Mark McDonald

In a prior post I raised the point of what happens when frugality fails?  This leads to the question of where IT goes from here.  While the future of IT is an ongoing concern, re-imagining that role starts by recognizing your IT mindset and the mindset of other enterprise leaders.

What do you think when you think about IT?

How do you see IT?

Its role in the enterprise, its value ?

Its potential?

While we all talk about what IT should do, or the problem with IT, etc.  We rarely go back and think deeply about our IT mindset, the fundamental memes, values and outlook we apply in making plans, understanding issues and measuring success.

MORE WITH LESS is the dominant mindset associated with IT, based on discussions with business leaders and CIOs.  Grounded in a view of IT as a set of budgeted resources, assets and an organization that sits within but somewhat apart from other functions in the organization, this mindset is a collection of various views that see IT as:

• An expenditure  — this mindset reverbs from both a financial perspective that sees IT as the single largest part of SGA expense and the echoes of the dot com bust where unregulated IT expenditures in pursuit of the internet promised more than they delivered.

• A commodity — this mindset is a vestige of the Does IT Matter? That was a dialogue that measured IT’s contribution to operations against business strategic value determined by driving unique and differentiating sources of competitive advantage.  For many IT failed this test as it implemented market standard systems and solutions but could not show its value.

• A constraint — this mindset arises as business volatility increased the need to change business practices and operations only to be confronted with IT being the bottleneck for change.  CIOs and IT leaders support this view when they raise concerns about security, risk and expense as reasons not to do something.

In this environment IT is a resource whose supply needs to be controlled and closely monitored lest the organization spend more than it has to.  This is the mindset that measures IT budgets as a percent of revenue (a silly measure at best), seeks outsourcing their mess for less, and asks if there are ways to reduce the cost of IT.

CIOs have played into and re-enforced these mindsets

IT strategies and plans often play into these mindsets.  Cutting costs, constraining supply, turning to IT services, chargeback or outsourcing potentially valuable aspects all enforce rather then engage the ‘more for less’ mantra – with a distinctive emphasis on the “less”!

Nothing has supported this mantra more than IT’s response to the need for radical cost cutting in the 2008 – 2009 period, where organizations reduced IT costs by more than 20% without incurring significant disruptions in operations.   One CEO remarked to me that he felt IT professionals were somewhat dishonest as ‘After years of saying we cannot cut IT, we did and nothing bad happened.’

More for less became and remains a dominant view on IT that is finding new support as business leaders compare what they can buy in the marketplace to the technology they get from their own organization.

The consumerization of IT, led in large part by smartphones, tablets and app stores associated with a company named after a fruit have created the mindset that new ideas, innovation and value now come from the outside and that IT on the inside is at best second class.

Reality is different, but too often we lead with cost when we need to lead with value, performance and results.

We need a new mindset.  I suggest a mindset around how technology amplifies the enterprise.

But what do you think?

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Category: 2012 Technology     Tags: IT strategy, Strategy and Planning, Technology

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