Stryve Advisors - Five Challenges for Todays CIO

8/3/2019 Stryve Advisors - Five Challenges for Todays CIO

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Five Challenges For Todays Cio


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Five major trends define the challenges of todays information technology organization and the opportunities for

businesses to capitalize on IT. None are new. Most IT organizations have been in the process of interpreting and

addressing them for several years. But the economic downturn interrupted both focus and progress, and

technological capabilities have continued to advance in the interim. Now is a good time to take stock, reinvigorate

the effort, and follow the fastest paths to business results in these five domains:

Busess ytcs turning information into insight. We have the tools to answer new kinds of questions:

Whats the best action to take? The likely outcome? The ideal result? In the process we can transform the

measurement, management, and performance of business processes. IT must drive the business appetite

for innovative analytics.

Mobe ppctos extending the enterprise. Its no longer a matter of phone home, or getting information

and simple applications to be decipherable on those little screens. Mobile computing-and-communications

devices are in everyones hands and business applications must capitalize on their capabilities, starting with

knowledge of location. Enterprise infrastructure extends to wherever employees, customers, and business

partners may be.

Coborto techooges adding dimension to business interactions. Social networks may seem addictive

and distracting, but collaboration technology should be at work everyplace that the business can benefit from

more and better communication and coordination, both inside and in the market. In other words, everyplace.

Leaving available brains and capabilities untapped means leaving money on the table.

Coud computg putting the pieces together. Its time to embrace the architecture of the Internet, including

within the enterprise, as the platform for collaboration, mobility, and the flow of information of all kinds. In the

process, we can enhance (not compromise) information protection, systems security, and business continuity.Efficient andflexible, accessible andsecure.

Techoogc tet riding the demographic wave. Businesses must capitalize on the technological

competencies of the changing workforce, while coping with the uneven distribution of those competencies.

IT must adjust its talent profile to capitalize on and compensate for what others in the organization can and

cannot do. And the next generation of IT leaders must be prepared to work with a new foundation of

collaboration, mobility, analytics and integration.

No one of these challenges stands above the rest. Analytics, mobility, and collaboration all have profound effects on

how we work and how we innovate. We cannot capitalize on these capabilities without the platform that enables

them to work together with the rest of our information systems. And all this is happening against the backdrop of an

unprecedentedly large and swift flow in workforce demographics those of us doing and leading the work. Three

major drivers of business capability . . . the architecture for them to work together . . . the people to put them towork thats todays IT challenge.

Todays CIOs are orchestrating a profound shift in how businesses use and benefit from IT. As profound as when the

PC changed the interface and made computing accessible, or when the Internet made connectivity and information

access ubiquitous. Todays shift doesnt have one technology as its namesake its too multidimensional, and thus

perhaps more challenging.

We hope this discussion sharpens your perspective on these five challenges, both individually and collectively. We

hope you will share it with management colleagues to help them appreciate and invite them to discuss what IT is up

to these days, and how its business role and potential value are growing as they change. And we invite you to

discuss these challenges, their implications, and your responses with us.

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The business payoff of new insight is pervasive:

Process performce. With connections andcorrelations revealed, processes can be

simplified and accelerated. And if you can identify

the key decision points within processes and

enable them with better information and

predictive analytics, you increase the odds of

successful outcomes.

Busess ovto. Exploring information and

developing insight are inherently experimental

activities, essentially invitations to get out of the

box and innovate. The business can regularly

discover, assess, and test new ways of working,

and people get in the habit of test-and-learn

rather than best-guess.

Performce mgemet. Analytics is about

how the hip bone connects to the leg bone,

enabling measurement of connections, not just

activities and results. Thats something every

facet of the business can use more of, including

the general management process. Most business

scorecards and dashboards are still roll-ups of

separate categories, revealing little about the

connections and drivers among them.

Business people can always use guidance around

the information they have and how they use it today

more so than ever given the overwhelming amount of

information available electronically. IT organizationshave long provided that guidance. By understanding

the information flows of the corporation, its processes,

and its people, IT uncovers the inefficiencies,

redundancies, hidden assumptions, and mis-

communications of the organization. Information

analysis shapes both business process and

information systems design, and thus continuously

improves how we work.

