BUZZKILL: Fending Off the Tech 'Buzz' to Focus on the Business

In the summer of 2013, I had a conversation with a high level IT executive well known in his field. During the conversation, the term “cloud” was used multiple times, seemingly without a business context. I asked, “Isn’t cloud just a means, and not an end?”

From the flurry of thinking, conversations and research that stemmed from that first discussion, a book was born. Co-authored with Manish Sharma, The Tech BuzzKill: How Top IT Leaders Fend Off the Tech 'Buzz' to Focus on the Business is composed from multiple conversations with high level IT leaders in many industries.

We asked each IT leader that we interviewed the same set of questions about business alignment – nine of them to be specific. To follow are two of these questions, and some of the more interesting answers we received.

QUESTION #1: How do you encourage your teams to stay invested in the business? How do you keep them business-focused, and not technology-focused?

• Shadowing the Users and Walking in Their Shoes are common methods for familiarizing IT teams with how the business operates, and ultimately what it needs. Shadowing is when IT looks over the shoulder of the business to learn what they do. Walking in their shoes entails performing the job of someone outside of IT for a short time.
  
  
• Meet the Business Day – IT has a tendency to work in a vacuum, so some CIOs designate one day a year on which IT is not permitted to sit in their offices or cubicles. The entire day is dedicated to meeting business team members. It is an IT ambassadorship day.
  
  
• Immersion in the Business – Business focused IT leaders work hard to make their team members “students of the business.” They send people to business training and forward them relevant article and newsletters related to aspects of the business. Some leaders have gone so far as to swap employees for a year so that the employee can grow in the business and return with an inside perspective.

• Cross Pollination – Some progressive IT leaders are open to taking the employee swap one step further and hiring people from the business. In turn, they are open to the business hiring their team members. One leader said it well: “If the business has not made an attempt to hire one of my Business Relationship Managers, I think there is something wrong.”
  
  
• Financial Incentives Tied to Business Objectives –In short, business focused CIOs tie compensation to the business, either through overall performance or mapping of business objectives. Who can argue with including this in a larger strategy to keep IT employees invested in the business?

QUESTION #2: How do you maximize awareness of IT effectively servicing the business -- up, down and laterally?

Business focused CIOs consistently design and employ strategies to communicate the benefits their organizations produce. They are not “embarrassed to show value.” In fact, they know it is essential. These leaders firmly believe that an IT department that lets its perception get stale is one that will find itself on the defensive very quickly. Here are some of their strategies:

• Technology Day – Top IT leaders collaborate with their business peers to create events, and invite technology solutions providers to exhibit their products and services. This event accomplishes three primary goals.
  • It exposes the business to new solutions in a controlled way, thus eliminating the issues maverick vendors can create when they sell vision with no path to success.
  • It allows IT to see what is appealing to the business.
  • It presents IT as a business vision enabler.

• Recognize the Business - When success happens, the top CIOs make a habit of calling out the business’s role in the success rather than taking all the credit for IT. Doing so highlights the value of IT without boasting its achievements. It also forges a stronger relationship with the business and encourages future stakeholdership.
  
  
• Retrace History – This unique idea came from a CTO at a large Healthcare Provider in Pennsylvania. In every one of his project charters, he lists all the relevant past initiatives so that people can see the chain of events driven by IT that have led up to and will enable the new project.
  
  
• Transparency –A healthy IT department puts its performance on display. Many leaders have scoreboards that are presented to the business. Their metrics are more focused than “server uptime.” They pinpoint service metrics that are relevant to the business and present them in business terms. (For example, number of POS transactions serviced without interruption at a large retailer).
  
  
• Export IT’s Strengths to the Business – In what we see as a growing trend, CIOs are taking what their IT departments do extremely well and expanding these services into the business. Some notable examples:
  • IT PMOs enlisted to run the enterprise’s strategic planning process, and in many cases, business governance functions.
  • IT Help Desks engaged to handle issue resolution of things beyond IT.

More and more, IT leaders are breaking the mold and employing new and creative means to produce value for the organization. Based on the findings we discovered in researching our book, we are confident that a new generation of IT leader is breaking through.