used to write a column for CW - called Inside Track. "Like - anyone cares?"
For one week only I am revisiting a selection of the challenges - if you think it is still a problem, some ideas to stop history repeating itself. If you don't, go enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy...
Originally published on 26th August 1999
Board Level Value
“What has the IT Director ever done for us?” shouts the CEO to his board, echoing Monty Python Romans ever done for us question. When the list begins, the CEO side steps, ignores, or looks the other way – his feelings are all about perception, much more powerful than reality.
When faced with this position, tinkering with the real world will do nothing, one has to go deeper, in order to counter, deflect and dissolve the massive, negative publicity.
Such CEOs are often suffering from spending too long with their heads stuck in sandcastles. After all…
• Who changed the dates?
• Who altered the budgets?
• Who changed their minds after asking for a swing, then a slide, then a roundabout, then a swing that only swings forward, then one for half price, then one in three days time, then?
Time for positive, powerful and proactive action from the IT leader. Time to stand up and be counted, to announce that he/she and their entire department will, from this moment on, be measured against the return on investment (ROI) they will bring for their company.
The IT priority on CEO’s lips remains financial. Y2k, total cost of ownership, budget expenditure, all combine eto support the view that IT is there to take, and not to add. A drain on natural resources.
This has to change – by the IT leaders deciding to measure the real ways they and their department are adding real value to the business, at every level. That they are all, fundamentally, business people.
The IT Director who is serious about delivering a quantifiable, and measurable ROI must do many things differently.
• Create outstanding measurement/reporting/communicating infrastructures
• Provide a clear contract (Service Charter) balancing what a company wants with what a company can afford
• Put in information systems that track the use of desktops/PCs – and quantify the value they bring
• Market the IT department through powerful interpersonal relationships, at all levels
• Quantify the real costs and benefits for all projects
• Relate everything you do, and plan to do, directly with the company’s bottom line
When the cry goes up, “down with the Romans/IT department, what have they done for us?”, IT leaders must have the allies who immediately leap to their feet and point out, “what about the aqueducts/inventory systems?”; “what about the roads/payroll and pensions systems” etc.
Work to put those allies in place, and take ownership of the relationship with your CEO, so that the original question never arises.
IT Directors who run their departments like a business, delivering on ROI, focus their attention on being a strategic business asset. Achieve this, and it will not be long before the ‘allies’ are queuing at the gates and then going out into the marketplace to spread the ‘word’ themselves.
Then the laughter can stop, and IT will be seen as a value, and not simply a cost.
Please DO NOT READ tomorrow's post...
The Art of War 4
The power of deception - the greatest ever being...
During World War II, Operation Bodyguard was the overall Allied strategic deception plan in Europe for 1944, carried out as part of the build-up to the invasion of Normandy. The major objective of this plan was to lead the Germans to believe that the invasion of northwestern Europe would come later than was actually planned, and to threaten attacks at other locations than the true objective, mainly the Pas de Calais. It was an extraordinary plan, brilliantly excutued, and without it, D-Day may have been delayed by many months, and more troops would have been lost for certain, on both sides.
Of all of Hitler's advisers, only his astrologer predicted the attack would come at Normandy. Don't tell Richard Dawkins.
Tomorrow - the most powerful paragraph on military strategy, ever...in fact, don't read that one either, it is secret knowledge