Memo to the CIO: How to prevent the extinction of your department

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Category: Executive Advisory
Published on Monday, 06 June 2011 07:46
Written by Le Digitale
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Welcome to the heart of the 21st century my friend; “traditional” IT as we knew it in the 1990’s and early 2000’s has been effectively commoditized.  The survivors of your outsourcing initiatives are most likely those with the most business savvy or deepest technical knowledge (good), but the perception of your department and its charter by key business stakeholders most likely isn’t significantly different than 5 or even 10 years ago (bad).  While IT is now poised to be a key partner in growing the business, the business does not reach out to you, or view you as a strategic partner -- in a worst case scenario you are a perceived bottleneck, roadblock, or nuisance; in a best case scenario you are a “Yes Man” or an order taker. 

Before you punch your fist through the monitor and try to grab my neck via the internet nether-sphere, take a few deep breaths and let’s talk this out -- I come to you with ideas and solutions which will help you evolve both yourself and your department as technical thought leaders who enable exponential business growth. 

First; however, a little side journey ...

One of the most perspective changing conversations I’ve had as a technology professional was with a CEO friend.  I was bouncing a few ideas I had for technology services with him, and I mentioned how I thought private equity firms doing heavy M&A would be good partners; he turned to me and said,”Come on, don’t waste your time.  Private equity guys don’t partner with technology folks unless C is the first letter of their title, and they own a product they believe has exponential sales and growth potential.”

Dejected, but not discouraged I reached out to a friend in private equity and had a conversation over drinks to get his opinion on my idea, and people of my professional ilk.  Long and short of the conversation was that the Private Equity view of technology services was that they were in the same neighborhood as operational efficiencies and process improvements,”You’re going to do a lot of hard work, and achieve in the absolute best case and most dreamlike scenario improvements that will increase the valuation of the company in the low to mid double digit percentile area -- I’m not going to partner with someone for that small of a growth potential, I’ll hire someone with that capability.  If I spend that same time and energy focusing on growing the company’s capabilities strategically via M&A, I have the potential for exponential valuation growth that is akin to winning the lottery.”

I finally got it; if you want to be a real partner to the business, its not about saving money or introducing efficiencies ... its about introducing exponential growth capability to the company.

Back on track ...

I finally got it; most IT leaders can talk until they are blue in the face about introducing efficiencies, and supporting business initiatives well via technology, but how many can speak about the ways their team is going to introduce exponential revenue growth to the company?  This is the key to transforming your IT department from a cost center that is going extinct, to a strategic business unit driving growth and corporate transformation.  How?  I’m glad you asked ...