Monday, August 7th, 2006...12:08 pm
Thoughts about the Printable CEO
I did a lot of thinking on the previous post regarding adaptation to the Printable CEO (PCEO) to Information Technology (IT). David Seah wrote a nice post and challenged readers to three questions:
- What is the Goal of Information Technology?
- To Whom is the Goal of IT Important, Not Counting IT Professionals?
- What are the tangible signs that tell us that IT is actually fulfilling its goals?
I pondered these over the weekend, especially in the vein that I, as a 1-man IT Department, now have many more roles than I did in my previous employment.
I jotted these thoughts down and will post them as well to David’ site.
What is the Goal of Information Technology?
- to provide a stable and secure infrastructure to maximize productivity
- to keep hardware and software current with needs of the users
- to support all users of infrastructure to achieve basic literacy and competence with basic IT tools
- to maintain a security program that protects the investments put into it
- to provide cost-effective results to achieve results and improve effiency
- to provide communication about plans and projects that are IT-related that affect the whole organization
To Whom is the Goal of IT Important, Not Counting IT Professionals?
The goal of IT should be important to everyone in the organization. The tools that IT provides ensure that communications are available between the organization and the customer. The knowledge that IT provides can help make long processes more streamlined therby saving individual time and company money.
What are the tangible signs that tell us that IT is actually fulfilling its goals?
The only real tangible sign is that the business is running. When things break in IT, some process stops dead in the water. Whether it is a down printer that is needed to print out proposals, to a down computer that is the SR VP’s before his big meeting, to email that stops communication, to a down internet link that shuts down multiple streams, when IT breaks, more than just IT breaks.
Please send any comments to me or leave in the comments section.
- Michael
3 Comments
August 8th, 2006 at 1:39 am
Michael:
I believe everything you said is true, but it somehow doesn’t capture the soul of IT. If we could get our jobs done with pens and postcards, the business would still continue. Many, many businesses are so dependent on IT that I think we belive that IT IS the business– but it is simply a tool for productivity, and hopefully, finding a way to enhance customer experiences as they interact with the company. Companies should always first be about customers: finding them, servicing them, keeping them. Getting repeat business. IT is so powerful that for some it is like a talisman– if we implement it correctly, our business will thrive. But the truth is that IT is just a tool in the service of the company to find and satisfy customers.
August 9th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
I also believe that the business would survive with pen and postcard because it did! The computer is barely 25 years old. This country is over 200 years old, so we did live without computers for a long time. I have not been in company where I thought that IT was the business so I cannot comment much on that. I have been in a public university and now in a local municipality so we are all about the customer, cause that is who pays our bills. But IT is now a crucial component to making a business thrive, but it is still rooted in reactive support.
August 11th, 2006 at 4:59 am
[...] The experiment in trans-blog inquiry continues! To recap, Michael and I were chatting about an IT-specific version of the Concrete Goals Tracker. He followed up with his thoughts on this in his August 7 post by answering the three questions I had posed earlier: [...]
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