IT Organization Circa 2017

Some suggestions for IT leaders who are determined to drive up the business value and impact of Information Technology during 2008:

1. I resolve to be more effective in raising awareness of the potential for information technology to drive business growth.  I will bring ‘marketing thinking’ to my IT organization, and focus on improving our business communications.  I will leverage Web 2.0 technologies to this end, we will start several blogs authored by the IT leadership team, and be more deliberate in seeding experiments in IT-enabled business innovation.  These efforts will help me implement my 2nd resolution.
2. I resolve to innovate IT funding so as to drive higher business value and more innovative behaviors throughout my enterprise.  Among the outcomes I will strive for through my new IT funding approaches are:
   • Shift at least 10% of my spending in 2008 from ’steady state’ activities to ‘innovation-focused’ activities by aggressively retiring and decommissioning systems and technologies that are no longer essential to running the business.
   • Shift costs for business unit specific activities from the IT budget to business unit budgets – and shift the accountability for ROI on those costs to the respective business unit.  This will allow increased investment in IT infrastructure.
   • Add a new, voluntary ‘IT Innovation Fund’ – business are free to contribute to this fund out of their top-line income.  The IT organization will partner with business units on business innovation activity in proportion to that business unit’s voluntary contribution to the IT Innovation Fund.
3. I resolve to experiment aggressively with Software as a Service (SaaS) during 2008 with a goal of shifting at least 15% of my IT spend to SaaS by the end of 2009.
4. I resolve to establish the IT organization as the model of collaboration for our enterprise – we will lead our enterprise into becoming a ’Next Generation Enterprise’ by establishing a ‘Next Generation Enterprise’ IT capability during 2008.
5. I resolve to establish a strong, compelling and valued ‘brand’ for IT at my enterprise during 2008 – a brand known for creating an exceptional customer experience for both our internal and external customers and partners.
6. I resolve to significantly strengthen our IT talent during 2008 by looking beyond the traditional recruiting sources, and hiring people from entrepreneurial, high tech environments – I will care less about industry experience and more about attitude and potential.
7. I resolve to shift more of my time and attention from inward-focused activities to looking outside – outside my IT organization to our business units; outside my business units to their clients and customers; outside our industry to other industries where innovation intensity is significantly higher than our own.
8. I resolve to learn more about ‘design thinking’ and bring more design thinking competence to bear on everything we do as an IT organization.
9. In conjunction with Resolution #1, I resolve to increase the transparency of everything we do in IT.  This will mean communicating from an ‘outside-in’ perspective – in business rather than technology terms.
10. In conjunction with Resolution #4, I resolve to make the IT organization a more fun place to work – a place of innovation, experiments and excitement.  The heroes we will celebrate will be those that try innovative things, whether or not they are successful.