You may know that IT leaders today need to change with changing times, going from keepers of the infrastructure to strategic partners who help lines of business achieve their goals. But how do you actually make that transition?
In part one of a two-part interview, Jay Anderson, CIO of IT support management services provider ServiceNow, explained how a service-oriented CIO can bring greater benefits to an enterprise. In part two, he tells us how to develop a service-oriented approach, and go from the executive in charge of IT infrastructure to a digital evangelist.
The Enterprisers Project (TEP): The shift from infrastructure keeper to digital evangelist is one that I think many tech leaders would like to make. Does it begin with a fundamental attitude shift?
Anderson: From a leadership point of view, it does take an attitude shift because you're moving into a service mentality.
It also requires a language shift away from the traditional 'tech speak.' IT veterans are comfortable with their knowledge of servers, networking, and how systems function. Historically their chops have been about the very technical aspects of the IT infrastructure and they speak in terms that other business unit leaders don't always understand.
We need to get out of that mode by speaking in terms of the experience and how work gets done. That requires a different set of skills and outlook. We need to become better storytellers to explain how specific solutions will drive business results.
TEP: Where corporate leadership is accustomed to seeing IT as a cost center and infrastructure provider, how do you get them to start seeing you as a strategic partner instead?
Anderson: You want to demonstrate how to change the way work gets done across the company to increase productivity, reduce costs, create transparency and dramatically improve the user experience.
You can do that in IT, but that won't wake people up. The ideal starting points are HR, facilities, purchasing and other departments that are also part of the shared service community. But do so in phases. Find one organization outside of IT that's open to creating services to address their business challenges, show some early wins and then use it as the case study to other business units.
Our IT organization uses an 'interlock' meeting to engage with each line of business every month. We use that meeting to stay aligned on progress, understand changing priorities, and keep the transformation road map up to date.
Most managers operate blindly without transparency into the work their teams are doing. When you provide that transparency, they start thinking of other ways IT can help them run their organizations more efficiently. You remove the blinders and unlock the potential of the management team by giving them this transparency. It's an amazing effect.
TEP: What advice would you offer CIOs about becoming service-oriented? Any pitfalls to avoid?
Anderson: I've seen some get stuck and frustrated with what they perceive to be a slow rate of change. The mistake is thinking that structuring the work means automating all the processes. They start drawing flowcharts to enable all this automation and never get anything done. They need a more incremental approach.
I've learned to think of this in two stages. First, capture the work with case management. Use a record keeping system that gives you transparency into the categories that the work fits in, where the work is coming from, who's doing the work, and how long it takes. You can use the information you capture to create a Pareto chart that shows the volume of work being done across the different categories. A Pareto chart is a bar chart that shows incidents or problems in descending order of frequency. This gives managers transparency into the work and they start improving all sorts of things immediately.
Once you have the Pareto of the work, you can surgically apply automation and workflow to address the highest-impact areas. You don't have to automate everything, focus on the areas of heavy volume or obviously inefficient processes. Once you automate the first chunk and streamline that work, the department has more time to identify the next chunk of work that can be automated and you get a virtuous cycle going.
You can quickly implement case management by identifying category, subcategory and assignment group. You can then move the work out of email and into the record keeping system. If a department is already using email aliases, those likely represent the same structure that you're looking for - they are categories and subcategories. And the people receiving those emails are the assignment group.
I also recommend that CIOs get exposed to a service-oriented IT environment. Find people who are actually doing this, that will give you a better handle on it and help you learn the language. Get a tour from those CIOs. Find some good reference customers and see it in the flesh. Take some pictures and screenshots to bring back to your organization.
It's not a continuing education course. There's no substitute for going out there and immersing yourself.