All well and good, but weve really only scratched the

surface of putting information into action. The tools

and techniques of information management, analytics,

and business simulation enable us to answer moreimportant and forward-looking questions than ever

before and to ask them about more parts of the

business.

The overwhelming amount of information use is (and

will continue to be) reporting about whats already

happened. The other cells of the matrix represent

enormous opportunity to do much more. Simple

pattern and parameter analysis enables real-time

alerts, and extrapolation from the past describes the

possible future (assuming major variables and trend

lines remain unchanged). But the real opportunity is

where information becomes insight. Analytics andsimulation reveal the connections behind why things

happened, suggest the best action to take right now,

and anticipate realistically complex scenarios for the

future.

Reprinted with permission fromAnalytics at Workby Thomas H. Davenport,

Jeanne G. Harris and Robert Morison. Copyright 2010 by Harvard

Business Publishing. All rights reserved.

Questos adressed by aytcs

Pst

iformto

isght

Preset Future

WhtHppeed?

(Reporting)

How d whydd t

hppe?

(Modeling,Experimental

Design)

Whts thebest/worst thtc hppe?

(Prediction,Optimization,Simulation)

Whts theext bestcto?

(Recommendation)

Wht wHppe?

(Extrapolation)

Wht sHppeg

ow?

(Alerts)

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Risk, Compliance and Analytics

Risk management and regulatory compliance are

two areas where analytics are playing greater roles

in business decision making, yet most companiesare still behind the curve.

Analytics are essential to understanding and

managing the risk profiles of corporations as they

turn to more complex financial instruments, from

fuel price and currency hedges to insurance

contracts on weather events, supplier failure, and

other operational interruptions. A fundamental

principle has it that risk can never be eliminated,

but it can be pooled and converted into more

manageable forms of risk. Derivatives are a

common approach information-based financial

products that demand analytical expertise.

Meantime, risk management and regulatory

compliance grow more interconnected. Todays

governmental information requirements and

legislative changes focus not only on corporate

finances and operational reporting, but also on

energy and healthcare, two basic issues for

companies regardless of industry. Even if

government is not a direct customer of your

products and services, it is a customer of your

information and your analyses if you hope to

wield influence.

Analytics can help corporations manage the mix

of business performance, asset protection, and

regulatory compliance. But it takes far more than

yesterdays standard and exception reports. It

takes models and simulations of complex facets

of the business and their interplay, which in turn

demands a nimble and robust information

management capability to keep pace.

Many companies are already highly analytical,

already addressing the interesting questions, in

selected parts of their businesses trading, logistics,

and others. But they typically struggle to apply

analytics more generally. IT can help unleash the

additional potential.

Information management has grown into one of the

core competencies of IT organizations, but theres

more growth to do. Information specialists have

tended to focus on the data itself completeness,

accuracy, structure, and meaning. And thats proven

invaluable, especially where information flows at

cross-purposes or people cant get a handle on what

constitutes a customer. But information manage-

ment specialists need to focus more than ever on the

business use and new potential of the data, which

involves some additional questions: Is it sufficient(not

necessarily perfect) for its analytical use? Is it

combinable with other related data from inside andoutside the company? Does the combination yield

unique information to exploit? The information

management team that adopts such a holistic and

pragmatic perspective can be a powerful driver of

business performance.

Todays constraint in turning more information into

insight is human, not technological. IT can expand its

analytics staff and information management capability.

Most businesses must learn to think and behave

more analytically, starting with the example set at the

top of the organization.

Progressve CiOs are discussing opportunities for

analytics-fueled innovation and improvement in the

executive suite, while they build an analytical

capability and culture in IT.

Other CiOs are waiting for demand to materialize

before investing in more analytical skills and tools.

They are likely to find themselves playing catch-up

when (as is common) business demand for analytical

applications ramps up suddenly.

