Some fresh insights on IT and Business relationships

If you listen to podcasts, how often do you go looking for something new? At least once a month I go looking for new shows to listen to. Sometimes I’ll drop an old show that isn’t quite working for me anymore. Change is good! If you’re not doing it – give it a try…you just might like it. Heck you might even learn something new!

Just the other day while looking for new podcast shows, I added Harvard Business Review’s IdeaCast to my iTunes list. One of the shows that I listened to twice was Show #97 – 8 Thing We Hate About IT with Susan Cramm. Wow! There is more wisdom from Susan Cramm on her HBR blog ‘Have IT your way’. Hey Susan! I really like what you’re saying and how you’re saying it!

Susan has clear insights and suggestions on how IT and business can work together. No really! Not just the same time worn phrases like I’ve heard for the last twenty years ago like ‘IT needs to align itself with the business side of the organization’. It’s easy to say but what actions do both sides need to take to make their rrelationship successful? That’s the advice we all need but doesn’t look like we’ve been getting. It may be old to some folks out there, but the things Susan talks about in her blog are a breath of fresh air for me and is actually getting me excited about the future of IT in not just large enterprises but in small and medium oorganizations as well.

Here are some snippets that caught my attention . . .

The end goal is to manage IT as an organizational asset, not an organizational structure.
IT is Stocked with Out-of-Date Geeks. It’s not good when you learn about social networking from your 12-year old at home while IT is still trying to cope with email.
Problem is, as we’ve discussed, IT is so busy managing the trees, they can’t afford to even think about the forest.
How do we reduce our lights-on costs to increase innovation capacity?
In my experience, 30% of the IT requests aren’t worth the effort and 20%-30% can be accommodated by leveraging existing systems.
It would be great to take a vow of IT celibacy – but in today’s information intense, connected world, that’s the modern day equivalent of living on bread and water.