IT Value Stack

Moving Beyond IT-Centricity

In From Bad-to-Good CIO: Move Beyond IT-Centricity Laurie M. Orlov writes:

...In other words, the good CIO (one who is admired and respected by both business execs and staffers) transcends the IT-centricity and insulation from the business that frustrates business peers, and pushes the CIO out the door...

My viewpoint is that it's all a question of semantics, but I think IT-centricity shouldn't have its epicentre in the IT function, ie IT-centricity is a organisation-wide issue.

I believe IT-centricity must stem from the boardroom. Treating all IT related problems including substandard CIOs as IT problems is more often than not a mistake. The problem lies somewhere in the recruitment, development and management spaces.

Somebody somewhere outside the IT function got one or more of these wrong.

Avoid the IT alignment trap

Have a look at Avoid the IT alignment trap, an article by Bain employees Steve Berez, Vivek Gambhir and Amit Sinha.

My reaction: I agree that IT-business alignment is not the solution. I also agree that an IT department lacking in engineering and operational discipline will fail to meet the users' needs. But even IT departments that get their act together will still under perform if they focus on alignment. My interpretation of business-IT alignment is buyer-seller. A well aligned IT function does what it is told and does it well.

I believe we need to move beyond alignment to entwinement. In other words the IT function must influence business strategy as much as the users. This is a key way of moving IT as a subject for consideration under the title cost management to being a tool for innovation.

IT: Follow the Lead of Service Firms

In a recent series of blog posts popular author and speaker Tom Peters writes that companies should “PSF” themselves and be more service oriented. (PSF stands for Professional Service Firm.)

IT is, on a day-to-day basis, providing a service, and so must behave accordingly. The quality of that service will determine the users’ perception of the IT department, much in the same way as a restaurant’s service will determine the diner’s perception of the kitchen. A good kitchen fronted by surly waiters undermines the chef’s endeavors. Increasingly, the IT department is providing a service to both users and customers. A lack of service will impinge on client loyalty and thus revenues.

IT’s focus needs to be on the experience users have when they use the service.

For IT to be like a popular restaurant you will need your IT people to become more business-like. This goes beyond learning to be nice to users, and on to identifying who the best customers are and lavishing them with the limited love and attention available. This is also known as resource optimization.

(I discuss this more in the Service Stack chapter of The IT Value Stack.)

IT Struggling?

Interesting piece by BEN WORTHEN of wsj.com: IT Struggling? Put a Business Person in Charge. It shouldn't be as that is what IT staff are paid to do. However it highlights how far the industry has to evolve for these Renaissance IT stories to become mundane Bell curve norm events rather than notable extremes. We need to move beyond the slavish notion of business-IT alignment to entwinement where business and IT in partnership is standard. But it takes a special breed of CEO and CIO to make this happen. And in the main there aren't many of either who are ready for the challenge that I refer to as IT leadership.

It's time for the IT industry to grow up

It’s time for the IT industry to grow up. Through this blog my aim is to raise (and ideally progress) the issues around the subject of IT value maximization and IT leadership.

IT value maximization needs to be the focus of any organisation that invests significantly in IT. Failing to maximise the organisational value that your IT investment delivers could be construed as poor governance. The consequences of which can be dire.

I believe that IT value maximisation involves more than just tuning one’s technology. It is an issue that stretches far beyond the IT department perimeter.

My thoughts on IT leadership can be summed up as follows: All leaders need to become IT leaders, as IT is too important to be left to the IT department. Thus we need strong IT leadership to deliver real business value from one’s IT investment.

I am currently serialising my latest book ‘The IT Value Stack – A boardroom guide to IT leadership’ via my column in the Financial Times. (Also see the IT Value Stack framework).

My most recent FT column focused on the need for Process entwinement, which forms the second layer of my IT Value Stack framework. In essence I am saying that the IT department needs to come out from behind the IT fence and take on the role of process consultants. What do you think?