Strategic Technology

Excellent, truly, truly, excellent post by Ian Lurie at Conversation Marketing titled; The IT department isn’t killing you – you are

I urge you to read it, to encourage you, let me give you a teaser;

Dear CEO/VP of operations or whatever you are:

Information technology departments don’t kill businesses. CEO’s using IT departments kill businesses.

The post is downright hilarious – for all the truth it conveys. In fact, it is so true it is painful. As a technology manager, technologists do get sucked into these black holes.

If someone in marketing crashes the whole site by adding an extra “>” in the footer, what do you do? Uh-huh. You call IT. It’s all computery screeny stuff, so they must be to blame. And, when you point the finger at them, they say “OK, give us control over the web site, then.”

Mr. Lurie is referencing your marketing function, but the same happens in many business functions. Sales has no real idea who your largest customer is, but it is ‘computer screeny’ stuff, call it CRM and make it an IT Project.

Finance takes four months to close the books, but it is ‘computer screeny’ stuff, make it an IT Project.

Mr. Lurie also gives some ways out of that trap, I’m not going to repeat them here, read his post, I will state that his second option, along with its reference, is the one I choose.

Unless your business is a hot dog cart in Times Square, technology is woven through the very fabric of your business. Most, if not all, of your business processes will contain an element of technology in them. But just because there is one piece that is ‘computer screeny’ – does not mean that;

a) IT should be in charge

b) IT should be responsible for that ‘>’ in the footer that crashes the web site.

IT Leadership should, and must be joined at the hip with each piece of your organization, IT can provide tools that help standardize or automate, can provide tools that allow analysis. But at the end of the day, these are business tools – not technology tools.

Thank you Ian……

@Montberte: I don’t think there’s intelligent life on other planets. Why should other planets be any different from this one?