You hear a lot these days about the imperative for CIOs to be business strategists. And while I share that belief, I also believe it’s not just up to IT executives to connect the dots between IT and the business. Everybody in IT should be playing a role in bridging the divide.
It’s not uncommon for those in the IT department to feel it’s them versus the rest of the business. But the more time you spend with any business you understand that our problems are really no different. When I go talk to people in our Rooms Department – or when I was in the airline industry and I spoke to people in technology operations, for example – I see that they often have the same battle with the people in Finance or HR because they don’t understand the complexities of the areas they’re working in. The only challenge IT has is one of scale – IT touches so much of any enterprise that the situation is magnified.
Given IT’s reach across the enterprise, it’s even more important that everyone in IT works to educate and enlighten employees on what is possible, what is hype and how to tell the difference between the two. Unless and until we can get our colleagues to understand how to make smart selections and to give them a good “BS” detector on what they’re being told, we’ve got a challenge on our hands.
Certainly, I’ve made a living out of simplifying technology and putting it into a language a hotel operator or somebody in engineering or somebody in finance can understand. But I’m not the only person who should be doing that. I think everybody in IT should be playing a role in understanding and helping to bridge the divide between IT and other parts of the organization.
Read Cliff's article, "IT mentorships should be a learning experience for mentor and mentee."
Cliff Tamplin is a consultant and former vice president of Technology Support & Risk Management at Hyatt Hotels Corporation. Tamplin has held a variety of roles with major global corporations including Barclays, M&M Mars, Diageo, Northwest Airlines and Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. These roles have spanned application design and development; infrastructure architecture and operations; and information security.
