When the world ground to a halt in March of 2020, the IT field was given a chance to shine when we finally had our seat at the table to address the cataclysmic shift in the way we approach business. We were given this opportunity and for many of us-we blew it.
When given the platform to show the business how awesome IT can work, be creative, and support the business during one of the most volatile and troubling times in a generation, we fell short of demonstrating lasting impacts. We were able to take massive groups of people and help them transition to work from home. It was now a proven fact; IT is CRITICAL to the business’s success.
During this period, there was a lot of back patting by IT leaders. I always cautioned those in my network that it won’t last. At some point, “business as usual” is going to come back, and if we don’t do something to continually show value, we will lose the seat at the table. I saw many colleagues go hard on Digital Transformation and Big Data initiatives, only to find out those are not really IT projects. They spent time trying to refresh core infrastructure but were thwarted by the global supply chain issues. They were developing new apps to allow the company to be more agile and operative in a work from home environment, to find out that they consistently had the wrong stakeholders calling the shots, or the value was not as great as they hoped. Even I launched huge global projects to start changing my organization’s capabilities and capacity to grow during that time. But those with this newfound trust from the business, we were wrong.
IT brings a variety of offerings that add value to the organization, we all know that. But the business doesn’t care. Upon reflection of where many of us went so wrong, I was able to boil it down to the two values the business cares about: constant functionality and operational improvement.
1. Can employees work without unnecessary system distractions? IT should be seen as a “utility”. It is just “ON”. You don’t worry about if your lights will come on day-to-day, and the IT systems should be equally as dependable. Outages should be few and far between, as daily IT issues are the equivalent version of a thousand papercuts to an organization’s productivity. Employees end up task switching or restarting, which we all know from within IT, sucks.
2. Is IT truly making the BUSINESS better? IT is part of every project. Unfortunately, many of those engagements are obligatory, and therefore not the best environment for anyone. Many times, we take on roles that we have no business being responsible for, we criticize stakeholders, and we make decisions we have no authority to make. It is also perceived that we spend money to spend money, and IT is a black hole for cost. We are trying to deliver IT solutions, rather than the BUSINESS SOLUTION.
At this point many of you are reading this, and likely asking, “What the hell is Mike’s deal? Does he suck this bad? We are perfect!” Of course, we all discuss things at the networking events, at bars, and coffee shops, and I already know I am not in the minority. Do we suck? Yes and no! We all have failures and do not deliver what we would hope to at times, but those are great learning experiences. And though it may suck, you can’t shy away or deny it. But to look at the full picture organically, the answer is of course we don’t always suck. We are working in environments that in many ways are not fully transparent throughout the organization, a mash of different micro-cultures clashing, ambiguous goals, and unclear strategy and vision.
There are 2 things we should be working on, at the basic level that will allow us to start changing the discussion.
1. Operational Excellence and Resilience.
IT has the responsibility to provide an efficient and effective environment for the rest of the organization to operate. Almost all processes require some sort of software. If your systems are constantly unstable, there are notable effects to the Order to Cash processes. These are also where the KPIs that almost every other department in the organization is measured and held to account. Your IT service experience is struggling because they are constantly behind and over worked. Look to implement a framework for your operations that will allow you the flexibility to mature slowly, while providing flexibility to modify as you learn. This framework should not be a “tool”. It should be mindset, practices, and processes that people can commit to that will provide a better environment. In essence: it is your culture. While you are doing this, get transparent; really transparent. You should feel naked (HR recommends not being actually naked at work) when you are in front of your peers and leadership. They need to see what is going wrong, and that you all understand and are addressing it. They need to experience the successful processes you put in with you. They need you to succeed, so don’t lock them out when you are changing course to make it better for everyone.
2. Alignment is everything
How many people in your organization know the corporate goals, strategy, and mission? Do they understand and live the values of the organization? First think about this at the micro level in the IT Department. Now zoom out and look at the big picture. This is a huge issue. Businesses keep succeeding without this, so they never fix it, then they stop succeeding, and it doesn’t matter. Let’s focus on IT. If IT does not understand the goals of the organization, how can it plan to help? How will IT help prioritize projects? How will IT employees be able to commit to action if they don’t understand fully what they are committing too? How are they supposed to understand the customer impact to the work they are doing, if they don’t even know who the customers are and why they use your organization? IT leaders need to take this opportunity to get this information from leadership of the organization, commit to understanding it, and then communicate, communicate, communicate. There should be no doubt in any IT employees head or heart about what they are doing and WHY. You will start changing the culture inside IT, which will start a movement outside IT. You should be able to draw a line from the action being taken by IT to the business goal. You should add this to your discussions with leadership. They need to understand that you’ve got this.
With operational excellence, resiliency and mature alignment to the business, IT will be able to regain that seat at the table and start driving the value everyone (including IT) wants to deliver to the organization.
How have you worked on these issues? Please comment and share so we can all get better!
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