Leaping Onto The Change Bandwagon

In most organizations where I have recently consulted, business executives are dissatisfied with IT. This dissatisfaction is usually because IT isn’t delivering what the business wants or needs, or it is perceived that IT costs are not in line with the value being delivered.

Last year’s BES posts expressed high expectations by executive leadership for IT to deliver on both critical business imperatives and cost improvements. Sadly, it would appear that this has not happened.

Whether real or perceived, this is an important problem to address because IT is now seen as contributing to the failure of achieving important business objectives and wasting significant budget dollars on low-value activities.

The size of the problem varies, and therefore the executive leadership appetite to address it does as well. But if it is a big problem, with critical business objectives missed and/or IT costs way out of proportion to the services provided, then why isn’t the problem being fixed?

The answer almost always can be classified as one of these three statements:

•    We are planning to fix the problem.
•    We are in the process of fixing the problem.
•    We have tried to fix the problem and it hasn’t worked.

When pressed for more detail about how the fix will be approached, or what actions are being taken, the response is usually an IT-centric one that focuses on process and organizational change.

Frankly, and from experience, I believe that an IT-centric approach to solving the problem is fundamentally flawed and will invariably lead to the result in the third statement.

Which brings us to the point of today’s post – the introduction of a new series.

Entitled “Business-Centric Change” this series will describe an approach to solving the problem (captioned in the first paragraph) of “IT isn’t delivering what the business wants or needs, or it is perceived that IT costs are not in line with the value being delivered” that is business-centric and IT-led.

Like BES, the BCC posts will appear weekly (or so, depending on my schedule). The first – entitled “The Problem” will be on the site next week. I hope that you enjoy the series and remember that your feedback and comments are always appreciated.