And I turned to Ken, who looked down and muttered something about the 80/20 rule and 24/7 operations. The chief executive then canned the initiative. This was a shame, because blue sky thinking requires people to raise the bar.

But Ken and I also knew you can’t polish a turd. And we were secretly pleased when human resources gave us our cards and said we would be spending more time with the family.

Further reading

• 'Gentleman's hours' are key to flexible working
• Would you recommend a career in IT to your child?
• Forget dreams of working abroad, or in Cobol
• Be proud of being a technology nerd
• Modernise to beat IT and skills obsolesence

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Want to contact the writer? Email Mark Samuels