The New Book “100 IT Charms” Introduction Chapter IX High-Performance IT ~ Future of CIO

Thursday, June 20, 2019

The New Book “100 IT Charms” Introduction Chapter IX High-Performance IT

10:32 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

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

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 organization to lead the digital paradigm shift. High performance IT achieves a greater level of productivity, autonomy, innovation, and brings up tangible business results.

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Profit - Driven IT: Forward-looking IT organizations are on the way of radical digital transformation, change their reputation from a cost center to a profit center; from a back-office support function to a relentless innovation engine, and from a process glue to a capability building. Compelling business cases describe the IT-driven business initiatives’ benefits and cost flow. It creates a narrative that places a proposed investment within its competitive context. The narratives within strategic business cases should reflect the multifaceted business value pathway such as responding to mandates by external parties; upgrading existing technologies; making business process improvement, responding to a competitive necessity; gaining a competitive advantage, and generating options for provisioning future business capabilities, etc, and attach believable dollar values to identified benefit flows and unlocking business performance.

Cost-Transparent IT: Many IT organizations are still operated as the back office function; no one knows what happens inside if only the light is continuous on. However, forward-looking companies have positioned their IT organizations at the digital frontier to drive changes, optimize business capabilities and catalyze business growth. It’s important to take multi-phased approaches to build transparent IT for re-energizing its value proposition and unleash its full potential. All IT spending must be rationalized against the business benefits. It’s isn’t just the IT spending ratio as a percentage of budget numbers but the question of what is the real tangible or measurable business value? Who is measuring or driving the perceived value? If your key metrics focus only on cost, and then, don’t be surprised if you manage IT based on cost. If your metrics are all pointed backward in the technology, and then, don’t be surprised that the business can’t really understand the value of IT. Effective performance management should improve business transparency and enforce employee accountability. Only through a well-defined set of KPIs, IT can both quantitatively and quantitatively measure value delivery to business and achieve high-performance business results.

Number-wise IT: “You can’t manage it if you don’t measure it” is an old adage for modern business management. Performance measurement is a necessary foundation for continuous improvement. IT leaders need to be fully aware of the promises and perils of performance management and play the number game wisely. It’s dangerous to impose metrics just because the focus on what’s measurable is manageable; it’s not about the measurement that is important. The performance measurements should all be presented in business terms and evolve to something that matters to the business audience; at the same time, the business sentiment needs to get put into something more tangible with the goal to improve IT performance, transparency, and overall IT management maturity.

The goal of running high performance IT is for both making improvement in business fundamentals and achieving high-performance business results in the long term. The challenge to be a great IT leader is to make a balance between short term quick win and long term business advantage, keep steady for sustaining the business’s bottom line, but also move fast to accelerate IT performance.