7 Missed Opportunities for Executives to Revolutionize Management of IT Departments
Senior executives who excel at strategy and overall business management often stumble when it comes to managing Information Technology. Technology is evolving rapidly. The reality is that many executives are struggling to keep up, with common executive management errors, blindsides, and oversights preventing good executive leadership and consistent management of information technology.
Good executive management is more than leading the business and assuming or hoping that the technology is capable of supporting the business strategies.
A frank risk assessment is critical to improving the executive management and business outcomes – as well as identifying root causes as opposed to a focus on secondary consequences. Taking ownership of business outcomes and solving problems for the long term is critically important. The technology layer must be a full partner in enabling the business strategies to be achieved.
The lack of technology knowledge is not a “get out of jail free card” or a rationale for abdicating yourself from direct ownership of the technology business outcomes.
There are seven core opportunities for executives to improve their management of technology staff and technology systems. Improving in these areas will better facilitate growth, reduce risk and cost, and contribute measurable value to the business.
1. Apply Management Best Practices to Your IT Department
Many senior managers have a “hands-off” or “delegate it” approach with IT staff, often driven by a lack of comfort or knowledge with the rapidly evolving subject matter and technology. When management best practices aren’t applied, the result is a basic cost management approach prone to missing wider opportunities for growth.
Avoid a basic cost management approach by asking the following questions of your IT staff:
What is the value of a lower-cost solution compared to the value of a higher-cost solution, in terms of impact to the business?
What areas of IT should be identified as candidates for growth? How would this benefit the business?
How can I help my staff deliver better value to the business?
What risks do we currently have in our IT systems, and how can they be mitigated?
Non-technical answers are critical to understanding the context of IT contribution. Do not allow IT staff to confuse the core business issues or value with technical jargon. Apply business management skills effectively rather than basic cost management, and develop the use of non-technical language and concepts in your IT staff.
2. Maintain the Integrity of Your Data
Two issues related to data integrity are commonplace: the quality of data, which is a business management issue, and the backup and recovery of data, which is a fiduciary issue.
Data quality is the enabler of data mining, business intelligence, and a dashboard-driven approach. It’s critical to ensure that IT staff have structured databases with quality standards in mind. There are third-party data quality assessments available to contribute to a better understanding of status, opportunity, and risk.
Backup and recovery of data is a common area of deep executive, and sometimes IT staff, misunderstanding. Data backed up to tapes or drives is not a backup solution. A documented backup and recovery strategy, plan, and recovery testing cycle that is well-defined and signed off on by the board, executive team, or business ownership is critical. A full backup and recovery exercise should be run at least every 12 months – a fiduciary obligation.
Failure to ensure high data quality standards, a failure to implement a regimented backup and recovery process, and a lack of documented process leaves a business prone to risk, leakage, and loss.
3. Develop Your IT Staff
IT staff should represent less of a technical function and more of a business partner, driving the development and extension of business strategy. Good IT staff can comfortably provide technology solutions to challenges outside of their business unit. If business leaders alone are driving IT strategy, the result is a collection of point solutions that lack integration and a team with inadequate core competencies to face known and unknown challenges and opportunities.
Business leaders driving IT solutions outside of a partnership with IT, as well as a lack of training for IT staff in non-technical problem solving and expertise, leads to a fragmented unit that is unable to respond or adapt at full potential.
4. Leveraging Vendors for Education
IT vendors typically provide solutions, basic demonstrations, and trial programs. But they often reserve investment of time, resources, and executive briefings for large accounts. It’s important to proactively request vendors to provide roadmaps, strategic trends, and transformational technology insights.
Similar to your approach to your own IT staff, you should expect and demand non-technical context for vendor solutions, and leverage their industry insights to gain a better understanding. Not asking your technology vendors for this value-added perspective is a missed opportunity for understanding and developing your IT strategy.
5. Develop Benchmarking and Standards
Benchmarking exercises should compare against industry standards as well as historical internal performance. It’s important to know how your IT infrastructure and applications compare to industry standards and best practices.
However, industry standards or “the best of the best” are not always affordable, reasonable, or the correct approach for where your business currently stands in its growth roadmap. But understanding the ideal allows you to lead your IT staff to build and refine your own strategy with goals and objectives.
With this approach, IT costs become policy-driven and special projects become an annual or quarterly investment decision. Separating operational costs based on standards and benchmarking from proactive, high-impact investment in special projects allows IT leaders to better understand financial commitments and impact.
6. Build a Dedicated IT Strategy
Most businesses have a 3-5 year strategy for growth. But a 3-5 year strategy for IT, involving both infrastructure and applications, is equally critical to success. IT is a foundational enabler of business strategy, and a gap between the needs of the business and the capabilities of IT can leave a business struggling to keep up. An assessment of this gap can bring clarity and refinement to the strategies of both IT and the wider business. A focus on a business strategy without a companion IT strategy represents a missed opportunity for businesses to remain capable and open to growth.
7. Hone Your Personal Expertise as a Leader
Too many executives consider themselves to be tech-savvy and therefore perceive themselves as well equipped to manage IT. A personal interest in technology does not constitute the required skill set of an IT manager or Chief Information Officer.
There are a host of skills, experiences, and perspectives that good IT leaders have. Manage your IT staff but appreciate that they have unique skills and knowledge. If they are right for your business then you should be trusting them.
Is your business at risk or underperforming due to these seven missed opportunities? Are you addressing these areas in your strategic management efforts? Take the time to evaluate, and to extend your business management skills and approach to IT management. The benefits are a richly enabled business strategy that is supported by a fully aligned IT infrastructure and business unit.