The changing nature of the IT role

- If you think about the value that IT departments have historically provided, for several decades it was responsible for creating systems that automate manual tasks often within the finance or accounting departments. For example, the general ledger was an early candidate for automation. This was so codified in fact that business schools' professors who covered IT topics were in the accounting department. As a result, in the early days most leads of technology typically reported either to the chief financial officer, or to someone else within the finance function. Interestingly enough, this relationship would continue until recent times as the CFO has traditionally been the primary boss of the CIO. That's only recently changed however. There have been several drivers of this change. First, technology has become much more pervasive. You don't have to be a computer scientist to use technology daily. In fact, innovation in the consumer space is now driving innovation in the commercial space, whereas it was the reverse for many years. A great example of this is the app economy. You probably were first exposed to apps through personal use on your iPhone or Android device. Now your company probably has developed apps of various kinds for your colleagues and for your customers. Another big driver is major business trends that are leading to dramatic innovations for companies and their customers that have IT at their core. My guess is that your company is already leveraging, or has plans to leverage, data analytics, social media, and mobile business solutions to name just three examples of technology-enabled business trends. You, and your colleagues throughout IT, should recognize these to be examples of topics that you can take the lead on. This will enhance the possibility that a single investment will be made to meet the needs of the entire company, as opposed to one-off competing technologies implemented for each division. A third major driver of change is cybersecurity which has become a major board-level concern. The board has awakened to an information technology for reasons of risk mitigation. Major breaches have occurred in recent years in companies like Sony, United Airlines, Anthem, Home Depot, and JPMorgan Chase, to name just a few. Perhaps your company has been among those victims. Even if it has not, chances are you personally know someone whose company has been compromised. Boards recognize that unfortunately the bad guys are very smart and constantly innovating. Moreover, none of the companies I mentioned were sitting on their hands when it came to protecting their data. If the bad actors wished to break into your company they probably will find a way. Therefore this requires equal innovation, time, money, and attention put to cybersecurity. This again is the domain of the IT leader. Therefore the old division of the IT department as a support organization is antiquated. If you don't recognize that your team is the central nervous system of the enterprise you're shortchanging yourself, your IT team, and ultimately your enterprise. You must recognize that increasing criticality of IT and its ability to be the glue that brings the company together, to filter through which new insights of our customers and how the serve them better can be identified, the defense against bad actors who would hope to steal information from the enterprise, among other broad capabilities that the IT department has and can bring to bear. My advice to you is this, think strategically. Weave yourself into the strategic narratives of each of the other business units and functional areas to breathe life into those plans, and encourage your colleagues in IT to do the same. Define your own IT strategy as well, highlighting the areas of focus for IT for the foreseeable future in a way that will provide clarity for the IT team and for the rest of the enterprise. Dedicate time to research and development. A way to jumpstart this process is to develop a network within the venture capital community. They can be invaluable sources of insight into where new innovative technologies might provide faster paths to seize opportunities or to mitigate potential issues. So taking this all in, the risks that you and your team must mitigate have become more complex, but the opportunities to drive innovation have also never been higher.