Listics

Lisa DiCarlo calls Bain a “White Shoe Consultancy” (thanks to Doc for the link). I wonder if this means they close down after Labor Day? Regardless, DiCarlo’s Forbes article and Doc’s article are thought provoking. The impediment to opening a large organization to a good relationship with its own internal IT resources is strictly cultural. Companies by and large aren’t organized with coherent strategic direction of IT resources that can be embedded in business units and work to support unit goals. Budgets are segregated. IT project efforts are managed by a separate service unit. Management of the IT unit talks the talk about internal service provision and customer service to internal business partners. Often, this bespeaks a distinction, a gulf of understanding dotted with islands of responsibility in a complex enterprise.

When people come together to do something, they have choices about how to get things done. The less transparent the internal IT organization, the more likely they will find themselves competing for work with external providers. We seldom speak anymore of the arcane priesthood of the glass walled and raised floored temples to dinosaur maineframe-ism, but cultural vestiges remain, both in the experience and expectations of senior management and in the attitudes and training of IT professionals.

Corporate strategic planning must include a significant IT component. IT strategic planning that is managed separately exposes the enterprise to risks that can be avoided. Rather than asking IT planners to craft an IT strategic plan, corporate planners have to integrate that effort with the broader planning efforts that are always underway. So often it comes back to improving communications and eliminating silos. IT people can educate their company’s management on the possibilities, while management can help the IT people to understand the limits for investment. But everybody needs to be working in the same room with t heir eyes wide open to these possibilities and constraints.