Three things to do (if you havent done so already):

Pick an important business area and take a close

look at what kinds of questions are being asked

and answered by the information available to it

and what else is worth asking.

Launch an information combination and analytics

pilot with a key customer, supplier, or business

partner to optimize a mutual process.

Enhance the information and analytics at the key

decision points of an important business process.

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landscape there are over 225,000 third-party

applications available in the Apple store. In short,

user adoption has blown by the tipping point. And

because customers and employees are exposed tothis type of innovation at an unprecedented and

accelerating rate, they expect their employers,

suppliers, and business partners to keep pace.

To do so, IT leaders must acknowledge that the cost of

doing business now includes full mobile access. They

must be prepared for anytime, anywhere, and at any

speed. This means first putting the pieces together:

ubiquitous connectivity, powerful mobile devices, and

easy-to-navigate mobile applications must coalesce

into the enterprise computing infrastructure. Then

capitalize on the additional information available,

including location and anything else that can beusefully sensed and transmitted by the device. And

then streamline and accelerate transactions and

business processes to take advantage of instan-

taneous or continuous communication with the field.

This will not be without challenges, both managerial

and technological. Almost every corporation developed

methods for first-generation mobility management as

the first wave of smart phones came into use.

However, these methods were focused on security

and control rather than employee enablement. With

the massive proliferation of mobile applications and

collaboration technologies, companies must revisetheir methods along principles such as full enterprise

reach, customer enablement, and employee

collaboration.

The technology, meanwhile, pulls in two directions.

Interfaces are standardized, but devices and

applications proliferate. IT has relied on device

standardization in the past, but today must be geared

to accommodate a large array of hardware-software

combinations as customers and employees now

demand unfettered choice in carriers and devices. Its

no longer about how IT rolls out the companys way

of working, but about how the company works within

the ecosystem of telecommunications services, de-

vices, and applications vendors to further its business

and that of its customers.

So what can companies do to keep pace the mobile

demands of employees and customers? Start with

the marketplace, not the technology. Mobile

applications enhance how the company interacts

Anytime? Anywhere? We already live in a 24x7, 180

latitude x 360 longitude business world, where two of

the most critical business performance drivers are

real-time information and robust mobile access to it.

Organizations that harness these two forces in a

comprehensive and coherent manner have significant

advantage in reaching their customers and employees

through a ubiquitous, always-on channel.

Enterprises have long used specialized mobile

devices for functions like field operations and even

sales. But now the use of standardized, multipurpose

devices like smart phones has extended to employee

productivity, mass marketing, even executive dash-

boards. And in consumer-oriented fields like banking

and travel, companies already push significant

transaction volume through their mobile applications.

The pieces are certainly in place. Over 42M

Americans own smart phones, and the number is

rising 85% a year. Almost every corporate citizen now

carries a full-blown mobile computer in the pocket at

all times. Broadband coverage has exploded, as

Sprint and others roll out 4G networks, and one-

quarter of mobile subscribers have unlimited data

plans. Innovators like Apple and Google have

transformed the handheld device and application

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5

Remember: Its Technology and Process

Commentary by Jim Champy, consultant and author.His most recent book is Reengineering Health Care:

A Manifesto for Radically Rethinking Health Care Delivery.

About 20 years ago, the economist Lester Thurowpublished the results of a study that showedinformation technology was not adding a lot to thevalue of business. Of course, in the nineties, wedidnt have collaborative software, mobiletechnologies, sophisticated means for aggregatinginformation, or the cloud.

But just recently, a team of Harvard researchers,studying 3,000 hospitals across the United States,found that electronic record keeping has provenfar less beneficial to patient care than expected.In fact, the research showed that technology

complicates and even diminishes care by floodingnurses and physicians with information that takescare givers away from their patients.

The reason, of course, that technology doesntalways deliver on its promise is that organizationsfail to redesign their work to take full advantage oftechnology. Today, technologys promise is muchgreater than when Mike Hammer and I wrote ourreengineering book, and, if intelligently applied,technology can enable more dramatic work change.So here are five questions to help you get started:

Can I use social networking to engage mycustomers in fundamentally new ways gettingthem to come back and maybe even do myselling?

