At this point in your career, you might sit in an IT manager, architect, senior PM, director or other leadership role. My challenge to you is to transform yourself from your IT seat to an organizational partner. You might be thinking, I’m good where I am. I do not want to be in the C-suite. Yet, this is not what I am talking about. There is a distinct difference between being an IT leader and being an organizational partner. IT leaders view things from the IT perspective and see tasks and projects from within the IT silo. Organizational partners understand how the entire business works, flows, and how IT makes it all possible. The partner then builds close relationships with people across the organization to develop and deliver solutions. Why should you make this shift?
Measurable value
When we align IT with the business, we start thinking about what each effort needs to yield for the business, not just IT. A few examples are given in John Edward’s article 7 ways to effectively ensure IT-business alignment. Think about a current project or your service desk metrics. Are they:
IT focused
99.9% uptime
Service desk mean-time to respond - 24hr
Server built on time - Per project plan within variance of 1 day
Business focused
Moved unscheduled downtime from 10hr/yr to 8hr/yr saving $200K/yr
Moved service desk speed to answer from 90sec to 60sec on 2K calls per month saving….you get the idea
Uptime is just a number until we show what it achieves for the business. Moving from 99.9% to 99.99% uptime may actually not benefit your business very much. Have you run the numbers?
Organization change management
When we shift to an organizational focus, we start taking surveys and conducting assessments of our IT services. These can be electronic or in-person visits. Instead of inflicting change upon the organization how we in IT believe it should happen, we learn how each group (persona) within the organization will best move through change.
Can we reboot automatically overnight? What about the weekends?
Do they consume video training? Do we need posters and flyers?
Do we need to attend team meetings to answer questions live?
Each group is different and will move through various types of changes in different ways. Once we shift from an IT leader to an organizational partner, we learn how to guide the organization through technology changes.
Fulfilling work
Finally, you took this job originally because you believed in what the organization was doing. You aligned with the mission. We know that the most effective goals are those that are aligned with business priorities. As an IT leader, it is your responsibility to help your team align their work to organizational goals. By doing this for yourself and others, you will reconnect with the organization’s mission, your purpose for being there, and find fulfillment in the work. This is a great protection against burnout.
It’s time to make the move from IT leader to organizational partner. We will explore in future articles how to make this shift. For now, your challenge is to reflect on where you are in the transformation process.
My challenge for you:
Metrics - Review your metrics and determine if they are IT focused, organization focused, or a hybrid.
Relationships - Review the meetings you had over the past 90 days. Are you visiting regularly with all the key people who represent the groups to whom you provide service? I am not talking about project meetings. I am talking about relationship development and “how are we doing” meetings.
Goal alignment - Review your goals for this performance cycle for yourself and your team. Are they clearly aligned to organizational goals? Are they SMARTER?
Connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know how your challenge goes. I am happy to visit if you would like to dive deeper on this topic. Remember, #ClarityDeliversResults!
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