By Ivan Milam, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

More than a decade ago, most Canadian public sector and government CIOs focused on providing “the pipes, power and ping” for their organizations. Their primary job was to keep the department’s IT infrastructure and applications running. Their priorities were often set by other executives whose primary purpose was to drive down cost while demanding increased service.  However, over the past 10 years public sector CIOs have increasingly come to the  understanding that to be an equal partner at the executive table they must break from their traditional “infrastructure delivery” roles and embrace a much more strategic one of an equal business partner in the organization.

As a trusted public sector advisor with PwC, I have helped many departments make this very important transition.  Through these experiences, I’ve witnessed CIO’s make this journey by using, to varying degrees, elements of the following 6 key activities.

1. Deliver core services efficiently

IT departments are continually asked to do more with less. CIOs who are strategic partners demonstrate to business executives that they’re delivering core services at the lowest expense while achieving high levels of client satisfaction.  Without this foundation piece, CIOs typically get stuck in the process of continually defending IT’s cost instead highlighting its value.

But doing so means utilizing all available options to enhance IT efficiency. These include outsourcing, co-sourcing, co-partnerships, and improving collaboration with other stakeholders and partners.  Leveraging all options to improve the day-to-day IT functions free up CIOs to do what CIOs do best – highlight strategic and innovation opportunities to help drive their organization’s to meet their strategic goals and outcomes.

2. Immerse yourself in the business and demonstrate your knowledge

CIOs must not only show value by delivering services efficiently. They must also develop a genuine understanding of the business outside of IT operations. High performing IM/IT executives learn about the business processes, business drivers, and strategic focus of all business units in their organization.  By showing their knowledge of the organization and selling ideas supported by data and a sound knowledge of the business, they demonstrate they are not only a technology person but a strategic peer at the executive level.

3. Align your innovation and ideas with the organization’s strategic vision using a structured process

Instead of taking orders at the board room table, leading CIO’s are proactive in presenting ideas that align IT’s investments with the organization’s priorities. One way to do this is to develop a structured process for prioritizing innovative ideas for IT investment. A structured process helps to identify, evaluate, develop and present new IT innovations to the organization. Then, as an executive team, they can determine the best ideas that align with the organization’s strategic vision.

4. Stay engaged by connecting with people

Gaining visibility at the executive, stakeholder and staff level with active participation and collaboration is another tool used by many CIOs. Building these relationships allows CIOs to share the organization’s vision and learn how vendors, suppliers or employees can contribute.

Successful CIOs are often seen engaging stakeholders by participating in local public speaking events to communicate where they’re taking their organizations and how stakeholders can help. Other platforms used to get the message out to staff include wikis, blogs and social networking tools. These methods contribute to collaboration and innovation, and build awareness around the IT department’s value to the organization.

5. Enable agility with effective architecture

Typically, a lot of companies have a complex IT architecture with different systems that do not work well together. This hampers innovation and the agility to solve problems quickly.

CIOs who bring IT from the back office to the executive table develop and more importantly implement architectures that provide flexibility to handle the changes that innovation brings. Reducing system complexity and increasing standardization are two key approaches that allow organizations to pivot on a dime when embracing new technologies or discovering new priorities.

6. Keep an eye on risk

The balancing act for CIOs is to bring value while remaining cognizant of risk. IT represents a significant area of vulnerability for an organization in different ways. Without adequate controls, companies may leave themselves open to fraud, security breaches, or a loss of intellectual capital. 

Effective CIOs balance security, risk and compliance requirements with innovation.

With technology playing such a large role in our lives today, CIOs must be equal partners at the executive table.  Today, an ever increasing number of CIOs are advancing down this path. For each CIO and each organization, the journey is different but many of the steps are similar. 

In my last post I talked about pace of change in the IT world. There is no doubt that we have seen enormous gains in every aspect of IT development and usage, but… I have to say the thing I hate most is change that seems to be done just for the sake of change… at least that is how it seems to me whenever I open a new version of my working software to discover that some brainchild somewhere decided that those menu items that I used to know so intimately needed to be moved … to some place where, in his/her vision, they would be of better use to me.

So what took me 2 minutes to do, now takes 45 minutes, most of it spent searching for the menu tool to do that 2-minute job. I can’t say if developers do much work with users before they change the location of things, but I can say that I wish they would leave well enough alone so that those of us who use programs on a daily basis – and who have bosses who expect us to accomplish a much larger amount of work than we used to, given the technology tools available – could get on with it.

No doubt about it, IT has impacted the productivity of the workforce in a positive fashion and government procurement staff are striving to make sure we all have the most up to date tools possible to get our work done… and truthfully, we all get excited about having a new computer or software to use. Then reality strikes and many find ourselves frustrated because we cannot do quickly what we did before… and may even need to take time away from our desks for special training. I do wish that the productivity of users could be a factor when considering the redesign of software. Users unite!!! Let the developers know that sometimes we like some things just to stay the same.

I have seen a lot of good work being done in Enterprise Architecture over the last several years, and I am encouraged that many organizations are embracing a more holistic view of the way they deliver their business services.  Enterprise Architecture is not about technology.  It is not about applications, servers, or databases.  It is about aligning all aspects of the business to improve the quality, agility, and cost efficiency of delivering business services.

But what does it mean to be aligned?  When your car’s wheels are aligned, they all point in the same direction and work together to propel the car forward.  All of the wheels agree on the direction in which they should be moving.  For an organization, alignment means that people, process, and technology elements of the business must all work together to move the business forward.  To accomplish this, they must all agree on what “forward” actually means.  Alignment requires that these elements of the business share a common vision for the future.  And, to move anywhere at all, they have to know where they are to begin with.

But as we all know, business and IT have been historically misaligned.  In fact, there is often a huge gap – a great divide – between business and IT.  How, then, does an organization go about aligning them?  Clearly, some sort of change has to take place, but where does one begin?  Aligning business and IT requires not only that they share a common vision for the future, but that they also share an understanding of the current state.  Lao Tzu said in The Art of War that “Knowing others is wisdom, knowing thyself is enlightenment.” It is this enlightenment that enables  organizations to make the right changes to increase alignment.  Day by day.  Week by week.  Year by year.

It can be tempting to get so caught up in trying to understand and document the current state that “analysis paralysis” sets in.  How much knowledge is needed to make progress?  How soon can the first step be taken?  It is important to recognize and embrace the continuous improvement nature of aligning business and IT.  This notion should be a fundamental, underlying theme of any Enterprise Architecture program.  You need just enough information to be able to make decisions about what to change to get you in the direction of where you want to be.  Too much navel gazing and fear of moving in the wrong direction will prevent any progress from being made.

It is also worth noting that the future state never actually arrives.  The future is constantly, well, in the future.  It is important to continually readjust the long-term vision to include new factors that influence the business.  This is like having the wheels on your car realigned.  Just because they were aligned last year doesn’t mean they are still aligned after a winter worth of potholes.

As Yogi Bera said, ”You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”

Tags: Enterprise Architecture, Business, IT, alignment, incremental