How can mobile technologies change the workthat I perform in the field?

Can I use collaborative technologies to workwith my suppliers to improve our joint

performance and create new offerings for mycustomers?

Can I mine the information I now have to moreaccurately measure the performance of mybusiness processes?

Are there hairy problems that I can now solvewith the cloud, like the creation of theuniversally accessible healthcare record?

The challenge is to focus on the design of workand technology at the same time.

with customers, serves their needs, and builds

relationships. In the process, mobility drives new

opportunities and business models. Then recognize

that you cannot keep pace via tactical pilots and small

deployments alone. Mobility must be an enterprise

initiative in pursuit of scaled and sustainable results.

Progressve CiOs see mobility as a business

enablement issue. They understand that the next

generation of mobility must be scaled for the enterprise

and will serve the strategic business agenda.

Other CiOs see mobility as an infrastructure issue.

They remain focused on device standardization and

security, thus limiting access to systems and data by

employees and customers alike.


Assess all of the channels with which you interactwith customers and employees, their changing

channel preferences, and when and why they

swap channels. Target mobile applications to

enhance high volume/value channels.

Work with HR to explore how mobility affects

workforce dynamics and opens opportunities for

more flexible and efficient work arrangements.

Explore how to expose core information systems

to mobile interfaces. This will involve simplifying

transactions, rethinking user interfaces, and

devising ways to enable access to systems thatneed to remain highly secured.

Companies across the industry spectrum are

getting adept at reaching their customers via mobile

devices: Best Buy, Amazon, DirecTV, Avis, American

Express, Hilton. Airlines are experimenting with

email-delivered QR (quick response) barcodes

that can be scanned at security gates. HBSC uses

codes in print adds to drive business to mobile

channels. Retail food outlets such as Domino's and

Chick-fil-A have multi-channel mobile strategies,using text messages and mobile applications

methods to reach customers for order taking,

coupon delivery, nutritional content advice, and so

on. Since they serve a wide demographic at point

of sale, reaching customers wherever they are,

including on the run, is very good for business.


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around the restrictive rules. The genie is long out

of the bottle.

These techooges chge how we work.

Collaboration technology opens up the

information, computing, and human resources of

the Internet. We can find more information and

use it better, find and connect with people and

leverage their expertise, and work together in

collaborative spaces on problems both simple

and remarkably complex. Collaboration technology

is new business infrastructure with an astounding

cost/performance profile. Its also becoming a

preferred channel of interaction for customers as

well as employees.

Putting collaboration technologies to work is quite

unlike deploying more traditional information

technologies. Like the PC revolution, this revolution is

organic and emergent. The technology has a differentfeel. Its adoption is fluid (or viral), not rolled-out per

an implementation plan. It is integrated with other

systems and technologies by the relatively simple

means of standard interfaces and packaged services.

It cannot be controlled by the rules and structures of

yesterday, but can be channeled with progressive

incentives and enablers more carrots than sticks.

Collaboration tools often starting with an active,

Facebook-like employee directory can quickly

become part of how employees connect,

communicate, and work together. But they also serve

Collaboration technology refers to the latest generation

of tools that facilitate making connections, sharing

information, and working together via the Internet,

including web-based communities and their shared

workspaces, social networking sites like Facebook,

wikis and blogs, and associated web-hosted services

for managing content and connections. Use of many

technologies is free, and their popularity continues to

skyrocket, to put it mildly. Theyre entrenched in how

we live our lives, if not yet how we do our work.

