Harvard Business Review

One day, your company "encouraged" managers to attend a two-day workshop on business unit manager's role in managing IT. You were skeptical, but true to your politically savvy nature, you signed up early - with every intention of appeasing the powers that be and getting back to your "real job" as quickly as possible.

But what you learned at the workshop has changed how you view IT. Strategically, your company is transforming the nature of collaboration with customers and trying to adapt to a rapidly evolving marketplace. You now know that supply chain partners and information technology are essential to ensuring fast response to marketplace changes and customer needs.

You've realized that every organization has the IT capability they deserve. And you've decided that your organization deserves better.

You are now flying back from the workshop, reviewing your notes, and decide to draft an email to your boss about what you learned and the implications for you and your team.

First you summarize what you learned...

"Companies that are smart about managing IT outperform those that aren't. Underperforming companies make bad investments, ignore inherent risks of developing and deploying technology, and spend too much time and money operating fragmented systems using informal, undocumented processes. For these underperformers, there is no correlation between IT spending and financial outcomes."

Next, you reflect on the state of IT management at your company...

"To be perfectly frank, we treat IT as some sort of servant-genie - expecting to get our wishes granted and frustrated when the genie asks for information and resources that impinge on our "real work." If I'm being honest, line managers have responded to IT's pleas for increased engagement with passive-aggressive behavior. We assign junior resources and treat project sponsorship as temporary, minor job that consists primarily of showing up at IT steering committee meetings."

And then you move to recommendations on how to improve IT management practices...

"From now on, we need a tighter relationship with IT with the right people part of the dialogue about how to leverage IT in support of strategic goals. We can kick start this dialogue with cross-education, create IT-smart business leaders and business-smart IT leaders. Without that, we don't have a prayer of translating strategies to successful execution. Our dialogue with our IT counterparts needs to center around the four key IT imperatives:

1. How do we increase the value realized from our IT investments?
2. How do we improve the success of projects and change initiatives?
3. How do we ensure coherent architectures to enable flexibility and agility?
4. How do we reduce our lights-on costs to increase innovation capacity?"

You want to close the email with specific commitments. But what? You try to channel your inner Gandhi and "be the change you want the world to be", but are stuck as to how a middle level business leader, like yourself, can begin to make a difference.

While shifting in your coach seat, you see someone across the aisle reading the book, "Good to Great" and it hits you...

"My team will meet with our IT counterparts to confront the brutal facts regarding the four IT imperatives outlined above. Based on the results of these discussions, we will work together and outline an approach to better manage IT in support of the company's strategic goals."

You save the email and plan to send it as soon as you land, with a new understanding that IT is part of your "real job."

The end.

We all need to do our part to improve how IT is managed - please take a moment and share your thoughts on what you can do to lead by example and "be the change."

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