For IT and Business Leaders, Mere ‘Getting Along’ Is Not Enough
Susan Cramm, writing for HarvardBusiness.org:
We have an opportunity to help business leaders manage IT as an organizational asset — not simply an organizational structure. Technology will fall far short of expectations if business leaders continue to try to operate IT via remote control. Emerging technologies — such as social media, business intelligence, business process management — aren’t applications in so much as they are innovation toolkits. While they require (business-smart) technologists to implement and configure, they also require IT-smart business leaders (at all levels) to experiment and exploit their potential.
The notion of ‘business-aligned IT’ has been bandied about for years, but only now are companies figuring out what it really means. It used to be great PowerPoint fodder for c-level presentations, but it doesn’t cut it anymore.
Because management and IT both know there’s a giant disconnect between them, and its become the white elephant in the room. It’s finally at critical mass, and now it’s time to put action behind the catchphrase.
So what does the action look like? For starters:
- Communication and involvement. Business leaders need to explore emerging technologies with a business context and mind, and they need to explain to IT technologists why it’s important. On the other hand, IT staff needs to understand what the business is trying — really trying — to accomplish.
- Open minds. Business leaders can’t just look at IT as operational infrastructure or data services, and IT can’t look at business leaders as tech-feeble suits.
- A eye towards doing things much differently. As Cramm notes, modern applications are ‘innovation toolkits’ more than mere applications. How are companies doing something today? It it unsatisfactory? Has a competitor leapfrogged you? How can you do things radically different and get your pole position back?
We have discussions like this every day. We see customers in asset-intensive industries move to PeopleSoft EAM solutions away from tactical point products, and their IT teams fully understand what’s being sought. We have clients ask us about the best way to gather business intelligence requirements — in fact, business intelligence requirements gathering is one of the most popular search terms leading to this blog — because they want that BI layer to span business leaders and IT to enable smarter decisions.
So yes, it’s happening, but it’s not all kittens and moonbeams. For a great many companies out there, they’re happy enough if business leaders and IT aren’t in a catfight du jour. They’re happy if the silos are getting along.
That’s far from enough these days, and the sooner a company makes its own changes to its thinking, the more adeptly it will sidestep real circumstance that will force the lesson upon them anyway.
(Via Jim)
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