Perspectives & Strategy

According to The Bolton Group only 20% of CEO’s rate their top teams as ‘High Performing’. They also state that “The need for executive-level collaboration and top-team performance is higher than ever before”. Yet is there a clear picture of the corporate goals for the board room team? Many executives think not.

Having, in a prior career been CEO of a software corporation I know very well that building a common goal and vision is important for executives. In order to provide leadership it is necessary develop a clarity of purpose and direction for the organisation. In some organisations this seems to be clearly missing, or at the very least has not been communicated well. How corporate goals and visions are dependant on the leadership style that prevails within the board room. Measurable goals usually relate to motivational and results oriented types of organisation.

In my current role as an advisor to C-Suite executives the subject of delivering to goals and vision is often discussed. Part of the problem is that if you take two people who attended the same meeting that defined the vision statement you will get two distinct viewpoints about what the words actually mean, this can lead to problems in ensuring that the corporation is following the right path, let along the contribution of an individual department. It goes without saying that execution of the shared ambition is that which leads to corporate success. Each department should have a set of goals that need to be achieved. Within Marketing is is about building brand (or corporate) visibility, for sales it may be the reaching of sales targets, and within IT this is usually about building the technical capabilities that will enable to corporation to function effectively.

I have written before how the role of the Head of IT (normally either the CIO or CTO) is changing. The role is becoming one of Chief Change Officer, in other words they are being seen as the best agent for change in the corporation. They have a background in building capabilities, gaining clarity on corporate requirements, and increasing the commitment where change is needed. This is what IT has been doing on an everyday basis across the corporation. It is often the IT Manager that knows more about what is going on across the organisation more than any other area, including HR.

IT’s role historically has been to respond to stimuli from other departments for change then build or implement systems as needed. More recently it has had to respond to corporate goals and implement corporate-wide solutions that are intended to provide an holistic solution. There is a greater focus on collaborative solutions than at any time in the past. Managing corporate change projects there is always a need to build on multidisciplinary competencies in order to deliver effective change. Corporate-wide projects need the ability to collaborate on a global scale, not to mention the necessity to involve external specialists. Technology should be used as a means to facilitate more effective collaboration within the workplace.

That said, Information Technology now stands at a cross roads in respect of the leadership of the Information Services department in the average corporation.

To a large extent to challenges of operational systems should be thought of as a thing of the past. Technicians are required to ensure the organisation continues to run, but little effort is required to develop new applications. Over time significant investment will have been made into corporate solutions. Many software vendors are keen to convince us that our systems ‘must’ be replaced to fit today’s challenges. Yet to do that we spend much needed budget to replace an already functioning system. Many times old legacy systems can be moved onto more modern servers to gain operational efficiencies. I am not arguing that we should never replace old technology, there comes a time when everything must be replaced, but the average corporation has invested a great deal on its applications, and needs to leverage its investment to the fullest extent possible. The IT department has an ongoing role to monitor developing technologies and identify new components or services that can be leveraged to enhance corporate operations.

A new future exists with a different focus, specifically in the area of contributing to the improvement of business results. Are IT leaders spending enough time focusing on the areas that deliver the best value to the overall corporation?

So what delivers best value to the modern business? A corporation’s Business Intelligence offering is perhaps IT’s greatest contribution to the diagnosis and solution of complex market trends, and can be seen as a key part of the value proposition. There is a need to integrate data between applications (both for operational and for business intelligence services) and here is where we also need to add collaborative technologies into the mix. The business community should be united in their effort on behalf of the corporation. However at the end of the day the efforts of the workforce rests on the quality of the information available. Data governance has a strategic impact, but it is important to remember that the control of corporate data is actually a business responsibility, the business community ultimately owns the data, IT are mere custodians. The business community has a continual need for information, facts, and figures in order to drive business growth, is essential that we can provide a picture of performance and show how this is driven against the goals of the organisation.

Identifying strengths and weaknesses in the resources (both human and systems) is an important aspect of leadership. Everyone looks for feedback on how they are performing. People leverage that information to boost their performance, the same cannot be said of machines, so we must do it for them. In analysing performance we must always be cognisant on how we are performing against the overall goals and vision of the corporation.

Further reading:

Information Technology Must be Integrated into the Core of Business! by Peter Giblett

The role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has changed forever by Peter Giblett

Leadership for Extraordinary Performance by Joseph J. DiStefano