Does Your IT Organization Lack of “Strategic Bone”

IT is the value-added delivery that makes the organization different and competitive. Thus, developing and strengthening the “strategic bone” of IT is critical to transcend IT as a trustful business partner. 

There is no doubt IT plays a critical role in both improving bottom line business efficiency and top-line revenue growth. However, there is no "one size fitting all" magic formula on how to run the IT organization as a strategic partner and a revenue generator. Different IT organizations and enterprise as a whole are at a different stage of business maturity. The role of CIO is the mirror of the business reputation as an innovator or a plumber; a strategist or an operator; a change agent or a controller, etc. Lack of “strategic bone”  is perhaps one of the root causes of diminishing IT influence and keeping IT irrelevant for the long run.

Many IT organizations are entire order-takers: Many IT leaders are promoted for very tactical skillsets without the strategic mindset and business acumen. Without C-level understanding of the business goals and objectives, you cannot position IT resources correctly and run IT strategically. If the Help Desk mechanism - whatever it may be glorified, IT is an order-taker; if the organization is strictly tactical, then Yes, IT is an order-taker. if IT leaders are not called in to provide feedback and address strategic business goals, yes, IT is still an order taker. CIOs need to become far more business focused, IT resource must be aggressively proactive in making sure they are not just being seen as order takers. IT should create multidimensional value across organizational lines and not get siloed. Thus, more transparency in IT value proposition to the business plus more engagement in partnership is needed with the business for reinventing IT and improving IT maturity. From IT leadership perspective, what C-level executives really want is a strategic business partner that works both "on the business" and "in the business," not just "for the business"; someone who can share the technological vision, know what the business needs and help to solve tough business problems proactively and creatively.

Many organizations don’t have an implementable business strategy, or many IT organizations overly emphasize the alignment angle on IT strategy: It's a bigger challenge today because some companies are still trying to “feel their way” through the economically stressful period. Many organizations have tried creating a formal strategy, but it fails frequently because they don't have the ability to understand when their actions are in accordance with the strategy or not. Most companies may have a strategy on paper, but in all likelihood don't even look at it. IT leadership needs to know the strategy of a business before any IT plan can be created to be an integral part of business strategy, without overly emphasize the alignment angle on IT strategy. The other pitfall is that many people in IT leadership avoid having a strategy because they feel that it is a constraint. In fact, having constraints provides guidelines for running strategic IT by opening up opportunities and providing anchors to explore from. It also frees you up from having to do a lot of base research on topics that don't add a lot of values but are necessary to move forward. The strategy frames effective constraints which are not only a facilitator but a requirement to value-driven IT explorement. IT strategic planning is a cohesive component and a necessary process that parallels or follows a business strategic planning process. Too often business strategy and IT strategy are developed mutually exclusive of each other. The process of creating an IT strategy, independent of the corporate strategy process, perhaps exacerbates the need to perform the business-IT alignment. IT strategic planning needs to be crafted in such a way that it matches or enhances the maturity level of the organization.

Many organizations do not allow their IT departments to work on strategies: Sometimes the business has “bias” view on IT, and business leaders see IT simply as a technology issue. You have an organization that often fails to own its part of the relationship in partnering with IT. Too often IT sees "business professionals" wanting to go back to the segmented organization and define technology as something outside of the business as a separate entity. The real cause is that the business executives lack a comprehensive understanding of IT potential and still limit their vision of "IT supports a strategy.” IT becomes so pervasive in today’s enterprise, however, for most of the business executives, IT is just like a costly “magic” they know little about, that's why they don't trust it so much and even do not allow IT department to work on strategies. Therefore, the executive team’s attitude to learning about IT will directly impact the quality and practicality of business strategy. How can IT help them do their job better, how can their "hard-learned" IT knowledge enrich their leadership? Technological literacy enables the senior leadership team to unleash business potential catalyzed via the latest technology and exponential growth of information. Imagination is the word of why business executives should learn more about IT. Historically, technology indeed stimulates mankind's imagination, to make the impossible possible. Forward-looking organizations invite IT leaders to the big table for co-creating strategy, sharing their technological vision, as well as building up trust and transparent relationship with peers so that all executives will stay on the same page for strategic conversation and seamless strategy management.

IT is the value-added delivery that makes the organization different and competitive. Thus, developing and strengthening the “strategic bone” of IT is critical to transcend IT as a trustful business partner. The success of IT is not random, IT leaders need to put a lot of cohesive effort behind IT magic and take a systematic approach to get IT digital ready.

Posted in: CIO Debate,IT Transformation,Strategy