Next-generation CIOs Should Focus on Change, Not Just Business
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CIOs who think of themselves as savvy technologists skilled in
aligning the work of the IT department with the goals of the parent corporation
are in serious trouble and don't even know it.
They're smart, well trained, fully adapted to the last major wave of
technology-fueled business innovation – and as anachronistic as a T. Rex
expecting a giant meteor strike to bring great new opportunities for giant
carnivorous saurians.
"Aligning IT with business – which has been a
CIO's main goal
since forever – that's gone," according to Chris Potts, director of Dominic Barrow
Svs. Ltd., an IT strategy consultancy based in
London. "IT is too integral to the practice – to
the operation of the business – to be something separate that you align. You
can't align IT decision-making and business decision-making; you have to treat
them as an integrated decision-making process."
That ability to go beyond IT-business alignment was an important
factor in what made companies named to the Baseline 500 among the most effective
users of technology in the business world, according to Paul Strassman, the productivity
expert, IT consultant and former senior IT executive at Xerox, Kraft and NASA who did the principal analysis of Baseline 500 companies in 2007.
During its first 40 years of existence, IT's role
was to reduce costs, increase the efficiency of existing operations and
automate what it could, Strassmann said. As the structure of global business
and economics changed, however, so did the requirement of IT to be more than a
support structure for business decision makers.
"Unlike in the past, now companies outsource as
much to 65 percent to 75 percent of their operations, so looking at IT relative
to the complexity of a firm is no longer accurate," Strassmann said.
"Many of these (Baseline 500 members) are hollow companies. GM gets 78
percent of its revenue from the work of outsiders, which is staggering."
IT Management 
