Facing the Digital and Innovation hypes, what should an IT manager focus on?

Quite often you see and read that everything needs to become digital, or that IT wants to initiate and setup innovative or cutting edge technology products. In my opinion an IT department needs to know when they can embark on such a path... And that moment is different per IT department, maybe even for some teams may never happen.

A couple years ago I read an article where the CIO of Intel was interviewed. And in hindsight, it was that interview that formed my believe and thoughts on how an IT function should work.

When explaining the concept to my team or other colleagues, I frequently use the building blocks typology depicted below.

Without the larger ‘Fix the foundation’ block you can't support the ‘Business Alignment’ block, and subsequently without those two, you can't support the ‘Innovation’ block. So ‘Fix the foundation’ first, before you can be seen as true IT Business partner, as innovations will only be accepted from IT when IT has proven to be a solid business partner.

IT, innovating the business, is considered being the highest maturity level of an IT organization or department.                                                                             

Every IT function from its core has the basic IT operations it needs to run, like; the hardware, the basic software, the servers, the network, the IT Security, a solid Service Desk functionality. To have a foundation to build on, the IT department needs to ensure it aces, each of the elements I just mentioned. And then not just executing those services, but being able to truly excel at them and constantly drive for improvements and more automation. Because the time spend less on the foundation, can be spend on the next building blocks. So basically you're never finished with fixing the foundation. Standing still, means you’re falling behind, as some technologies around infrastructure, networks and security are innovating extremely rapidly.

When the foundation is under control and when you're proud of it, that will also show to your clients, being all the other functions in the company. They by then see the IT department as a solid provider of the IT Services, and they have trust in IT to deliver those IT services. This is an important first gate to have passed, to have trust from the other functions within the company.

If the foundational IT services provided do not meet expectations of the business then it is rather easy to ask feedback via a regular survey to the business, which should be part of any Fix the Foundation program.

Looking at the next building block; Business Alignment. In the foundation block the focus has been on IT services and activities. To assist the business functions in becoming better, or being able to provide the right technology tools to the business, the IT department needs to understand what the business does.

What are their processes? What are their issues, their challenges? What future challenges are awaiting them? What is happening in the broader industry? And what are other top companies doing in respective functional areas such as Marketing, Supply Chain, Finance and HR?

To answer these questions, the IT function needs to have team members dedicated on this building block. They need to be able to connect the business demands (not just the business asking for it solutions, but actually the demand, based on the above all questions), with IT solutions. These solutions can be within the company or exist outside of the company.

Besides connecting IT demand to supply, I would like to highlight the critical element of Change Management in Business IT initiatives.

When speaking about Change Management, I refer to the adoption of the business users of the new applications, upon Go Live. When the application isn't being used after the implementation, we cannot call it a successful implementation. Reason for me to highlight this part, is the obvious fact that many IT projects are still pushed through from just a Tech perspective, and not taking the business users with them in the journey.

A strong focus of IT on Change Management will help IT to be seen as a true business partner.

Showcasing the dependency of the Business Alignment building block on the Fix the Foundation building block; just imagine that an IT function has IT Business Analysts, IT Business project managers, which are all trying to understand the business and improve the way of working, but the foundations, such as basic email, laptops, Wi-Fi, isn't working. Do you think the IT department is able to properly execute the Business IT related projects? Of course Not! Because the business doesn't trust IT. "If they can't even do their basic IT stuff, why would I trust them with our business processes?". Eg, the Fix the foundation is really a prerequisite to the Business Alignment block, or the possibility of the IT department to become a true Business Partner. 

Having done the two prerequisites of the Fixing the Foundation and the being Business Aligned, then the IT department has earned the trust of the business and personally I also think, the ‘right’ to bring innovations to the table.

Innovation is very much hyped, everybody wants to innovate, disrupt, but we can’t all be the next Elon Musk. Innovation is not one person by himself or herself thinking very hard and then coming up with an idea. More often great ideas are developed one small step at a time, by different persons building on top of each other’s ideas. So it is important to have an open and sharing culture, to foster the discussions about new ideas that result into innovations.

Other ideas to become more innovative are;

• start reading about new developments and innovations,
• join conferences,
• participate in roundtable discussions,
• start doing some small projects with small vendors on innovative topics just to learn, or
• establishing partnerships with other companies having knowledge you don't have.

These are all steps towards a more and more innovative environment.

One example of an innovative IT department I have heard of is; IT develops an innovative idea for the business. But before IT presents their idea to the business, they are completely sure they have a thorough and positive business case, they have every detail worked out and can implement it directly, if wanted. 

The business only has to say 'yes to the idea..... this sounds easy, but actually indicates at what sophisticated level the IT department already is.

To conclude my view: IT should support the business. And the better it performs on each of the building blocks, the better it serves the company, with an ultimate goal of bringing innovative ideas, which will generate more revenue for the organization. As such making IT a profit center instead of a cost center.

However going through the different stages of the building blocks, the key element in this is Trust. Without trust between IT and Business, IT won't be able to deliver its potential.