IT Organization Circa 2017

As I’ve been researching human and organizational development for BSG Concours’s Reaching Level 3 multi-client research, I was reminded of the role of organizational “mission” as frequently expressed through some form of mission statement.   I’ve done a lot of work over the years (both research and consulting) on IT organizational change and transformation, much of which involved defining or refining organizational mission and organizational vision (with its corresponding vision statement.)

Often I have found that my role as consultant and facilitator of mission/vision development sessions is to elevate my client’s ambition – to focus them on a higher order (more mature) business demand, with the correspondingly higher order (more mature) IT supply capabilities.

For example, a Level 1 IT organizational mission might be colloquially described as “keep the trains running on time and keep the lights on.”  This is an essentially ‘IT infrastructural” mission.  This is appropriate to Level 1 business demand – IT is seen as a necessary cost to be minimized, and as a bunch of techie types best kept as far out of the business as possible.  The business really wants a pure “utility” – like good children in Victorian times, best neither seen nor heard.  If we have to have email, it better run efficiently and with high availability.  If we are replacing clerical people with silicon to process transactions, they’d better run efficiently, accurately, consistently and reliably.  One important variation on this theme is the anticipation of Level 2, and indeed the stimulation of Level 2 business demand.  In other words, the Level 1 IT mission is to fully meet Level 1 business demand, and to elevate that demand beyond Level 1.

At Level 2, the IT organizational mission goes beyond simply running the trains and lights.  The Level 2 mission is more about business effectiveness – end-to-end business process solutions and enterprise systems.  Above and beyond IT infrastructure, Level 2 missions have a strong project and programcomponent – building new business capability.  At the risk of pushing the railway analogy way too far, the business ‘passengers’ want help planning their journeys; they want help creating new facilities to meet their customer needs they want more direct ways of getting to and from those facilities.  It’s no longer just about transportation, it’s about developing communities where people live and work, and helping transport them through those communities.  As with the Level 1 mission, our Level 2 mission must include not only meeting Level 2 demand, but also elevating that demand.

At Level 3, the IT organizational mission expands to activities focused on business innovation and growth.  If Level 1 was about the trains and utilities, and Level 2 was about creating new towns and cities, Level 3 is about exploring new frontiers – “outfitting” our business partners, their customers and suppliers to collaboratively find new places to live, and better ways to live and work in their current places.

Analogies aside, I believe that the IT organizational mission looks very different at Level 1, 2 and 3.  Regardless of how many developmental stages you want to consider, look at your IT organizational mission – when was it last changed?  How appropriate is it to meeting today’s business agenda?  To what degree does it shape tomorrow’s business agenda?  How is your mission being actualized? 

This last point brings us to IT organizational vision, which I leave for a future post.

Filed under: Demand Maturity, IS Management, IT Infrastructure, IT Management, IT Maturity, Supply Maturity | Tagged: Business-IT Maturity, Demand Maturity, IT mission, IT vision, Supply Maturity