Take an Interdisciplinary IT Management Disciplines via Logical Steps

The overwhelming growth of information and fierce competition force IT leaders to get really creative about how they drive changes and ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next and guide the business in the right direction

With the very characteristics of hyperconnectivity, interdependence, nonlinearity, adaptability, unrepeatability, unpredictability, Information technology systems are the backbone for shaping a high-performance digital organization with interdependent processes, emerging technologies, and interdisciplinary management disciplines for moving the business to a dynamic, iterative, integral, and interactive digital ecosystem.

Seek the scientific logic and engineering discipline behind IT: IT is an engineering discipline, IT engineering disciplines and practices require a scientific logic, structural approach to solve problems step-wisely. Science = "What" and "How." What defines science from chance is the ability to repeat a process with the same resulting solution every time through the application of known facts.

From an IT management perspective, IT leaders need to practice strategic thinking to “keep the end in mind,” focus on solving business problems, peeling back the layers to find the root cause and addressing it systematically. Due to the complex nature of information technology, it’s also crucial to present the “know-how” technical understanding, apply scientific logic and engineering discipline to break big business problems down into deliverable chunks for presenting value to the business at regular intervals and take continuous performance management approach.

Make a real shift from micromanagement to macro-management: Many IT organizations suffer from overloaded information, the rapid pace of changes and frequent disruptions. Today’s IT leaders are not just tactical IT managers to “keep the lights on” only or micromanage teams via “command and control” style. Because today’s workforce is highly educated and fluent with digital technologies, and innovation is the “must-have” unique competency to keep the organization surviving and thriving for the long term.

Digital is the age of choice and service on-demand, it means the variety of options to run IT via building, purchasing or anything in between. IT leaders as the senior business executive need to apply an interdisciplinary approach to improve autonomy, catalyze innovation, and advocate macro-management. If you are pulling the reins too tight, keeping “we always do things like that” mentality, setting too rigid processes, or undermining managers or staff to micro run or make a decision without collective input, you probably fall into the micro-management trap. The most important thing is to build the trust relationship with businesses, practice governance with agility; build orders over control; prioritize people over process

Recognize design as a creative problem-solving scenario and process: IT management is both art and science. The digital IT leaders understand how things like design thinking can fundamentally change organizations as well as their societal impact. They should practice paradoxical thinking for understanding both sides of IT management coin-on one side, IT enables intuitive user interface design, and the full spectrum of digital innovations management; on the other side, it is about managing IT complexity via consolidation, rationalization, integration, modernization, and optimization, etc.

From an IT management perspective, the important thing is to identify the common design principles and help to raise design thinking from an inwardly focused semantic argument to the truly recognized digital management discipline. The goal is to reframe the problem and explore the new possibilities by applying design methodologies and enforcing IT innovation. IT can become the strategic advantage of the business.

The overwhelming growth of information and fierce competition force IT leaders to get really creative about how they drive changes and ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next and guide the business in the right direction. They need to leverage interdisciplinary business insight to predict emerging events, prevent potential problems, pursue solutions and purpose seeking, as a mode of thinking and action, for running IT organization as a strategic business partner.

Posted in: IT Innovation,IT Transformation