IT Can't Win By Only Playing Defense.

One of the myriad benefits of my current role with EMC is that I get to work with the IT groups from hundreds of companies, and get exposed to a lot of different environments and viewpoints. It's been very interesting to see how different teams are responding to the pressures being placed on IT today.

In the majority of the companies I have worked at or been exposed to, there is an . .. . interesting relationship between IT and the rest of the company. If you work in IT, you know what I'm talking about. It sounds something like:

"IT is a cost center."
"Our budgets are shrinking."
"Data centers are old technology, and all of this will be running somewhere else soon."
"IT is slow, and unresponsive, and it's inhibiting the company's ability to innovate."

I've heard people say "perception is reality." I think a better way is to say that often perceptions create reality, in that they become self-fulfilling prophecies.

If you believe IT is [only] a cost center -  then your only response is to seek to drive down cost.
If you believe that IT budgets must shrink -  then your only option is to choose where to cut.
If you believe that on-premise data centers are obsolete - you are unlikely to invest in modernization.
If you believe that IT is slow and unresponsive, why would you provide training and budgets to change that?

Here is a law I believe wholeheartedly:  "Over time, all organizations get the IT service they deserve."

If you believe that technology isn't a competitive differentiator, why hire anything more than the candidate asking the lowest salary? You are sure to have your assumptions affirmed after a few hires.

My father led a challenging organization (ask me sometime - it's an interesting story), and he was constantly reading everything he could get his hands on around organizational theory and leadership. As a result, from a young age I received dinnertime lectures on Covey, De Pree, and Collins' writings and theories. Dad used to spend a lot of time talking about how short-term leadership can "hollow out" a company to show short-term savings. A new VP comes in, postpones maintenance and defers training ("because after all, IT is a cost center"), shows a few million saved, and gets promoted to a senior VP role with a nice pat on the back. In his short-sighted wake, IT is now further behind and deeper into technical debt. This becomes a negative, downward cycle.

Here is another law I believe:  "Rest assured that if you value yourself cheaply, the world will not raise your price."

IT has every reason to have a seat at the table, and more than most. The senior leadership of companies going forward will need a solid background in technology more than ever. Companies today cannot attract customers, transact business, communicate, or operate internally without technology. It is as fundamental to business as calculators, pens and paper were decades ago. Who are you to require a higher budget? Who else needs it more? Show me the big initiatives that engineering, marketing, sales, and operations have at your company and I'll show you a litany of requests for IT services before any of those projects can begin.

My father used to spend a lot of time theorizing about the differences between "management" and "leadership," and I've come to realize that he was pondering an important distinction that gets far too little thought. He finally decided that in simple terms - Management is getting daily things done. Leadership is deciding what we ought to be doing. In a world where IT has become so central to getting things done, a key role of IT leadership is to intercept the existing dynamic (see above) and outline how IT can help, and what it needs in resources to succeed. Why do anything else?

To accept what you know to be a losing proposition in constantly declining budget and headcount, and make cuts in areas you know to be strategic is to essentially resign yourself to just delaying the inevitable. Once you are on the downward spiral of missed deadlines, failed projects, and disappointed expectations, will the business be more inclined to give you the budget you need three years from now? Your only option in that world is to play defense, and dodge the axe of outsourcing as long as possible.

****Disclaimer:  Easier said than done, I know. Everyone has to take cuts at some point, and that's part of the benefit of on-premise, in-house IT. Try getting AWS to postpone their bill! It may be that in some years things get deferred. However, this shouldn't become the norm. There should be some discussion and understanding that this is a temporary setback, and needs to be remedied by a year of plenty, and that sustained cuts and deferrals aren't in anyone's interests.****

The best IT shops I visit today are characterized by a few common elements:

1. The business understands that effective use of technology is a key differentiator, and so is willing to invest in order to do it right.
2. IT leadership recognizes that they have to deliver value to deserve a seat at the table, and strongly advocates for the resources necessary for success.
3. From top to bottom, IT staff recognize that they are competing for their (internal) customers, and their jobs.

Now, I think all of us can agree that the above three elements are every IT leader's dream! However, very few inherit this situation, or find it naturally occurring in the business world. It's a rare species. Usually, it has to be created. The key to creating this dynamic is the decision that IT needs to go on the offensive. To get more salary, major league teams have to show a plan for how they are going to win more games. Once they win more games, more people attend, and ticket sales go up. Once the money is rolling in, the business side of the ball club is willing to think about growth, and investment. 

What does going on the offensive look like? IT has to find something the business cares about, and deliver quickly and reliably. If you are going to pick something the business cares about to get started, pick something as close to the decision maker's hearts as possible. 

Easier said than done, right? Here's a simple idea that has caught my imagination. A wise man told me that if you have all the facts and data, making the right decisions is relatively easy. The challenge is that we rarely have many facts or useful data. What if IT had access to Ph.D -level data scientists who understand business, and had them interview every VP about what it is they wish they knew? "What answers do you wish you had in order to run a more effective business?"  What if IT could have those Ph.D Data Scientists examine the company's data, and determine how to answer those questions, using the existing tools and technologies the company already owns? What if they then held a session with all the company leadership showing all of the questions, ranked by feasibility, and value, and highlighted which ones could be answered, and then gave the answers? What if all of that could be done in three weeks?

At the end of it, the leadership has a strategy for how to go about using information and technology to directly drive revenue and make better decisions which is what IT is all about in the first place. IT has undeniably brought value to the table, and delivered in rapid fashion. Best of all, it hardly took any time or cycles from IT, and didn't come with strings attached to large capital outlays for infrastructure. 

This theoretical service actually exists, and is exceedingly affordable. Pivotal Data Labs is an amazing part of the EMC/VMware/Pivotal Federation of companies, and has an amazing pool of world-class professors, consultants, and true data scientists that are accessible to customers. We're talking about less than $60K to get access to the types of talent that helped Goldman Sachs create their money-making models. Three weeks to having made a case that IT is worth investing in. 

Yes, I work for an IT vendor, but I'm not asking you to get more budget to spend on large storage arrays. I'm not asking you to buy Greenplum, or Pivotal HD. If you need those things at some point in the future, fine, we will be here for that. Increasingly, we are less about the hardware, and more about helping you compete in a world that demands flexibility, choice, and speed-to-value through self-service, automation, and software. Let's do it on the hardware you already own, or some whitebox stuff you buy at Fry's. Skeptical? I'd be happy to explain how we can help you do that - and I'm a free resource.

However - the above is just one idea. The larger point here is that IT must go on the offensive. By only playing defense, one can't hope to stay ahead of the pressures and disruption that businesses are going to experience in the coming decade. IT leadership has two choices - to shrink from engaging and to try to dodge the outsourcing axe as long as possible, or to try and take their budgets into their own hands, and make a strong case for why the effective use of technology is more critical than ever.

Many thanks to the great leaders who I have witnessed doing exactly that, and to my father for thinking out loud at the dinner table.