Smart people can make stupid decisions. Case in point: business executives who decide they can address their technology needs without involving IT, responding to the IT supply-and-demand crunch that afflicts so many enterprises today. In my experience, nobody wins in these do-it-yourself projects.
There’s a chill in the air, the chill of fear. Sales and profits are down. A new CEO is in town. The head of manufacturing is gone, and the supply-chain head may be the next to roll -- unless she can deliver some wins. She has a plan: Rationalize the vendors, realign accountabilities, and roll out new technology to the field.
A productive CIO-CFO relationship is critical to the successful exploitation of technology. And, in general, CIOs find the relationship difficult and frustrating to navigate.
One of the root causes of the frustration stems from the fact that when it comes to IT, CFOs serve multiple and often conflicting roles: CFO's are IT's business partner, banker, and in some cases, boss. This means that in a given work week, it's not unusual for CFOs to request additional IT support, cut the IT budget, and criticize the CIO's progress in strengthening the company's competitive position.
Cloud computing is inevitable.
The end state promises computing resources that deliver against the New Normal's need for speed, collaboration, productivity, and scale.
The transition state, however, delivers nothing but challenges for all involved.
On the vendor side, big names don't necessarily equate to big capabilities. Every "world class" cloud vendor consists of mere mortal employees who are struggling (given organizational silos, fragmented technology, and dramatic growth) to deliver on their company's service level commitments . Buyers beware. Take your reference checks to a new level - and focus not only on vendor capabilities but also the internal capabilities necessary to make sure the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
On the company side, technology and process changes are pretty well understood, security implications less so, but the organizational impacts are the most profound and sure to confound.
As we transition from managing assets to services, what is the role for our MVP technologists? With the transition to cloud, they are being asked to transfer their knowledge and manage service levels without direct access to the tools that allow them to do so. As an technical IT leader said to me recently, "We are now managing relationships and tickets - not technology."
Don't write off these employees as "unnecessary" in the end state and replaceable in the transition. Companies need to "lift and shift" their MVP technologists from the micro to the macro: architecting, integrating, innovating, directing, monitoring, resolving, negotiating.
As you move to cloud computing, how are you making sure that your people are moving with you?
Big thanks to client Todd who turned me on a to a great article on innovation.
The article does a wonderful job illustrating that no one owns innovation - it's a horizontal, not a vertical process. One where innovations must travel across organizational boundaries to find purpose and become reality.
There are three major players in the innovation process: those involved in an open-ended search for knowledge (e.g., found in universities and some great R&D labs), those facing needs and serious constraints (e.g., start ups, front line knowledge workers), and those with the discipline and resources to define and scale products that have broad-based appeal (e.g., vendors and IT organizations.)
Innovation is a messy little soup where the magic happens as the different players interact. There is no simple recipe, but key ingredients include employees who understand the needs of marketplace, are exposed to the outside world, and work within a culture that nurtures creativity within a disciplined process of iteration, prototyping, and pruning.
The fact that no one owns innovation means that everyone should. This presents an enormous challenge for companies with bloated project agendas, over-burdened employees, and overzealous bosses. Google's "20% time" is a boundary rule targeted at keeping these toxic ingredients at bay.
What is your company doing to foster innovation?
Question: Why would a major technology vendor fire people for leveraging IT?
Answer: When the employees are leveraging IT without involving IT.
A well-known technology company has become the poster child for locking down IT to capture efficiencies gained through consolidation and standardization. Now, all IT decisions must be funneled through IT. It's a good idea that has gone bad. It's not unusual for engineers to wait a year for technology decisions. Going it alone risks termination. Courageous business leaders mask IT spending in their project budgets by calling it "equipment."
IT is at a crossroads - it needs to either figure out how to bring shadow IT out of the dark - and into the light - or risk being marginalized as increasingly tech-friendly business leaders take innovation into their own hands.
It's time for IT to control what matters. Imagine if IT defined investment policies rather than stewarding all business cases through approval? Imagine if IT certified project managers rather than managing all IT-enabled projects? Imagine if IT approved vendors rather than getting involved with all IT vendor provisioning? Imagine if IT controlled access to applications and data rather than the access devices?
Shadow IT reflects a need. Rather than shutting it down, IT should be building it up - while ensuring that it meets the needs of the enterprise as well as the individuals within.
How is your company bringing shadow IT into the light?
Here's a simple piece of advice for companies looking to become more innovative: Get IT out of the IT department.
I know it sounds counterintuitive and goes against the drive for centralization that has been in effect at most companies for the past 10 years. But for both competitive and technological reasons, funneling everything through the IT department no longer makes sense. Instead, business-unit leaders need to start assuming more control over the IT assets that fuel their individual businesses. To read the full Wall Street Journal article, click here. To learn more, listen to a recent NPR interview with Susan.
This week I met with some senior IT leaders to discuss my new book and the future of IT. At the end of the discussion, one of the participants expressed concern about the ability to develop future IT leaders in light of the fact that the company is outsourcing and "we aren't hiring junior IT people anymore." As I looked around the table, I realized that this organization is running on the leaders they developed five, 10, even 15 years ago, in their pre-outsourcing days. These people are getting older and looking tired. Outsourcers, not employees, are performing many of the jobs that helped build their leadership skills.
Andy Grove penned a fascinating commentary about the impact of outsourcing on American job creation, and the subsequent ability to innovate in the sectors that have been outsourced. He challenges the belief that as long as knowledge work stays in the United States, it doesn't matter what happens to factory jobs. Grove believes that, "not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is important for technological evolution." Grove makes a good argument that, over time, companies lose the ability to innovate in the sectors they outsource.
Think outsourcing eases leadership burdens? Think again.
There are two major reasons an IT organization is "bad," and what you do about it differs depending on the root cause.
By default or by design, companies get the IT capability they've bought and paid for.
Every profession has its stereotype. Operations guys are risk averse. Marketing types are emotional. Finance wonks are narrow-minded. CIOs are interpersonally awkward and out of step with the business.
In a large ballroom with 250 CIOs, an industry leading CIO takes the podium to discuss how his company leveraged cloud-based email services to quickly deliver email capability to a newly acquired company. He delivers a punchy, succinct presentation and finishes with about 30 minutes to spare. I start packing up, certain that the Q&A will be short and sweet. Instead, I witness 30 minutes of collective handwringing about cloud-based email: What about the service levels? Aren't the costs higher? Are you really comfortable putting company information into the cloud? Can the vendor really deliver?
Many of us involved with IT believe that success in the new normal calls for democratizing IT-enabled innovation. But democratized innovation represents a significant shift from how IT currently operates and there is no clear roadmap or consensus on how to move in this direction. IT leaders know that change is necessary, but are so busy struggling with today's challenges that they don't have the time to bring the future forward.
Ever found yourself in the workplace doghouse?
Nobody knows how technology will be managed or consumed in 5, 10, or 15 years, but we do know that change is coming.
My last post profiled a CIO who is interested in increasing the IT-smarts of his organization. To help ensure success, we encouraged the CIO to approach the effort in a way that respects that change is driven from psychological, not just logical, forces. With this in mind, we identified eight steps to smarter IT.
Yesterday, a CIO said to me: "It's time to increase the IT-smarts of the rest of the business. They are demanding more direct control and they are ready for it."
In case any of us doubted it, our frustrations with IT — and IT's frustrations with the business — are alive and well. We recently posted a slideshow, 8 Things Executives Hate About I.T. based on the core principles in my book.
