In my last post, Crossroads of Control vs. Digital, I said would discuss the next logical questions for an IT leader. The first of which is “How do you embrace this “new world order” without having everyone in the business do their own thing, with little consideration for overall company mission & best practices?” News Flash: Folks are doing their own thing already. Embrace it and become an enabler, nay, a leader of a bottom-up, federated technology department focused not on digital control but on driving productivity and value.
To be successful this will begin at home with what is the biggest impediment – your team. Your team is accustomed to having control. You will need to educate them on the new ways and integrate them back into the business. This means three things.
- Solid multi-layer governance led not by IT but by the departments in your business.
- A keen focus on enterprise architecture not to be confused with technical architecture.
- And perhaps most importantly, immersion of the technologists at the individual level into the various business departments in a way that is a conduit for understanding and influence.
You may feel you are giving up the control, but that perceived control comes with sub-optimal productivity, sub-optimal meeting of customer demand, sub-optimal profits or surpluses and sub-optimal sustainability. The reward of improved productivity, improved morale, meeting customer demands and bottom line improvements will be worth the short term discomfort.