Fostering Innovation

Introduction

Are you a CIO? Then let's face it, nobody likes you. Not your team, not your boss, not your vendor partners, and, unfortunately, not your company's functional leaders. Because of the long hours you work, your family may not be too happy with you right now, and even your dog wonders where you've been all day.

How is that possible? You work around the clock; you are constantly juggling priorities and pulling off the impossible. You and your team have saved your company from disaster on more than one occasion.

IT leaders face many challenges. The first one is that IT can do more harm than good. When everything works perfectly, success is attributed to the functional leader. High sales result from desirable products and on-point marketing. When things go wrong, there's a good chance IT will take the blame. When the network is down, the registers aren't ringing, and the website is inaccessible, sales are impacted. When projects fail to deliver the expected value—IT again becomes the scapegoat.

Another challenge IT leaders face is that we accomplish only a small fraction of what is desired. How many initiatives did your team complete last year? How many were requested? The gap is usually large. It's easy to dream up an extra feature, capability, or report. But it takes time, effort, and money to deliver those things.

Another risk for IT leaders occurs when we don't understand or relate to our business. When we become enamored with solutions, we turn into hammers looking ...