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Business environment is becoming ever so competitive and market dynamics are changing so fast that it has become imperative for an organization to be extremely flexible and incorporate lean, moldable, easy to change process architecture. It is possible to adopt this fluidity only if the organizations have a strong technology backbone supporting its business operations.
As the technology has become the core business driver and many a times decides the fate of an organization, IT leadership has to evolve to suite the imminent demands of the business and highest expectations from the stakeholders.
Traditionally, IT functions of any end-user organization are divided into two main pillars of IT delivery, namely IT infrastructure and Business Applications. This leads to a situation wherein, an IT professional with high growth potential ends up focusing on only one aspect of IT (either infrastructure or business applications). By the time, he/she reaches to the number 2 position in the IT function, all the versatility is lost and an individual settles into a role of senior-most subject matter expert.
It is therefore imperative for the senior IT managers (who aspire to be the next CIOs) to stop being specialist and start becoming sensitive to the business.
The journey to the top can start by taking a few simple measures:
Becoming one with business:
It is critical for an IT leader to become part of the mainstream business to be recognized as the key influencer in the business. Only when you understand the aspirations and challenges of the business teams, you would be able to relate to their true needs for technology solutions. In order to achieve this, one has to:
Establish good rapport with key business users of various departments
Understand high level business processes
Participate in informal chats on overall business performance of the company, challenges in the day-to-day operations, as well as external factors influencing the companys progress.
Become aware of the business targets set for key people in each department
In short, speak the same language as your internal customer
Measuring business benefits of IT:
Any technology initiative has to have business need and its implementation success has to be measurable in the form of tangible business benefits. In order to adopt this practice one can follow a few steps such as
Capturing the current business scenario in quantifiable parameters before the start of the IT project and ensure that outcome of the IT project is measured in terms of improvement in these numbers
Associate each IT project to the goals of key business leaders (which many a times have clear financial measures). This allows one to assess the true return on IT investment.
Establish balanced scorecard for IT function in order to judge the impact of IT on all four dimensions of organizational improvement viz.
a. Financial growth
b. Customer satisfaction
c. Internal process improvements
d. Learning of the organization
Aspiring to be a game changer for the business:
IT function is no longer a support function but a strategic business enabler. But one cannot stop at this. For a successful IT leader, it is important to identify opportunities where technology can introduce a completely new business model and offer a newfound competitive edge to the company.
Any technology initiative which empowers your organization to create new markets, address customers differently or opens up new avenues of revenues and/or profit-making; would automatically put you in the leadership role.
Developing a friendly ecosystem:
Leadership in any field needs support and backing of friends, followers and alliances. Hence it is critical to establish a great professional (or at times personal) relationship with key IT vendors, implementation partners, high-end consulting companies and top technology product companies.
In summary, a senior IT professional has to start getting as close to the business as possible and establish clear connect between technology and business. One has to show sensitivity towards the fact that money is spent in each IT project and hence treating it as an investment and showing the tangible returns would catch the fancy of the key business leaders. Ensure that you build a support system that facilitates your career growth both internally as well as externally. Lastly, make a business impact through technology-driven innovation and the crown is yours.
The author is a CEO of Creative IT India
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