Are IT Leaders Suffering from Circular References?

When you see a headline "CIOs Disconnected from Business Execs" in a respected publication like CIO Magazine, you've got to wonder from whence that comes.  After all, haven't CIOs and IT Leaders in all sizes of organizations been focused on "aligning IT with the business" in recent years?  With all that focus, the disconnection gap would logically be closing, right?  Apparently not.  What was that noise?  Oh yes, that was the other shoe.... dropping.

According to CIO Magazine's 2012 State of the CIO Report, "fewer CIOs now report to the CEO, a metric typically used to estimate CIO influence."  Additionally, the survey finds that only 34% of CIOs sit on the business executive management committee, and 48% of surveyed IT organizations feel that they are perceived as either cost centers or service providers.  Sobering statistics indeed.  So... why? 

A clue might be here:  the majority of IT leaders surveyed believe that the "reducing costs" mantra is about reducing costs in IT, so that more money can be freed up for IT.  Cough cough.  How does that compute?  Behold the age-old chicken-and-egg syndrome.

1. When IT is perceived as a cost center or a service provider, and not a partner, peer, or difference-maker, IT is going to be territorial, no two ways about it.  Protect the turf.  Stabilize the landscape.  Don't walk on the grass.  It is easy to cut the budget for a department that isn't advancing the business, so savings realized by IT typically are not touted so that the budget can be used for things that got cut out in the budget revision cycle. 
2. IT is going to be perceived as a cost center or a service provider as long as it keeps behaving that way.
3. IT is going to keep behaving that way as long as it is being treated that way. 

See?  Circular reference.  Error message.  It does NOT compute.

We have been talking in this space for years about how "aligning IT with the business" is hogwash, and "integrating IT and the business" is where IT leaders need to spend their time.  What we see here is the result of "aligning" - more philosophical and strategic differences than ever seen before.

This circular cycle needs to be broken.  In some organizations, the CIO will stand up and say "I can make a difference" and proceed to prove it, and thus become an empowered CIO - a partner, a peer, a difference-maker.  IT Leaders who are breakthrough thinkers and who effectively execute on that thinking are getting noticed.  In other organizations, the CIO will be shifted down a level, report to the CFO or COO, and wonder why the staff reductions and the budget cuts just keep happening to them.

Another enlightening statistic in the CIO report:  in the question, "How IT will make a difference," relative to the year ahead, the top two answers were not clearly aligned with typical business goals.  The top answer, "improve end user workforce productivity" produces a big yawn from most business leaders.  Why is that?  The business leaders DON'T CARE about workforce productivity.  The business leaders care about things that are line items on balance sheets - cash on hand, accounts receivable, sales revenue, cost of goods, freight costs, and so on.  The business doesn't care if IT can "re-engineer core business processes" (the #2 answer), because the business DOES NOT CARE about the business process.  IT needs to talk in terms that the business does care about.  Tie it all back to the balance sheet.  Make it about achieving the corporate goals.  Note:  if unimproved workforce productivity and bad core business processes are costing overtime pay, higher attrition rates, or other hard costs, then the business leaders will care, if you tell them to care. 

The CIOs surveyed put out there that their favorite ways to spend time in the next three to five years will be to drive business innovation, identify opportunities for competitive differentiation, and developing and refining business strategy.  That's what leading CIOs do.  Integrate IT with the business.  Get connected.

Circular references break spreadsheets - and IT organizations.  Do you agree?

What is Your Desktop Status?

Has your organization deployed Windows 7?  What about Office 2010?  We have a four question survey out, asking those two questions, and, honestly, we've been surprised by the results so far.  Can it really be true that less than 3% of deployed systems are running Windows 7?  Less than 13% of systems are running Office 2010?  And what surprises us most of all.... is that more systems are running Office 2010 than are running Windows 7.  Really?

Please take the survey and add your input to the mix.  An XBox with a Kinect will be given to one lucky respondent.  Four questions - less than one minute for most, we promise.

There's no space in the survey to add comments, so please add them here.  Why do you think these numbers are so low?  Are people waiting to buy new systems with the new operating system?  Do people not understand the immediate value of Windows 7?  What has put Office 2010 ahead of Windows 7 in deployments?  Could it be that SharePoint 2010 is helping drive users to Office 2010?  Possibly some organizations are not well equipped to roll out a new OS version without having to visit every desktop? 

Let us know your thoughts and ideas, would you please?  We would like to learn.

Who Is In Charge of Mobile Application Development?

Brainstorming with the key leaders of our mobile application development team this morning, trying to determine the best ways to get the word out about our capabilities in developing applications for the major mobile platforms - iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and the up-and-coming Windows Phone 7.  We looked at our portfolio - all of the apps we've developed so far for clients - and we determined that the major uses for the mobile apps have been in sales and marketing.  In fact, in a strange coincidence, the vast majority of apps that we've done have been specifically driven around trade shows.  While we've typically been hired by IT, the Sales and Marketing groups have been driving the requirements and the apps.

