Regular readers will know that from time to time I refer to research by Peter Weill, Chairman & Senior Research Scientist, Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) at the MIT Sloan School of Management. I’ve had the privilege of knowing Dr. Weill for many years, and having collaborated with him on several multi-company research initiatives.
Peter and his colleague and co-author Jeanne Ross recently published their latest book called IT Savvy: What Top Executives Must Know to Go from Pain to Gain.
This is an excellent and important book. It is notably the first book by this duo written for the top executive community, rather than for IT professionals – the target readership for prior Weill/Ross books. I’m well known for repeating the mantra, “Organizations get the IT they deserve!” This book really reinforces the leadership roles and practices that help converge business and IT. The ideas are beautifully organized, clearly presented and convincingly illustrated by interesting case studies.
I don’t want to pretend that one book can, by itself, move you along the road to “premium return on IT.” But it sure is a great resource and, most importantly, a way to educate your key stakeholders what it takes to get on the right road!
Practices that Earn a Premium Return on IT
The authors, building on 15 years of research, describe what they refer to as the “Three Obsessions of the IT-Savvy Firm.” These are:
- Fixing What’s Broken About IT.
- Building a Digitized Platform.
- Exploiting the Platform for Profitable Growth
Citing several case studies to illustrate their points and help make the practices real, they work through issues of business operating model and the IT implications of operating model choices: IT funding model, digitized platforms, governance, driving value, and leadership.
Read, Share and Discuss!
Read this book with the idea of sharing it with your business partners and stakeholders. Set up or take advantage of current opportunities to drive dialog around the implications of IT Savvy to your organization.
I believe you will recognize in the IT Savvy book many of the practices, recommendations, and “vignette’s” that surface in this blog from time. In fact, Peter and Jeanne’s work over the years, and my research experiences with Peter, has greatly influenced my belief system, and with it, my approach to IT management consulting, at least over the last 15 years!
Book Cover Image Courtesy of Harvard Business Press
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Filed under: Business-IT Governance, Demand Maturity, IT Infrastructure, IT Management, IT Maturity, Key Frameworks, Portfolio Management | Tagged: Portfolio Management, Enterprise Architecture, Business-IT Maturity, IT funding, value realization, IT governance, MIT Sloan School of Management
I look forward to the read. While there are many opportunities to find a book on the state of IT, there are a precious few that stand out among the rest. I look forward to this being one of them.
As always, Vaughan, great post. And this is one of my favorite topics.
As you know, I had the distinct pleasure of collaborating with you, Dr. Weill and others when I led the 2006 Concours Re.sults Research project ITV: Contemporary IT
Value Realization Strategies. That project introduced me to IT Savvy, “…an expression of a company’s ability to recognize and exploit business value available from information technology.” It also gave me a great appreciation for the Impact of IT Savvy on Business & Portfolio Performance.
These concepts and frameworks have served me well in the last three years. I look forward to reading their book and continuing to build on their ideas.
I have just received my book and am looking forward to reading it. I also would like to find out the level of IT maturity in my current organisation. It should be an interesting exercise. Wish me luck
Good luck, Yuri! You will find an IT Savvy assessment and scoring mechanism in the Appendix of the book. I like to think of this kind of tool as a “dialogic” – i.e., it is more about the dialog they generate than the score they produce. So, use the tool with different stakeholders – individuals and groups, and drive to discussion around where the assessment findings are similar, and where they are different. I think you will find this very illuminating! Do let us know how it goes!
Great, I found it. I am now wondering if there is an standard or benchmark I could compare the organisation I work for (Local Government in Australia) which could give me an idea of where we stand in terms of maturity. Do you know of any such metrics? Kind regards
Yuri, Peter Weill has published from time to time some benchmark data by industry and other factors – mostly related to IT spend by portfolio category. But, as always, benchmarking is a dangerous and potentially misleading game – you are invariably comparing apples to oranges (or worse!)
I believe you will find time taken on benchmarking (except in the IT operations domain where things are more standardized and there is more reliable data available) to be wasted and potentially, destructive. Work with your leaders to establish where they think they should be, and why. Do this for current time period and, say, 2 years out. Then compare against their actual assessment. i.e., drive this from an internal perspective – that has the most meaning.
It’s very surprising (and funny) that even after so many decades of Information technology, Business Leaders have little clue in managing it.
Some more thoughts on IT Savviness. Would it make sense to communicate to Senior management (at least for the manufactruing and FMCG compnaies) about IT architecture in terms of standard building blocks which are
1. Firmwide communication network and email
2. ERP ( Transaction processing)
3. Data Warehouse (Buinsess analytics)
4. Portals ( Intra and Extra)
5. SFE/CRM
6. Desktop productivity tools ( spreadsheets, word processinfg etc).
The above need to be standardized and appropriately integrated via standardized processes or data or both.
Interesting question, Venkat, and one that I am dealing with in a current client situation. I find that business executives typically don’t resonate with the types of items you list – they feel “inside out” from the IT world. On the other hand, if you dig into the business strategy, there’s almost always something really important they are trying to achieve that IT architecture helps solve.
In my client’s case, that’s integration across business units. I also use analogies from every day situations. They are located in New York, so the subway is very familiar. The NY subway system was actually 3 separate systems which began to be unified in the 1940′s. The artifacts of the lack of a single architecture are still felt today when you need to change from one line to another – it’s a pain, and a cost of “interfaces” that were developed to create “interoperability” among disparate architectures. Executives quickly understand those types of example, and why they need an Enterprise Architecture.