These technologies, together with the portable

devices they run on, are at the center of the second

wave of the consumerization of IT the PC

revolution being the first. And as in that earlier

revolution, corporate IT has responded with skepticism

and reluctance. Seen as a hazard to corporate

security and a potential time-waster for employees,

these tools disrupt the corporate order so painstakingly

restored after the PCs arrival. Many enterprises arefighting an ill-conceived rearguard action to limit use

of the tools. Ill-conceived for two reasons:

Empoyees wot tke o for swer. The

net generation fast populating the workforce has

high expectations about what can be done with

technology, including an assumption that the web

activities in which they participate at home will be

available to them at work and on the road. Were

already well past the point of denial. The

technologies are cheap and powerful, and their

use is ubiquitous. Employees find ways to work

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specific business purposes, often as extensions of

existing applications. While the technology can be

incorporated into any type of information system, it

particularly lends itself to situations where ease of

use, speed of delivery, and ongoing rapid evolution

are inherent requirements, for example:

Any time a business process benefits from

tapping additional information, input, or expertise

on the fly, including input from customers.

Whenever you need a shared workspace with

suppliers or customers for product engineering,

order processing, customer service.

Whenever a group of diverse or dispersed people

are responsible for managing a process or

producing a result.

Collaboration technology is already central tobusiness innovation in major corporations. As the

Internet has opened up access to innovative people

and ideas, business innovation has become a much

more dispersed and collaborative activity. Companies

like P&G network extensively inside and outside their

organizations for new product ideas. Companies go to

online marketplaces like InnoCentive for problem-

solving expertise. Collaboration technology can form

an environment for developing new capabilities and

experimenting with new ways of doing things. You can

experiment at the edge of the enterprise at low cost

and without disrupting ongoing operations or systems.

CIOs must embrace, exploit and lead this computing

revolution rather than try to prevent it or to control it

in the traditional sense. Use the new toolkit to do

more with less, innovate faster, and find new ways to

engage prospects and customers.

Progressve CiOs see the business potential for

collaboration technologies (but may feel ill-prepared

to capitalize on it). The technology has entered the

toolkit, so they focus on its effective and secure use.

They look for collaborative opportunities in business

initiatives and applications, and they find ways for

collaborative tools to spur low-cost innovation at the

edge of the enterprise.

Other CiOs see collaboration technologies as a

disruption, another set of uncontrolled technologies

that may land on ITs doorstep for ownership and

maintenance. They play the security card to slow

things down, but may allow in-house experiments like

bringing Facebook-like social networking to

employees. Many such efforts are half-hearted their

poor results please the naysayers and leave the

enterprise handicapped in collaborative capability.

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Launched in 2006 for Best Buy associates, BlueShirt Nation is a corporate-sponsored social

network site that is voluntary, open-source,

user-moderated, and operates outside the

corporate firewall. Its original intent was to create

a network that could help increase the pace of

innovation, flatten the organization, and promote

the exchange of ideas among employees. It has

also evolved into a place where some 25,000

associates help each other solve retail store

operations issues. Launched with little to no

funding, it has become an important tool for

keeping Best Buy at the top of its class in

consumer electronics retailing.

Intel publishes a set of progressive Social Media

Guidelines for employees or contractors creatingor contributing to blogs, wikis, social networks,

virtual worlds, or any other kind of social media

both on and off intel.com. All who participate in

social media on behalf of Intel are expected to be

trained and to understand and follow the

guidelines. Rather than being discouraged or

prevented, employees are encouraged to be part

of the global conversation about technology and

other matters of interest.


Focus on a specific business need or opportunity

where innovation is called for and the potential

innovators are dispersed or unfamiliar with one

another. Provide them a collaboration toolkit,

encourage them to tap additional expertise outside

the organization, and monitor the effectiveness of

collaboration and the business result.

Define clear policies for collaboration technology

use that inherently trust employees to do the

right thing given basic guidelines. Monitor

compliance and treat infractions as performancemanagement issues.

Enhance approaches to remote access and

security by supplementing perimeter protection

with a system of virtual devices and digital asset,

identity and rights management.


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Whats your stance toward the cloud?

Do you pursue cost reduction and cost-effective

scalability or flexibility and innovation?

Is the cloud a set of resources out there or an

architecture for in here?

Whats not to like about cloud computing? Resources

including computing capacity, software applications,

and services like email are available on demand. The

scale economies of providers keep the cost down.

