Three Aspects of Running High-Performance IT

The goal of running high performance IT is to both making improvement in business fundamentals and achieving high-performance business results for the long term.

The multidimensional digital transformation provides impressive advantages in terms of the speed of delivering business solutions and the impact on the way we think, live, and work nowadays. With the exponential growth of information and constant disruptions, IT continues to grow in importance to organizations, both operationally and as a competitive advantage. The priority for CIOs is to genuinely position IT as an integral and inseparable part of the business and run high-performance IT to lead the digital paradigm shift.

High performance IT lives and breathes long term vision: No matter where you are in IT, the world changes with accelerated speed. IT is in the middle of a sea change. To keep IT relevant, CIOs should be able to bridge the chasm between the operational aspects and strategic outlooks, craft and cast the technological vision for the ways in which the emerging digital technologies can create sustainable business value. Not only should modern CIOs voice their vision, but also they have to live and be the vision, and think forwardly for a better future. Otherwise, businesses will become static, short-sighted, and even irrelevant. A CIO’s technological vision should be attainable subject to the current time and its ability to adapt and help the business gain a competitive advantage for the long term. The vision needs to be high enough for inspiring the organization to excel, but it’s also based on the scientific forecast and realistic expectation. With a clear vision, an organization is able to evolve, adapt, and innovate, without fear of changes.

High performance IT achieves a greater level of productivity, autonomy, innovation and brings up tangible business results: IT performance effectiveness is about how to qualify the business result, taking continuous improvement practices to guide the team understanding the purpose of performance and measurement management. It is understandable that CIOs need to take care of chronic operational issues to stop the pain and deliver requested upgraded and technical solutions. In fact, many IT organizations spend a significant amount of time on maintaining systems and tools to “keep the lights on.” To run a high performance IT and become the strategic business partner, it’s important to automate the logistic part of the business to further improve productivity, performance, and quality. With high autonomy, IT can spend more time on innovation-oriented activities or supply differentiated capacities to improve the top line business value. IT performance should be measured from an outside-in business perspective, with multi-layer ROIs to demonstrate the rate of productivity increase, the business benefit or the rate of increased market share gains from the new products or service development and delivery.

High performance IT encourages staffs to improve their proficiency in work by managing iterative thinking, learning, and acting continuum: With rapid changes and overwhelming growth of information, neither business nor life is linear or static these days, There is false information everywhere, and knowledge is outdated sooner than you think. Digital professionals can no longer get stuck in their comfort zone and think that they are done with their learning in their youth. The professional competencies for adapting to unpredictable or riding above the learning curve are critical to making continuous improvement and smooth digital transformation. The emerging digital technologies such as social platform and collaboration tools, provide a flexible way to learn, share and collaborate. IT is the backbone to build a learning organization. Organizational learning is enabling employees to constantly learn so that the organization does not only 'earn enough from today,' but 'thrive in the future," by unleashing its full potential. High organizational learning relates to high response in recognizing and addressing system constraints. Business management has to ensure that the organization knows the tasks and knowledge required to 'sustain' itself and create a vibrant business environment and systems to support those tasks being done by employees. Business leaders must keep alert to the digital dynamic environment, adapt their workforce planning and development strategies to ensure their digital workforce is engaged, innovative and transformative.

The goal of running high performance IT is to both making improvement in business fundamentals and achieving high-performance business results for the long term. IT leaders also have to advocate for "departmental immersion," create shared and admirable goals enabling IT to become more integrated and aware of the organization as a whole for improving the overall organizational performance and maturity.

Posted in: IT Performance Management,IT Transformation