Don’t get Ubered: Be an instigator of digital disruption — from by Minda Zetlin
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
It’s a common complaint from business leaders: IT takes too long to give us what we need. Not only is creating impatience in business leaders bad for a CIO’s reputation, it also leads to growth in “shadow” or “rogue” IT, as frustrated business leaders seek a more immediate solution. The answer is for IT to speed up its work, but that’s a tall order for many, who already feel they’re moving as fast as they can and then some.
In an interview with The Enterprisers Project, Emmet B. Keeffe, CEO of the software visualization company iRise, explains how technology leaders can and must speed up their projects.
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Keeffe: Don’t settle for a seat at the table. Every CIO faces his or her own challenges, but one thing we’ve been hearing for something like a decade is business and IT alignment and getting a seat at the table. But at this stage of the game, when software and the Internet define most businesses to their users, being at the table isn’t enough. CIOs need to be calling the business to the table, and presenting innovative ways to thrive.
Rise recently held a CIO event in New York, and though it wasn’t explicitly on the agenda, the one thing every participant talked about was disruption and the potential for startups to Uber them with a new digital business model, or for established competitors to beat them to a new digitally driven punch. They were focused on what was going on in the competitive landscape, figuring out how to act immediately on opportunity, and how to make sure their business leaders were listening.
So if there are any CIOs left out there still calling alignment a job well-done, my advice would be to keep pushing to a higher level, instigating strategic change rather than only falling in line with it.