In case you missed the bizarro story of the year, not one of the three Jeopardy contestants knew the missing word from the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, which art in heaven, This be thy name.”

Speaking of missing links …

We’ve been discussing what it takes for IT to be an effective organization. Depending how you slice and dice such things it takes business integration, process maturity, technical architecture, and human performance. A couple of weeks ago we dug into business integration, concluding that being good at this calls for strategy and direction; changes to culture, governance, and how they inter-relate; councils in place of most committees; and formulating projects in terms of intentional business change, not IT product delivery.

Nothing about this formulation is wrong. It’s just incomplete (I don’t, after all, like exhausting a topic too quickly!).

What I left out wasn’t “hallowed.” It was the two most important pieces of the business integration puzzle – the business/IT relationship and IT governance. That is, how the business/IT relationship is defined and how well it’s managed; and how strategic IT decisions are made and by whom.

The column in question did mention what’s most important in getting IT governance right. First and foremost it’s that governance – the formal rules, practices, and organizational structures through which important IT decisions are made should be thought of as IT’s decision-making guardrails.

IT’s metaphorical decision lane-markers should be controlled by management culture, defined as “how we do things around here.”

IT governance, that is, should be the outcome of shared assumptions, habits, and priorities. That it should be so is fortunate and convenient because that’s how IT’s most important decisions will be made whether IT management likes it or not.

That doesn’t mean the governance-guardrails don’t matter. Far from it, knowing who is accountable for making decisions; even more important who is accountable for making sure decisions get made; and also for articulating IT’s standards and priorities … on top of everything else this information is essential for engineering and fostering IT’s management culture.

It’s just that the culture matters more.

That leaves the business/IT relationship – how it’s defined; how it’s managed.

How it’s defined is a subject we’ve beaten to death in KJR, so I’ll make it quick:

The wrong definition is that IT is a supplier to internal customers. The right definition is that IT and the rest of the business are peers and collaborators in achieving intentional business change and in creating value for, real, paying, external customers.

That leaves the question of how IT can and should manage its relationships with the various parts of the business. Doing this well is essential, because IT’s ability to succeed is constrained by the level of trust business managers have in IT management’s understanding of their problems and circumstances.

The most important influences on the business/IT relationship are every IT employee’s day-to-day interactions with the business managers and staff they work with.

‘Nuff said.

Some CIOs create “relationship manager” positions within IT, whose occupants serve as liaisons.

It’s a good idea so far as it goes, but it has one serious limitation: Relationship managers have little ability to turn their insights into actions. They can listen and empathize all they want, but that doesn’t give them any authority over IT’s priorities.

Bob’s last word: The most important element of a well-managed business/IT relationship is embracing the wise words of the KJR Manifesto: “Before you can be strategic you have to be competent.”

Which is to say the business/IT relationship exists in one of two feedback states: It’s either a vicious or virtuous cycle. It’s a virtuous cycle when IT demonstrates competence in everything it does, so its business collaborators are confident it can deliver on their jointly developed strategies and plans.

In this virtuous cycle, each success creates the expectation of more success.

The alternative is a vicious cycle in which every IT failure creates the expectation that working with IT is a losing proposition. This leads to its business collaborators refusing to collaborate because really, what would be the point? Engaging an outside services firm would seem to be a more promising alternative.

Now on CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: “The surefire way to waste money on IT consultants.” What it’s about: Politics is an inescapable part of most consulting engagements. Don’t fall for it; don’t let your consultants fall for it either.