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.

Pity the poor CIO.

Your average CIO has a lot in common with a child who is surrounded by cool toys but has too much homework to play with them.

The cool toys are the heaps of nifty new technologies IT can bring to bear on company strategies and tactics – everything from generative AI to no-code / low-code development environments, to automating any gadget they glance at by way of the Internet of Things, to … make your own list. It will be a long one.

The CIO’s homework? It’s making sure the IT organization is organized and tuned for success. This means ensuring the IT organization:

• Is properly integrated into the business as a whole.
• Operates through well-defined and maturely managed processes and practices.
• Establishes and continually evolves a well-engineered technical architecture.
• Leads and manages IT staff so as to maximize human performance.

This week’s homework assignment is business integration – the combination of factors that make sure the IT organization goes beyond “alignment,” and that the actual information technology IT provides is built into the business instead of just being bolted on.

Presumably, the value of IT going beyond alignment to integration is obvious enough that no additional explanation is needed.

How to achieve it? That’s another story. Here are some tips and techniques IT leaders can use to get started.

Setting Strategy and Direction. Whatever strategies, tactics, and overall direction a CIO might set, they either advance better business/IT integration or they don’t.

And if they don’t, prudent … no, make that minimally competent … CIOs will adjust IT’s plans so they do.

Most change starts with culture. “Culture” is how we do things around here. Most often, IT and business management share a culture that positions the IT organization as a supplier of information technology to its “internal customers.” Here in KJR-land we’ve beat the internal-customer fallacy to death already (for example, in this piece, which ran in InfoWorld in 1996).

With strong business integration, business and IT management think of each other as peers and collaborators in creating value for Real Paying (External) Customers.

Culture provides lane markers. Governance provides guardrails. Governance matters – no doubt about it. It establishes processes and practices that help prevent major errors in judgment.

But overemphasizing the role governance plays in setting IT’s direction and priorities can turn the IT organization into a stifling, choking bureaucracy.

Councils over committees: IT needs decisions, on multiple topics and multiple levels, and it can’t and shouldn’t make them unilaterally.

The usual solution is to form steering committees to make them with full business involvement.

But better than the usual solution are to form councils rather than committees. The difference? Committee members join in order to represent their part of the business and make sure they get their fair share of things.

Council members join as leaders of the whole enterprise. They bring special knowledge of areas they lead or have led, but aren’t there to represent their interests.

There’s no such thing as an IT project. IT projects are how IT-as-supplier delivers working information technology … its product … to its internal customers. But as IT isn’t a supplier to internal customers, it shouldn’t have IT projects at all. The projects IT gets involved in aren’t about delivering technology. They’re about intentional business change.

Bob’s last word: It’s worth pointing out that the intentional business change IT gets involved in comes in three flavors: (1) Business process improvement; (2) decision support; and (3) a better customer experience … that is, external paying customer experience … when interacting with the company.

What, not a better user experience?

Well, sure, except that the point of a better customer experience is to make the company’s virtual cash register go “ching!” so it’s important that external customers enjoy, or at least aren’t excessively irritated by the company’s customer interface.

The point of a better user experience is that it lets them do their work more effectively when they interact with the applications that support the work they do.

Bob’s sales pitch: Want to help out the cause here in KJR-land? Write an Amazon.com review for your favorite KJR title.

Or even your least-favorite title. Even a negative review about one of my books helps out the cause. That’s because a large total number of reviews helps establish a book as being real.

Now on CIO.com’s CIO Survival Guide: “The surefire way to waste money on IT consultants.” What it’s about: Politics are an inescapable part of most consulting engagements. Just don’t make politics the point.