“The technology for digital business is stateless and loosely-coupled, not stateful and closely-coupled like IT.” This quote from Andy Mulholland, VP & Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, caught my attention because it captures a paradigm shift that most IT leaders struggle to embrace.
There is a sense of security in the technology control processes that IT created due to a lack of digital literacy within businesses in the past. Today, however, digital literacy is universal within not only businesses, but society at large. The challenge to IT leaders today? Embrace the stateless and loosely-coupled nature of digital business by creating the required relationship networks. The reward will be a new sense of power that not only improves their ability to deliver on their mission, but will result in better job satisfaction for their teams.
In my next post, I will discuss the next logical questions for an IT leader:
- 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?
- And how do you prevent the business from getting abused and taken advantage of by the technology vendors that love nothing more than having business “go around IT” and work directly with them?
Business teams definitely know more about technology than they did 20 years ago, but do they know enough to make solid decisions about complex technology on their own? Now, more than ever, is the time for IT leaders to show a healthy respect for business leaders’ interests while positioning themselves as trusted advisors and experts.
