IT Governance: Guidelines for Directors

CHAPTER 10: IT’S ALL ABOUT LEADERSHIP

The IT Governance Institute recently observed that, while boards are happy to focus on strategy and strategic objectives, they are far less happy to deal with IT, even though IT is so fundamental to business success. It identified three reasons for this state of affairs:

• ‘IT requires more technical insight than do other disciplines to understand how it enables the enterprise and creates risks and opportunities.

• IT has traditionally been treated as an entity separate to the business.

• IT is complex, even more so in the extended enterprise operating in a networked economy.’⁶⁶

This statement is kind, and true – as far as it goes.

There is another side to the story, and that is that some of the people ...