Customers can monitor and manage their usage, pay

only for what they actually consume, and scale their

usage up and down with business volume. Available

in the cloud is an already large and rapidly expanding

array of software that is maintained by the providers.

Customers can experiment with new software andbuild new capabilities very fast at low cost, and the

flexible architecture of the cloud makes it much

easier to swap applications into and out of use.

Not everything belongs in the cloud, as CIOs know.

Large and specialized in-house systems running well

dont need to be retrofitted to run in the cloud. And

the public cloud isnt the place for sensitive data or

business-critical applications. It currently lacks the

security, reliability, and management controls

essential for both business performance and

regulatory compliance. Using the cloud entails a new

level of trust of service providers, and customersmust look carefully at who is trustworthy and what

applications are safe to run in the cloud. Even

Google gets hacked.

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Is it a technical option or a business proposition?

Are you using the cloud tactically or strategically?

Cloud architecture represents a better way toconfigure and manage IT resources of all kinds,from servers and storage, to information and

applications, to productivity tools and user inter-faces. Technology assets and their capabilities arewell-defined, modular, and connectable. Interfacemethods are standardized and published.Virtualization enables physical devices to beefficiently and securely shared, and heterogeneoustechnologies to work together. All of theseresources can be managed as an efficient andflexible pool shared (as authorized) across thebusiness, its customers, and its partners.

Just as importantly, these resources can also beconsumed differently as understandable businessservices that people can access on-demand and

often via self-service through a standard browserinterface. Businesses enjoy more transparencyinto the services they consume, and can often payaccording to actual usage.

The cloud is the model of the Internet, animplementation of the principles of service-orientedarchitecture. Its also an extension of theinfrastructure, software, and information manage-ment improvement initiatives already under wayin major corporations.


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CHOiCE

COnTROl

EFFiCiEnCY

Provision businessservices and federatewith outside providers

Automate access, security,and management of thecomputing environment

Consolidate and virtualizetechnology resources of all kinds

suc: eMC Cpt. rpuc wt pm.

Cofgurg

Prvte Coud

9

The answer in all cases should be both. The financial

benefits should certainly drive your interest in the cloud.

It can provide low-cost capacity when needed and be

a cost-effective option for infrastructure services such

as backup and recovery. Everyday personal

productivity tools and commodity services such as

email can be cloud based, reducing both operatingand support cost. Applications that prove difficult to

maintain, starting with those that require regular data

feeds such as tax rates, are candidates for the cloud

and letting the provider keep them up-to-date.

But your interest shouldnt stop with cost savings.

Collaborative applications and workspaces, especially

those shared with customers and other business

partners, are naturals for the cloud. You can access

an array of specialized and potentially useful

applications that your business and IT organization

havent had the time or resources to consider. You

can try these on for size and leverage the ones thatwork. You should also look to the cloud as a platform

for business experimentation the on-demand

greenfield environment where you can rapidly and

cost-effectively build, test and learn.

Cloud computing is ultimately about business agility:

Expanded access to information and applications.

Expanded coordination and collaboration.

Rapid scaling of business operations up and down.

Rapid business innovation and deployment of

new business capabilities.

Thats why cloud architecture is the right approach for

the in here of enterprises as well as the out there

of Internet-based services. The cloud approach

enables better performance on multiple fronts

simultaneously: cost, manageability, information

access, new capability deployment, coordination and

collaboration, business innovation and growth. A

private cloud within the enterprise can even enhance

business continuity and security (the chief concerns

with the public cloud) by invoking more granularidentity, asset, and location-based security in addition

to the protection of the corporate firewall.

Theres always been a fundamental tension in IT

management: we want the computing environment

to be robust and secure, but we also want it to be

flexible and accessible. With cloud computing, we

come a lot closer to having it both ways.

Progressve CiOs are exploring the cloud on multiple

fronts, including cost reduction, business innovation,

and the application of cloud architecture in-house.