We were thinking that integration to legacy systems and extending them to the mobile devices is the primary need for mobile application development, but our experience to date does not bear that out.  While we've done it, only about 20% of our projects to date have been in that area. 

So, we are wondering... who really owns mobile application development in organizations?  Where are the lines being drawn between IT and the business groups?  Is IT being a thought leader in the organization, a "did you know you could do this" agent of opportunity to the business groups?  Or is IT being told by the business group, "We need this; make it happen," and responding accordingly? 

What's happening in your organization?  You can let us know via email to mjohnson at oakwoodsys.com, or comment on this post.  We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Does IT Offer Value to the Business?

What does a nationally (internationally?) known sales guru have to say to an organization's IT group?  Though the Jeffrey Gitomer quote I happened upon last week was directed toward salespeople, I think it is very applicable to the conversation about IT and how it integrates to the business.

"There is an unspoken strategy for businesses to employ and that strategy focuses around the word "value."  The more you offer, the more attractive you will become.  The less you offer, the more anonymous you will remain."

One of our clients' IT groups has done something remarkable:  they've made themselves indispensable to Marketing.  Because IT has provided significant value to Marketing, IT is attractive to Marketing - to the point that Marketing is funding a major IT initiative.  Prior to this occurrence, Marketing thought of IT as "just the network guys" - and IT was, as the quote suggests, otherwise anonymous. 

Now the snowball effect is in play.  Marketing says to Sales, "Wait until you hear what IT has done for me."  Sales and IT engage, and now IT is partnering with Sales.  Rather than spelling out the whole cascade, let's skip to the end.  IT is providing value to the business.  The business knows the value of IT.  IT is integrated to the business. 

It is a very good thing.

IT has Little Influence and More on Marketing IT

Wow.  "Why IT Has Little Influence in a Company" showed up again shortly after writing the last post on Marketing IT, and we're struck by how relevant this article is to the discussion we posed earlier, particularly these sentences:  "Recently, it struck me that this reticence may be related to another facet of technical culture, the idea that deliverables should speak for themselves. Think of how we deliver our products to our users and clients."

Read the prior post, and then read this article on CIO.com.  See if you don't think the two are related. 

There's more to this article than marketing.  Thought-jogging all around.

Should IT be in the Marketing Business?

Most people aren't comfortable with singing their own praises, true.  Marketing and PR are typically outward-facing groups within our organizations, working to attract and retain customers.  So how does a department that typically faces inward, with internal customers, get the word out about all of the great work they are doing for and with the organization?  Is it even necessary?

The last time you did a big upgrade, or migration, how did you let the user community know?  Did you send an email?  Or did you think about it more in terms of a marketing campaign?  Looking back over your last big system rollout, something the IT group worked on for months no doubt, what kind of response did you get from the user community?  Did you struggle with user adoption?  Did you feel that "no news is good news," and were secretly relieved when you got no feedback?  Do people in your organization regard IT as a necessary evil, or a cost center, a support center, or a partner?

Some IT groups have embraced internal marketing whole-heartedly, and those groups would argue that their marketing to the organization is as important as the technology that they implement.  Their user adoption rates are way up, and their help desk calls are way down.  The IT group is a bunch of pretty happy, secure individuals who work as a team with the business.

A lot has been written about marketing IT.  Do you think it might be worth considering in your organization?  While IT has a captive audience, it might be worth thinking in terms of "attracting and retaining customers" even when those customers are inside your own organization.

What do you think?

The 5 Dysfunctions of an IT Infrastructure

Having just re-read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni (and highly recommending that you read it, too), we were inspired to share these thoughts with you based on what we are seeing in our work with various clients across the US.  These items are critical to every organization, regardless of what platforms have been adopted, and are only just starting to get the attention they deserve.  Have a look at our list and see what you think.

1. Inattention to the directory structure - the most frequently ignored yet easily the most critical part of any network infrastructure. Symptoms to watch for: cobbled together, out-of-control, too many administrators, inconsistent application of policies, inconsistent information, old user accounts, no group policies, too many group policies, slow user logins.
2. Inability to effectively and efficiently deploy system updates, new software, software upgrades, new images, etc.  - too many images, too much traffic to the update site versus an update service, have to physically touch every machine to do an upgrade
3. Unmanageable assets - what we have and what is being used, what is capable of supporting new software and what will need upgrading or retiring, no understanding of how assets inter-relate, network diagrams that are outdated as soon as they are created, or network diagrams that are not updated at all, software we bought but can't find, buying too much software
4. Inefficient help desks with poorly defined SLAs, process challenges, or SLAs that are frequently broken, management systems that have not adapted to new technology, or are difficult to customize, or systems that have dictated how our help desk should operate
5. Siloed thinking - not taking into account how systems, processes, software, and people need to integrate together to form a unified infrastructure,

What dysfunctions would you add to or subtract from this list? 

