360°IT Blog

CEOs apathetic about IT? No, just bewildered

11 Jun 2010

From: 360°IT | Jim Mortleman

CEOs apathetic about IT? No, just bewildered

A dismaying headline in the latest Computer Weekly suggests
This strikes me as more than a little simplistic. Most top-tier CIOs have long recognised the need to end the IT-business disconnect and the best CEOs demand IT works closely with business at a variety of levels, and that their CIO or CTO talks the language of the business. Many firms have been engaged in long-term transformation programmes to remove the old silos and ensure there is more cross-functional working and communication at all levels. In the past decade, we've seen the rise and rise of roles such as business analysts and strategic IT architects, for example.

The next stage in this evolution may well be, as 360°IT blogger Peter Hinssen contends in his book Business/IT Fusion, a much closer merging of IT into the business, so that while there will still be IT roles, organisations won't necessarily have a separate IT "department". This seems similar to the vision presented by Forrester's Colony. However, it is not the kind of transition that a large, complex business can make overnight since it represents a fundamental cultural and structural change. Rather it is a journey.

Some companies have been on this journey a long time and are closer to reaching their destination. But, as Forrester suggests, many others are still at (or barely past) the starting line. For most of these organisations, I suspect the first step is not to rush headlong into a major transformation programme, but to focus on communication. And most of the effort has to come from IT.

I'm reminded of a talk I saw Whitbread CIO Ben Wishart give several years ago, in which he pointed out that his business had no interest in the technical ins and outs of what IT did, nor should it. Instead of running through meaningless IT project specs with his CEO and board colleagues (meaningless to them, at least), Wishart hired a marketing firm to develop compelling cartoons and animations that showed how any proposed system would improve the working practices and processes of the business once implemented. That way, the business could make sensible strategic decisions about which projects to prioritise.

Government CIO John Suffolk has similarly called on public sector IT leaders to develop compelling, business-focused case studies to illustrate clearly the tangible business benefits of the systems and services they introduce. These can then be used by their organisation (and others in the sector) to make informed strategic IT decisions without needing to wade through arcane technical documentation.

Mastering effective ways to explain IT to the business in as non-technical a way as possible is essential, and it needs to pervade all levels of the organisation, not just the executive. Otherwise, any attempt to 'fuse' business and IT in the way Hinssen and Colony (among others) advocate will be like trying to glue together the repelling poles of two magnets - the forces pushing them apart will simply be too strong to allow them to stick.

Jim Mortleman is editor of the 360°IT Blog and an independent business and technology writer/commentator

Tags:

IT leadership, business transformation, IT business alignment, CIO, IT strategy, communication, business relationships, marketing IT, business strategy

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