Other CiOs are focusing on the cost reduction

opportunities of selective use of the public cloud. They

should at least let their organizations get their feet wet

with the experimental capabilities of the cloud.


Create a simple cloud in a box starter kit for

information and applications-based business

experiments.

Experiment with a cloud-based service for

something your business cannot do yet.

Develop guidelines on what can and cannot run

in the cloud, and dont automatically say no on

security grounds (your firewall isnt doing acomplete job either). Then parlay that into the

start of a strategy for consuming and provisioning

business services.

Government stimulus money is motivating medical

institutions to adopt electronic medical records

methods and technology quickly, but physician

practices are reluctant to make their part of the

investment. A major medical center adopted the

cloud approach to hosting an integrated physician

practice management and electronic health recordssystem, accessible via secure web connections

from physicians offices. The system deployed

rapidly, and when usage took off it scaled up at

marginal cost. Benefits span patient care, physician

relations, and technology efficiency.


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and on the road, within the enterprise and in its

marketplace. Integration today is not about

binding together, but about managing the

interfaces. This requires skills in cloud computing,

service-oriented architecture, and enterprise data

management, together with an ecosystem

perspective on the business, its marketplace, and

its technology providers.

Educte. To gain the cost efficiencies and other

advantages of self-service, companies must

rewrite the social contract of employee

computing. IT must educate business people on

the responsibilities of personal technology

management and of representing the company in

social networks and other online venues. IT must

also educate business people managers in

particular on how to be smart consumers of IT

services. This requires consulting and influencing

skills plus an outside-in perspective of how

technology services are consumed.

iovte. Despite growing technological

aptitude, people tend to use new technology in

old ways, and businesses tend to deploy new

technology first to improve upon what they

already do. Theres a new wave of technological

capability available today, and IT has to drive the

business appetite for catching it by pushing

business thinking about whats possible and

providing tools for business analytics and

experimentation. This requires skills in

The four trends weve discussed have profound

effect upon the work, talent, and leadership of IT

organizations. Were in a world where:

Collaborative tools and methods are becoming

commonplace but not well-focused on the most

productive business opportunities.

Business people are technologically adept withtheir personal mobile devices and collaboration

tools but theres a generational gap in

capability, and people are more attuned to the

privileges than the responsibilities of managing

their own technology.

Vast amounts of information are readily available

but many business people are not analytical in

attitude or capability, so they tend to take bad

information at face value and underutilize the

good information they have.

In a world where information and technology are

pervasive, where organizations are full of amateur

and semi-professional technologists, where serving

oneself is becoming the norm what do the

professional technologists do? We see four focal

roles for IT:

itegrte. Todays primary technological

challenge is to configure and maintain a business

platform for flow of information, connection of

applications, and provision and consumption of

services a platform that operates in facilities

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These practices paint an intriguing picture of the

leadership qualities needed now and in the future,

including in an IT organization. All three practices

serve as a foundation for innovation and require a

high degree of savvy in business, technology, and

organizational matters. Where will this leadership

come from?

Most CIOs today recognize the changing landscape

of leadership qualities, and that IT career paths are

probably not developing them. They understand that

future IT leaders will be facilitators of business

innovation, overseers of an agile services platform,

cultivators of collaborative communities, attuned to

business analytics, and orchestrators of dispersed

(often global) resources and capabilities not

amenable to the controlling management techniques

of the past. They know the leadership pipeline is thin

and leaky, but that this remains a difficult time to

invest in talent development.

Progressve CiOs invest nonetheless, compensating

with time and attention what they may not have in

development and hiring funds. They take account-

ability for leadership development in their

organizations and define and encourage the non-

traditional skills needed in the future.

Other CiOs bow to the pressures and problems

facing IT today, waiting for demand to materialize

before encouraging changes in IT roles, and pushing

the development of future leaders to the backburner

as a problem that can be dealt with later (and perhapsby someone else).

Three things to do (if youre not doing them already):

Work with HR to develop an IT Operating Model

of roles and associated competencies instead of

(or alongside) traditional functional roles. Explore

ways to develop those competencies in business

and IT jobs and rotation among them.

