“Is IT strategy dead?”, I asked in an earlier post. Instead of tackling the question directly, I’m going to sneak up on it in a series of posts about what IT needs to look like in the 2010s from the perspective of the CIO (Chief Information Officer). I’m including the roles of the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and CSO (Chief Security Officer) in the generic role of CIO.
In these posts, I’ll address “The Basics”, “Dancing with the Business”, and “Driving Innovation”. First, it is necessary to define the playing field.
The IT organization I’ll be describing is completely generic. It’s implementation will vary from enterprise to enterprise dependent on a variety of factors. Size of the organization, the skills and experience of people in key positions, and the needs of the enterprise all drive the variants. Yet, always, the generic organization is common to all.
The business school graduate in me (I try to keep him in the closet, well tied) wants to draw org charts and talk about roles and responsibilities, showing this as lines of communications and control and examining spans-of-control and such. Instead of that approach, and against the voice in my head of my former Organizational Behavior professor, I’ll be approaching the IT organization as a network of commitments to the enterprise. And, conversely, a set of commitments from the enterprise to the IT organization.
When I speak of a commitment, I’m referring to a specific, time bound, and clear promise made between two people. A vow or promise, if you will. Embedded in this promise is a way of measuring the outcome to see if satisfaction has been achieved. In this series of posts, there will be an overall set of promises the CIO makes to the CEO (Chief Executive Officer, an assumption that the CIO reports to the CEO) of the enterprise and a corresponding set of commitments made by the CEO to the CIO.
These promises are more than, “I’ll run your IT organization for you” and “I’ll fund your annual budget”. The generic promises, which will be developed more in the subsequent posts, cover each of the main areas of responsibility for the CIO, but they’ll take the form of “I promise to provide a base communications and communications infrastructure for the enterprise providing 99.999% uptime over the year andlevels of service foreach area of the organization over the year or quarter.”
Specific. Bounded by time. Clearly articulated. And, made between two, and only two, people. A customer and a provider. Yet, the commitments can also tie others into the network. For example, to provide Sales in the enterprise with a service level commitment, it requires the CIO to also make commitments to the head of sales. And, that person to make commitments to make commitments. For example, to provide people for training before new software is released!
So, what does all this have to do with IT Strategy? Nothing and everything. In most minds, I’m thinking of my b-school professors again, it has nothing to do with strategy. Yet, by recasting how we view the IT organization, we’ve created a strategic platform for the future. So, it is pure strategy. Each subsequent post in this series will show this more clearly.
Stay tuned for posts that begin with “IT 2010s:” and the subtitle.
I welcome feedback and comments.
John P
