When Leadership Missteps Hurt Everyone Except Leadership

It usually begins with an announcement. A new system has been chosen, and it’s going to “transform how we do business.” The vendor’s brochure is polished, the demo looks slick, and leadership beams with optimism as they explain how this will modernize the department.

Down in the offices, though, the reaction is quieter. A few employees glance at each other, knowing that the system they’ve been maintaining for years already does the same job—and does it well. It was built in-house, tuned to the organization’s unique workflows, and improved over time with feedback from the people actually using it. Best of all, it costs very little to maintain.

But that doesn’t make the slides. Instead, the tool is dismissed as “not enterprise-ready.” Overnight, the work of those staff is sidelined. Their pride in having created something effective and sustainable is replaced with a dull sense of futility.

The rollout of the new system isn’t smooth. There are months of retraining, unexpected integration issues, and costly “enhancements” that were never mentioned in the original pitch. Budgets stretch thin. Departments grow frustrated as familiar processes are replaced with clumsy workarounds. And through it all, the employees who must keep the lights on are the ones absorbing the stress.

For leadership, the decision is a checked box—a problem “solved.” For the staff, it is the beginning of years of extra effort and diminished trust.

The Culture of Decision-Making

Stories like this are not isolated. They reveal something deeper: a culture of decision-making that too often prioritizes appearances over substance.

In local government IT, leadership rarely feels the consequences of these choices directly. It is the staff who live with them—supporting fragile systems, reconciling strained budgets, and fielding complaints from frustrated departments. Over time, the message becomes clear: technical expertise and practical experience matter less than politics, presentations, or the promise of something shiny and new.

That message has consequences. Innovation slows. Staff become disengaged. Departments across government begin to quietly build their own “shadow IT,” not to defy the official channels, but because they’ve lost faith that the central IT department will deliver what they need in a reasonable way.

And once shadow IT takes root, the costs and risks multiply. Services splinter. Security weakens. Trust erodes. Eventually, the public and elected officials begin to ask hard questions: What is the IT department really providing, and is it worth the cost?

Stewardship, Not Spectacle

At its heart, this isn’t a technology problem. It’s a leadership problem. And the core responsibility of leadership is stewardship—of taxpayer money, of staff talent, and of citizen trust.

Good stewardship doesn’t mean knowing every technical detail. It means asking the right questions, weighing short-term promises against long-term realities, and listening to the people who will carry the work forward. It means remembering that every dollar wasted is a dollar that can’t be spent on schools, safety, housing, or countless other public needs.

A Call to Recenter Leadership

Departments don’t collapse because of one bad purchase. They collapse because of years of compounding decisions made without reflection, without humility, and without accountability.

The fix is not another restructuring. Restructuring is only a symptom—the visible reaction when missteps have piled too high for elected officials or the public to ignore. The real fix is a cultural reset in decision-making:

• Listen first. Staff closest to the work have insights that no vendor slideshow can replicate.
• Think long-term. Initial discounts mean little if costs balloon for the next decade.
• Value stewardship. Public money deserves the same care we’d use if it were our own household budget.
• Build trust. When IT becomes a true partner—reliable, transparent, responsive—shadow IT stops being necessary.

In the End

Every decision in government IT ripples outward. Some waves are small, others tidal, but all of them touch the lives of employees, departments, and ultimately the citizens who rely on public services.

When leadership forgets this, culture decays, costs rise, and trust erodes until the entire department stands under scrutiny.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Strong leadership doesn’t require perfection. It requires humility, stewardship, and a willingness to see beyond the next presentation slide. If leaders can realign their compass toward these fundamentals, government IT can move from being seen as a burden to being recognized for what it should be: the backbone of effective, sustainable public service.