Wednesday, August 9th, 2006...2:06 pm
Printable CEO Redefines IT
David Seah has posted his comments on my answers to his questions regarding the adaptation of the Printable CEO (PCEO) for the IT industry.
Read David’s thoughts then read on.
I totally agree with David’s assessments of the Dilemma of Support and Customer-Facing Support wholeheartedly. I feel, and have felt, that way much of the time in my various flavors of IT work that I have done in the last 10 years.
I am not so sure that I agree with his statement that my goals are “defensive”. For example, there is a lot that goes into creating an infrastructure that allows SrVP X to get to the Internet. I can guarantee you that SrVP X does not care how it gets there, he just knows that it does. But the day that it does not get to the Internet, it is IT responsibility to get it fixed. SrVP X is not going to go in and trace the problem because he has a good understanding of the infrastructure of the company.
Another thought is that every company does not have the need for the “latest and greatest tools”. Most universities have a number of measurement devices that only run on Windows 98. It blows my mind, but it is true. So giving them Windows XP would actually kill them in the water. One rule in IT is never upgrade as soon as something comes out. That is especially true for Microsoft products. You are only looking at a number of long nights to get things back running.
And the last point about showing the organization how IT is making it more productive is almost impossible to measure. Sure we could cut off all of the IT things and go pen and paper for a week, then people would be groaning about how sloooow everything takes…BOOM! IT makes people more productive.
Maybe there is no way to measure tangible achievement in IT. It is so reactive that, by its nature, it is hard to track. I will think on it a little more before I give in to the idea that IT is not made for the PCEO.
- Michael
3 Comments
August 9th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Hey Michael!
By “defensive”, I mean that largely that they’re designed to protect what exists. We’re talking about the same thing, I think…when you say that IT is so “reactive” by nature, that’s the same thing: response to threat, acting to mitigate and protect. That is defense.
My question really is, maybe, whether IT itself could be defined in PROACTIVE terms. I suspect it can. It might be useful to see how achievement is already tracked in IT. How is that done?
August 9th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
The problem is the word User. I don’t like being considered a ‘user’ by our IT department. As if I am the addict and they are the pusher. “Hey man, take this new office version.” And when all your files are in that format I’m addicted, so I can’t live without their stuff anymore. So I don’t want to be a user.
I want to be a client. I want to choose what I use. And we pay for it, don’t we? IT is support, SG&A, overhead, additional cost. We, the organization, we are paying, so we want to be the client. You can be our provider. As long as you deliver value for money.
Here we are. Look at IT as creating value for me, the internal client. To determine your objectives, consider the good old Value Chain. You have to sell your services, to produce them, to deliver them and then to maintain them.
Now take the objectives as David has reformulated them and change only the order:
Sell:
demonstrate to the organization how IT is making the company more productive, more profitable, and how individual users are benefiting from all the improvements that are going on.
Produce:
maximize productivity with an easy-to-navigate, easy to understand technology infrastructure
maintain the latest and greatest tools for all users
Deliver:
provide classes and information to show users great time-saving tricks
Maintain:
provide safety and security for important company and personal data so it is never lost or compromised
Now you can ask yourselves great ‘printable CEO’ questions: are you spending enough time and effort in each area? How is your sales department doing? Are you producing products for which there is no market? How is packaging and delivery?
Good luck, and thanks for starting this intersting discussion!
August 24th, 2006 at 10:22 am
I’ve read CGT and I must admit that I’m a bit puzzled since, being in IT (well, less and less see PS), that quite doesn’t fit to me.
But that is probably because the existing CGT is for someone that needs to *sell* something. As have already been discussed here or there (above ?), IT is something that the enterprise has to pay for. We’re a support service for the rest of the enterprise. We’re necessary evil.
Given that, I would then state that some goals for IT would be some things that go toward the benefit of the clients (=clients of IT or “users”, even if clickglue does not like the term;)
I’d propose some things like (for top priorities):
-does this offer a new, desired, service to the customer ?
-does this reduce cost ?
-does this improve productivity (of the customer, of IT itself to service the customers)
-does this improves quality of existing services ?
Since these would be top priorities for me, it could be hard to find lesser priority items. I guess I have to think a bit more about it.
PS: I’ve just turned to Lean and must admit that I’m now devoted to it.
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