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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

Are you tired of the phrase “perfect storm”?

Me too. But tired or not, one is hitting IT right now. Several interconnected trends are affecting the business world in ways that will … and should … radically redefine IT’s role. Among them:

Cloud 3.0

Cloud 1.0 was playing with cheap or free stuff, notably but not limited to Amazon Web Services. Because Cloud 1.0 services were cheap or free, the IT pundit class concluded Cloud computing was going to be dramatically more economical than owned infrastructure.

Cloud 2.0 consists of (present tense because it’s going strong) important but standalone systems. Salesforce is an example. While Salesforce is integratable, most Salesforce implementations were and are standalone “islands of automation” to use a quaint phrase from a bygone era. Cloud 2.0 wasn’t/isn’t cheap or free.

Cloud 3.0 is serious enterprise-class computing that makes use of Cloud services and architecture. By serious, I mean it has the same characteristics as projects IT is accustomed to dealing with. Cloud 3.0 provides systems that are integrated into the rest of the applications and information portfolio; they make use of the enterprise directory service for identity management; and they’re subjected to the same rigorous software quality assurance and change control protocols as systems that run on owned infrastructure.

IT could ignore Cloud 1.0 and Cloud 2.0. Cloud 3.0? IT will be neck-deep in Cloud 3.0 projects whether it takes the lead or is dragged into them, kicking and screaming.

Shadow IT

Shadow IT isn’t so much a second, separate trend as it is the flip side of the Cloud coin.

Gartner has famously predicted that by 2017, marketing departments will have bigger IT budgets than IT departments and marketing isn’t the only department outside IT that buys information technology independently. Sales is an obvious example, routinely signing contracts with Salesforce.com without asking IT’s permission first (see Cloud 2.0, above).

Here’s what’s rarely mentioned: Companies have invested large amounts of time, effort, and political capital developing IT governance processes. Depending who you ask and after how much beer, this is either because companies want to gain maximum business advantage from their investments in information technology, or because business executives don’t trust IT do anything other than play with the latest and greatest shiny ball unless the rest of the business supervises it closely.

So here’s the question: Given that Marketing doesn’t, in most companies, have a strong reputation for tight cost discipline, does anyone really think CEOs are going to give Marketing, or any other department for that matter, a free rein when it comes to its non-IT IT spending?

Me neither.

The digital enterprise

Okay, okay. Yes, this is one of those so-visionary-it-might-be hallucination buzzphrases. Except that, shorn of its buzzphrasey trendiness there’s a lot of current reality behind it. In particular, there’s the rise of smart products that don’t keep their smarts to themselves — products that constantly collect data and communicate it to what I sure hope we soon stop calling “big data” repositories through what I hope even more we stop calling “the Internet of things.”

From IT’s perspective, this is a big, big deal, because …

Back in the day, most companies that sold technology products kept internal IT and product-development IT separate. Merge them and either the company would soon consist of nothing but cobbler’s children as product development sucked all of the priority out of internal support projects, or products would become second-rate as internal priorities had the opposite impact.

That worked when product IT and internal IT had no technological point of contact.

But smart products that send data to internal databases for use in customer support and marketing analytics are seriously smudging the line separating internal and external IT.

Politically, CIOs might win biggest by sitting this dance out, watching product development, marketing, and customer service duke it out in the silo wars, then riding in as the white knight that can pull it all together. After all, most business executives value solutions much more than they value prevention.

Another reason to wait on the sidelines: The most obvious organizational solution for all this — a dramatic expansion of central IT — would look like empire building should you propose it.

But waiting on the sidelines is the opposite of leadership.

Fortunately, there’s a better solution. Unfortunately, we’re out of space for this week.

So stay tuned.

* * *

Six years ago I published one of the most important columns I ever wrote — “The portal,” describing a better way to think about personal computers, although if I wrote it today I’d add tablets and smartphones.

And eighteen years ago, in InfoWorld’s “IS Survival Guide,” I took my first shot at the difference between productivity and effectiveness.

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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

Imagine your company, like so many others, makes use of some form of stacked ranking system in its employee performance management process.

Now imagine you’re the CIO, and don’t much like it.

What do you do about it?

Business executives find themselves in this sort of situation all the time. It’s why politics is a good thing, in spite of the word’s negative connotations: Politics is the art of finding a way forward when people disagree about the best path forward.

Which is pretty much every time people (1) have to find a path forward; and (2) aren’t alone.

Another piece of the puzzle: There’s an immeasurable but critical aspect to personal effectiveness when you’re an executive, called political capital. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. If you haven’t, you probably haven’t accumulated any. If you have, you know … it’s a combination of trust earned, favors provided, and reputation acquired for not needlessly making waves over every decision you don’t completely agree with.

If you’ve accumulated political capital, live with stacked ranking, and don’t like it, you probably … and probably, wisely … decided there’s no point expending any trying to fight it.

When you’re an executive, that is, you often have to support positions you don’t entirely agree with, and sometimes have to support positions you vehemently disagree with.

Support? Yes, support. From a personal-integrity perspective, this can be something of a challenge, as when someone who reports to you asks you point blank how you can defend such a cockamamie system. Your alternatives:

  • “Yes, it is a cockamamie system, but you know what those bureaucrats in HR are like.”
  • “As leaders we need to take responsibility for recognizing that some employees aren’t measuring up. This is part of it.”
  • “Gee, I’m late for a meeting. We’ll have to continue this conversation another time.”

Better but not good: “I don’t fully agree with a lot of things. When I don’t I’m not always right. Regardless, when the organization makes decisions I support them because that’s part of being a leader. And no, I won’t list which ones I do and don’t like.”

However you decide to answer, stacked ranking really fits only a very particular circumstance — an organization plagued with complacency and mediocrity, and overstaffed because of it. Any place else it’s a seriously bad idea.

So let’s pretend, just among ourselves, you think getting rid of stacked ranking is important enough that you’re willing to do something about it. Your first step is to find out why the company first adopted the practice. Make sure the original root cause has been fixed. Otherwise, don’t even try.

If you’re still willing to expend some of that political capital we were talking about earlier, as with financial capital, a willingness to spend the political kind isn’t the same as the knowing what to spend it on.

Your down payment is discreetly discussing the matter with your closest confidants among your fellow executives. If you’re all alone in this, give up, and unless they think there’s likely to be significant support for the change among the rest of the executive leadership team, give up.

Next: Amass literature that supports your position, and that offers practical alternatives, because whatever its flaws, stacked ranking is practical. Also, with your confidants, accumulate a half-dozen to a dozen examples of good employees who left the company because of the system.

Next: Assess the head of Human Resources. He or she might be wanting to change the system, but not brave (or foolish) enough to take the lead. If so, make HR your next stop. If not, wait until just after the next review cycle — changing a system like this mid-cycle is worse than having the system. Timing matters.

Then, meet with the CEO. Announce the subject. Provide the best of the best of the literature. Explain that you’ve spoken with quite a few members of the executive team, and there’s a lot of support for doing something different.

Ask to put the subject on the agenda of the next executive leadership team meeting, at which you make your points and suggest the company bring in some independent experts to assess the situation and recommend a course of action.

Yes, consultants. There is a place in the world for them (us), and this is one of them … defusing a politically explosive situation by providing an independent perspective.

Because part of winning the point is acknowledging you might be wrong about it.

One more thing: Win or lose, your political capital is now depleted. Don’t take any other strong stands until you’ve had a chance to replenish it.

* * *

Don’t worry. I’m not trying to drum up business. This isn’t one of my consulting topics. It isn’t even one of our (aka Dell Global Business Consulting’s) topics.

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