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The Savvy Manager: You're Doing IT Wrong
By Mike Bohlmann

September 15, 2008 —

There was an opinion piece in Systems Management News not too long ago about how IT planning is changing. The main point was that IT planning is no longer confined to IT, with no significant involvement from the business. As I’ve said before, we have to get out of the IT basement and into the meeting rooms and offices throughout the organization.

Sometimes, however, we run into barriers from management or others in the business who think IT people do not know anything besides computers. If you have started doing your homework by following my advice to get to know the business, then maybe it is time to confront management about how the company approaches IT.

Do you want IT to understand the business?
If a business wants to get the most out of IT, then IT needs to understand the business. While there are steps toward that end that IT staff should take, the task is not IT’s alone.

Management and employees throughout the company should be thinking about how IT staff can learn more about the business. Most large and mid-sized companies have IT staffers who serve dedicated roles as business analysts or relationship managers; such people can act as critical bridges between IT and the rest of the organization. Some organizations even go so far as to embed IT staff directly in non-IT units. But there are even more ways that every systems administrator or programmer can contribute by learning more about the organization.

The first step is to include IT in process improvement groups. Such involvement yields benefits in both directions. Non-IT people might hear new ways of doing things with tools they already have that can improve the process. The IT people might learn more about how the business operates and thus be better able to provide services.

Do you want IT to be a cost center or a strategic partner?
Within the organization, IT may be approached as a cost center or as a strategic partner. If you have been through a cost-cutting effort, you know that after a while you run out of costs to cut that don't risk a loss of quality. There is nothing about IT that makes it an exception.

Cost-conscious IT operations and infrastructure are important, but the organization must be willing to spend money on IT if it wants to get as much value as possible out of the function. If IT is focused on keeping software licensing costs to the bare minimum, it will not be able find new tools that could improve operations or create new business opportunities.

The first step here is to give IT some extra budget for investigating new technologies. Nothing fires up IT people more than the opportunity to try out new hardware and software. A few thousand dollars behind a new technology could have a huge payoff eventually. That payoff could come in the form of higher profits or more motivated IT workers. Just be sure there is a real business case for putting in the initial seed money.

Is the competition getting further ahead?
Times are tough right now for most companies. If no one knows where the company stands relative to the competition, then the staff is probably getting anxious and suffering morale problems. Not knowing how things are going is worse than knowing that things are going poorly.

Once it’s broadly known that things aren’t going well, company leaders, both formal and informal, can begin to work on improving them. Information technology, when applied creatively or with good discipline, can provide avenues for meeting threats and opportunities head on. Creativity and innovation require people with leadership capabilities to step forward and get the ball moving.

The first step is to get your IT leader involved in strategic planning meetings. If you need to catch up to the competition, you need to have every smart person in your company thinking about new ideas. Odds are that your CIO/IT director/IT manager is a really smart person who could offer fresh ideas for getting the company back on track.

Are you doing IT right?
If you are lucky, your organization is already doing some of these things to get the most of its IT investment. Congratulations! But the odds are that your organization could stand some improvement in at least one of these areas. By doing a little homework on your own and working with management, you can take the lead on bringing about positive change for your company.

Mike Bohlmann is an IT manager at the University of Illinois. He can be reached at mikeb@wecanhelpit.com.

Related Search Term(s): ITIL, professional development

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