Leadership and IT Transformation

Leadership impacts everyone.

And leadership takes its form in many different roles and departments within companies and organizations around the globe. One department that impacts almost everyone these days is the information technology, or IT department. In fact, if your IT leader wasn’t doing a good job, you might not even be reading this article!

For the past few years, there has been an evolution underway when it comes to technology leaders withing organizations. Traditionally, IT has been a pretty geeky group of people who spoke a language that other than Star Trek fans only a few could understand.  As technology becomes a more important aspect of every facet of business there is a change underway with many IT departments.  IT Executives and their subordinates are learning how to communicate, market, sell, and run their organizations more effectively and more like a business function.

More than Just Leading Geeks

The head of the Information Technology organization in any company is constantly dealing with a wide array of politics, ever increasing pace of technology change, increasing pace of business. They also have a reputation of leading an organization that usually tells you how something can’t be done.  Some cultures work hard to work around IT rather than to work with them because of real or perceived barriers that IT implements.

I spent 15 years in corporate IT Executive positions and I can honestly say that senior IT folks are trying to do the right thing; but often are fighting a losing battle.  Many IT shops take on too many projects and don’t put the right resources or poorly manage the important ones.  IT leaders have traditionally come up through the technology ranks and they just never had the business training that they needed to be successful.

With that said there are A LOT of top quality, knock-your-socks–off CIO’s out there.

Changing Roles

Some say there is a new trend of CIO jobs disappearing and the role is being absorbed by the COO with perhaps a CTO being brought in as well.  I have no doubt that you will see changes such as this, but it is dependent on the organization and how IT is used throughout the company.  Regardless of whether you are a CIO, CTO or COO trying to manage an IT function, we have some leadership help on the way.

Here are some tips for IT Executives looking to accelerate their IT Transformation.

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Top 10 IT Leadership Tips

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Workforce:

Ensure that you have the right skill sets in the organization to carry out today’s goals as well as tomorrow’s. Look at whether the people you are hiring today will have the skills for where the organization is going 2-3 years from now. This will require that you have a strategic view of where the organization is going.

ROI:

You must have a good ROI process to make sure that you are placing your precious resources on the most worthwhile business solutions that will give the biggest payback to the company. In an ideal world this means that you have an executive champion for each project that understands, and signs off on, the IT costs as part of their projects. Organizations fail when they try to open this process up to every request and try to prioritize a request from rank and file along with an executive request. I have seen lots of IT organization spin their wheels with rank and file requests while missing the bigger picture.

Commodities:

Determine and make a clear separation of commodity versus value services. Look for ways to outsource commodity services so that you can focus on innovation/value services. Typically commodity services deal with legacy mainstream solutions. Evaluate this at least annually as the landscape does shift.

Rotate:

IT employees need to spend time in the business side and vice versa. Start a job rotation program so that IT and business employees understand both worlds and their related languages. Job rotating can help IT get inside the business rather than just aligning with the business. This should be easy to implement and employees can typically enjoy three to six month rotations.

Cost-Cutting:

Be comfortable with continuous cost-cutting and optimization, including layoffs (see above point on workforce to minimize skill set driven layoffs). By the very nature of IT, solutions are deployed and will later need to be optimized. Institute a continuous efficiency and optimization process. Also, hiring employees with the right skills can help with future non-skill set layoffs.

Innovation:

Innovation is good and critical, but the focus has to be on “useful innovation.” Don’t be afraid to fail and realize that many R&D shops may only have one success out of 100 experiments. Create a culture where small-scale experiments are encouraged and successful experiments can move to the next level of funding. Part of your success criteria should include business value and ability to implement any proposed solution.

Stop saying “No”:

I see this is so many IT organizations, they say “no” to the business before they even understand the request. Typically, this is done in the name of security or cost savings. However, many users are pretty savvy, so restricting behavior only creates barriers between IT and the business. Work to try and understand the needs that exist and how to meet those needs safely.

Communications:

IT executives must be good communicators within their organization, across their business partners and the company they work in. IT executives also need to be savvy business people as well and it starts with the communication skills.

Partners:

Line up your strategic partners early and make sure that you have great partners in place well before you need to roll out a big systems implementation project. Prioritize building up those partner relationships early. Most effective leaders in Fortune 500 companies know how to use internal and external consultants/partners effectively.

Disruption:

Look for disruptive technologies and models that you can explore and understand. Many of today’s mainstream solutions were viewed as very disruptive when they were first introduced. When you look at disruptive forces (technology or business), understand whether you could apply some of the principles to your IT organization. Perhaps not deploying them right away, but maybe at the right time down the road might be a valuable idea.

How has the role of technology leader evolved in your organization(s) over the last many years? And how does that impact overall team morale, productivity, and workplace effectiveness? How has technology troubles hurt the overall performance of your team? And if you are a technology leader, do you think these tips will help? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Scott Archibald is a Managing Director at Bender Consulting.
You can follow Scott on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Scott_Archibald

Image Sources: civilservant.files.wordpress.com, i32.photobucket.com

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