"Too Add Value Through IT, Pick Up the Ball" headlines my latest article published by IDG group. For years IT leaders thought their job was to "keep the joint running." Today, that's insufficient. Nobody can avoid being part of the growth agenda if they are to be a successful leader or manager.
To drive success, and keep their jobs, IT leaders now have to move beyond simply being defensive. Keeping the systems running, and cutting operating costs, is not enough to be a great CIO. Too many have ended up outsourcing almost everything in order to lower costs, only to discover that IT becomes far too rigid and unable to support market needs when so many services are outsourced to third parties.
Today's CIO has to spend more time figuring out how to flexibly, adaptively, bring new solutions to both insiders and customers. It's important CIOs not just track historical (and accounting) data, but behave like the offensive team, identifying and tracking considerably more market-based data. And creating various future scenarios to help the company spot trends and opportunities. On top of this, IT must demonstrate how using emerging solutions – from Salesforce.com to Groupon, Foursquare and Facebook (examples) – can reach more customers, faster – driving higher revenues.
Read how important it is for IT to become part of the growth engine at one of the locations where this article has been published:
@ CIO Magazine – @ PC World – @ Network World – @ IT World Canada – @ CIO Australia – @ ComputerWorld Norway
Additionally, read my latest article on effective strategic planning – for IT or any part of the organization – published by the Strategic Planning Society of the UK "Disrupting the Marketplace". This article describes how to add maximum value, growing revenue, cash flow and profits, by identifying and implementing opportunities to disrupt the marketplace. And allowing those disruptions to invade your own organization for more dynamism.
Can I just say … ouch?
As author of Keep the Joint Running … http://www.issurvivor.com … might I point out two realities for modern CIOs?
Here’s the first (it’s Chapter 7 of my book, “Keep the Joint Running”): Before you can be strategic you have to be competent. As CIO you can drive growth … after everyone in the executive suite considers you credible, which means after you prove you’re good at keeping the joint running.
If, instead, everyone in the business sneers at the Helpless Desk, gripes about the Local Area Notwork, and considers their business case for Salesforce.com to be “that way it will get done … if that’s what’s going on, you won’t get to drive growth because nobody will pay attention to a word you say.
Nor should they.
The second reality is Adam’s point: Keeping the joint running isn’t enough. Once you’ve proved you’re competent, it’s time to provide technology leadership to the business.
That isn’t new. As evidence I offer Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz. What they have in common is that none of them existed before the World Wide Web. None of them, that is, are Internet extensions of the old-line travel agencies.
The reason for that is that the CIOs of the old-line travel agencies didn’t see providing technology leadership to be an important responsibility.
Excellent points! Remember the OAG (Official Airline Guide)? Made obsolete by new technology – where was the CIO when that happened? What’s happening with the CIOs at all the direct mail companies while Groupon is stealing the marketplace with its new technology implementation? Competency is essential – but not enough. Agree completely.
I fully agree with the article Mr. Hartung. However there are several weaknesses with the CIO role that hinders this effort to drive profit via IT. One is that in many organizations, the CIO still isn’t a full “partner” at the executive table. They are usually subservient to the CFO or other “C” level executive and therefore their ideas are given less weight. IT is still widely viewed as a cost center and money sink which leads to the next obstacle. Most CIOs are absolutely terrible about communicating and marketing IT value to other executives, besides being poor communicators themselves. CIOs will have to greatly increase their abilities to communicate effectively and actually market IT services internally to their business customers. That will be a challenge.
While I agree that CIOs and tech guys need to communicate better, that is only half the battle: The rest of the senior management team needs to wise up about technology.
I just blogged/ranted about it here: http://wp.me/pXewP-kE.
Basically, there is only so much communicating IT can do. Where else in the business would the same level of ignorance about technology be tolerated? Would a CEO get away with cheerful admissions of ignorance about Marketing? or Finance?
Even if CIO’s are just focussed on creating business value with the projects which are undertaken would drive growth.
As an independent consultant my personal experience have been at some companies where many ‘IT’ projects get implemented or atleast effort wasted and then later on the output shelved since it was not what business wanted. CIO’s approve those projects just because some high profile management wanted that.