How Process People are Becoming Our Friends Again

Process management has been bandied about organizations for a long time, and for just about that long, the "process masters" have been unpopular.  Traditional process management has not typically been user-centered, but has focused on systems and their capabilities.  The worm has turned, however, and the people who can address process with the users at the front and center of those processes are now becoming some of the most popular people in the place.

Why is that?

Processes have been documented, stressed over, and "worked around" for years.  Yet only recently have our technology capabilities expanded to the point where a user-centered process is a realistic goal.  We know of organizations where help desk processes were dictated by the inability to customize the help desk platform, or where HR processes were dictated by the HR system that was put in place ten years ago.  Now, with new technology, we can create process that makes sense for our organizations and how we need to work today.  We can do this without replacing old technology (if we have to or want to keep using it). 

Process modeling has come of age as well.  With new products (like Visio 2010 Premium) that allow users to model process quickly and easily, getting a handle on how things are - and how things should be - is more efficient.

For some, learning how people need to work, and modeling process that reflects that, will be a challenge, no doubt.  It's a different mindset.  For those who possess that mindset, however, friends are waiting around every corner of your organization.  And for the IT department yearning to be more fully integrated with the business, process management is the new golden ticket. 

Five Business Books for Any CIO and IT Leader

Some people think that CIOs and IT Leaders are particularly challenged with "business leadership" because so many were/are highly technical people who got promoted over time, and who now find themselves in team leadership roles without a complete understanding of what it takes to be a leader.

What prompted this post is a recent CIO Magazine article entitled:  7 Essential CIO Leadership Skills That Get Results.  It's a good article, but we all know that reading one article or one book is not going to change our leadership style.  For CIOs and IT Leaders who want to manage truly high performing teams, and who want to be amazing team leaders, there are a number of books that I recommend from my own reading list.  Each of these is a relatively quick and easy read, and, while the words and music are different, the messaging is remarkably similar.  Seeing this message reinforced in a variety of ways is a great way to internalize the changes, assuming we need some, in our leadership styles, that can lead us to great success.

1. The Secret: What Great Leaders Know - And Do, by Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller
2. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni
3. Gung Ho!  Turn on the People in Any Organization, by Ken Blanchard
4. The Inside Advantage by Robert Bloom
5. High Five!  The Magic of Working Together, by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles

Yes, you can probably tell that we are fans of Ken Blanchard, and we truly think these books are great resources for leaders of any group or any organization.  There are a ton of others, including Good to Great by Jim Collins, and the only reason it's not on this list is because it is a tougher read (much more academic).

According to the CIO Magazine article, the seven essential CIO leadership skills are:

1. Commit to leadership first and everything else second
2. Lead differently than you think
3. Embrace your softer side
4. Forge the right relationships to drive the right results
5. Master communication
6. Inspire others
7. Build people, not systems

It's amazing really, that when you step back and really look at all of the books that are out there, how most of them say the same thing - different words, same ideas.  Start your reading with "The Secret," and you'll see some great similarities to this list. 

What books would you add to this list?

SharePoint #1 in Gartner's Magic Quadrant Sept 2010 - our take

In case you've ever wondered about some of those "other" portal vendors, the new Magic Quadrant report from Gartner for "Horizontal Portals" puts Microsoft in the number one position, in the top right corner of the top right corner, closely followed by IBM and less closely followed by Oracle.  Here are some things that we have seen over the last year or so -

• Two multi-billion dollar companies with whom we work are using SAP, but have eschewed the SAP Portal product as too expensive, too complex, and too inflexible.  One client tried for over a year to make the SAP Portal work, but dumped it for SharePoint.  The other client decided up front that, as a primarily Microsoft shop, they would integrate SAP into the Microsoft stack, and do as much as they could within the Microsoft tools.  We see indications that other large companies will be making similar decisions over the next year, particularly with the release of SharePoint 2010. 
• Microsoft has carefully moved SharePoint into the center of the known universe, increasing its influence over the enterprise and its capabilities to the enterprise.  Project Server is now a SharePoint application.  Commerce Server is now a SharePoint application.  CRM 2011 will integrate to SharePoint and that integrations looks pretty rich.  BizTalk and SharePoint speak the same language.  Etcetera, etcetera.
• Companies like Global 360, Nintex, Newsgator, Bamboo, and many others have "bet the farm" on SharePoint, starting with MOSS 2007 and now into SP2010.  More will follow.  It looks like a good bet.
• Organizations which have struggled with SharePoint adoption are now getting on top of it, either re-formulating their SharePoint implementation to make it a better user experience, making SharePoint a destination point, or creating formal adoption programs.  Our SharePoint Passalong Tips are being used by organizations near and far as educational resources to help people get more out of their SharePoint implementation.
• IT groups are starting to ask their counterparts in other groups how they can help.  SharePoint is a big part of helping those other groups.  Played right (and in companies that still need this), SharePoint will be the matchmaker between business and IT. 

We love us some SharePoint.  How about you?