Code Halos: How the Digital Lives of People, Things, and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business

Chapter ElevenMake IT Your Halo Heroes: Transform Your Technology Organization

Most of us delight in our Sunday evening consumer technology experiences—video-chatting with friends, relaxing with Netflix, listening to music on Pandora. But when we arrive at work on Monday morning, we find our technology experience archaic, limiting—and even lame. As a result, many internal IT organizations are dealing with a credibility crisis that was not of their making. Over the past few years, while IT has been dutifully ensuring that the software and hardware was working effectively, efficiently, and securely, the consumer technology market caught fire. As a result, most organizations’ information technology function is moving through its own version of the Crossroads Model. Many business leaders are wondering what they should expect from IT. Many, perhaps most, IT professionals are now also wondering what the future will hold.

There has been talk of “strategic computing” for years, but it’s something many market observers thought of as self-congratulatory hyperbole. Business and technology writer Nicholas Carr famously stated “IT Doesn’t Matter” in a 2003 edition of the Harvard Business Review.¹ When he wrote that, the notion may have been open for debate. Carr was right that some aspects of technology are simply cost centers or, at best, offer competitive parity. However, in the context of today—when SMAC technologies are directly infused into most every product and customer experience—the ...