Continuing the exploration of IT Strategy for the 2010s (and beyond), it’s time to look at the basics.
While Steve Jobs and Apple were inventing and rejuvenating market after market, they stuck to the basics. No. They went beyond that. They mastered the basics of their business. As Jobs retires (again), he leaves a very healthy company behind. Imagine in this day a multi-billion dollar company that has NO DEBT. Not a little bit, but none. While creating, innovating, taking risks, and growing, Apple has mastered the basics of running a business. They’ve also mastered most areas of their market, since they invented it and have so jealously defended it from potential competitors. (Please note, I am not an Apple-head, own no Apple stock, and only own one of their products – a very old iPod).
Inside the business where IT finds its organization, IT has to master the basics. Those include mastery of the technology of the business, but also the fundamentals of business itself. And, in its own way, create a unique market within the company and guard it from potential competitors by out innovating and out delivering value.
The CIO has to be a business master and instil in the IT organization mastery of business basics. The first set of promises to the CEO have to include finance, marketing, and management – the basics. A progressive CIO will go beyond the basics and promise a mastery of the basics. I’ll talk more about blending with the enterprise later, but the level of mastery and the specific goals set up for IT meet or exceed the standards of the enterprise are critical. This also becomes one means by which IT can drive innovation.
With the business basics out-of-the-way, IT needs to focus on the technology basics. In generic terms, this includes the foundation (networks), interfaces (phones, desktop computers, laptops, and all the wondrous devices being brought into the market everyday), storage, intelligence (not just servers, this includes the intelligence in network itself), security, contingency planning, and applications. The standard laundry list every IT organization faces with from a one computer small business to a global enterprise with hundreds of thousands of systems.
These promises have to include quality of services commitments. What is the availability of the network? What is the response time from problem to correction? How fast willbe processed and how often? Faster, cheaper, better are the keys. Simply, this is the 20th Century industrial model and needs to be followed for some time.
What does the CIO need from the CEO in the way of promises? Simple: access (not only to the CEO but the CEO’s other reports and Board on occasion), resources (fiscal and physical), and arbitration (disputes will arise, establishing an open method of resolution is critical). There will be others, but these are the essential basics.
With this foundation in place, IT will be able to move into the more important roles for the coming century. Without this in place to show credibility, though, IT won’t get out of the starting gate.
The next few posts will look at the various areas of the basics in more detail. Stay tuned.
As always, comments are more than welcomed.
John P