Reexamine the IT leadership pipeline and ask

what youd do if you had to fill several key

positions at once how would you designate the

best candidates and provide them with accelerated

development and on boarding experiences?

Treat innovation as a core competency desired

in everyone in IT, as well as one of the key ways

that people demonstrate leadership potential.

experimental design coupled with deep under-

standing of facets of the business, especially its

information, processes, and customers.

Coborte. The trend toward more collaborative

work extends, of course, to IT just like the rest of

the enterprise. IT should employ collaborativetools in its own activities, in working with the rest

of the business, in learning from customers and

business partners, and in tapping expertise in the

online marketplace. IT should also collaborate in

the ecosystem of technology and service

providers to influence as well as effectively tap

their offerings. In the process, IT should set an

example for the rest of the enterprise. This

requires skills in connection, communication and,

of course, collaboration, again with an

appreciation for the marketplace ecosystem

in which the business and its information systems

operate.

These roles have been evolving in forward-looking IT

organizations, and it doesnt happen overnight.

Todays responsibilities continue. The challenge is to

manage and facilitate the transition into these roles

or isolate IT and leave the business insufficiently

integrated, educated, innovative, and collaborative.

What does this mean for the CIO and IT leadership

team? The IBM Institute for Business Value recently

surveyed 289 senior executives and identified three

practices much more likely to be employed by the

outperformers the 16% who indicated theircompanies were significantly outperforming their

industry peers (A new way of working: Insights from

global leaders, 2010):

They deveop cpbtes tht ebe rpd

djustmets to chge. They are more than

twice as likely to be able to quickly identify and

build needed skills within their organizations.

They estbsh work methods tht fctte

d ecourge coborto. They are twice as

likely to ensure that business process

documentation is visual and well understood by

key stakeholders. They are also more than twice

as focused on directly embedding collaborative

capabilities within processes to improve the speed

and quality of decisions.

They brg together dsprte dt for

decso mkg. Nearly 30 percent report

integrating different sources of data to a significant

extent, which is 3.5 times more than their lower-

performing peers.

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Techoogy d Tet:

You C't Hve Oe wthout the Other!

Commentary by Dave Ulrich, Professor, Ross School of Business,

University of Michigan, and Partner, The RBL Group

Companies that invest in technology to increase collaboration,

drive mobility, deliver business discipline, and trigger

innovation cannot succeed without attention to two talent

issues.

First, technology changes how people in an organization

relate to each other. Information technologys first wave

delivered an instant source of information at peoples

fingertips; the second wave increased efficiency as technology

changed time and space for business operations; and now

the third wave focuses on relationships as technology

connects people in new ways. Technology-moderated

relationships require careful attention to avoid superficialityand ensure substance. Tweeting about what a celebrity eats

for lunch on Tuesday to 1,000s of fans creates a false

intimacy. CIOs need to carefully plan how technology will

change not only work processes, but the boundaries of work.

Being able to corral knowledge from disperse people and

places to solve a common problem affects both productivity

and relationships. Used wisely, technology accesses a

broader knowledge base and turns that knowledge into

productivity. Used unwisely, technology isolates people in

shallow relationships regardless of the number of their

connections.

Second, using technology wisely requires increased

competencies among the IT staff. Legacy stereotypes of IT

people working in grungy rooms at odd hours are obsolete.

IT people should contribute directly to business success, and

CIOs should focus their organizations on the outcomes of the

businesss IT investments. That entails adjustment to both

roles and competencies. Roles imply what IT staff will deliver.

Good IT professionals help their businesses change quickly,

improve customer service, reduce costs, and collaborate in

the marketplace. Competencies involve the knowledge, skills,

and abilities IT staff must demonstrate to deliver business

value, including not only technical excellence, but personal

proficiency, business acumen, insight into whats possible,and strategic perspective.

Technology without talent is elegant systems that go unused.

Talent without technology is isolated individuals working

inefficiently. Technology plus talent equals added business

value.


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