Chapter 9
Marketing IT's Value
Now that you've read this far into the book and have begun to apply the strategies and philosophies my colleagues espouse, you're ready to tackle marketing. This chapter is purposefully near the end of the book, because no one can start marketing an IT organization until the staff's leadership capabilities are developed and it has adopted a service-oriented and consultative mindset, with well-honed skills in change leadership, project management, political savvy, business requirements gathering, and negotiating.
In fact, I believe marketing is the most important of the business disciplines and can be the most fun, as you'll soon discover. The formulation of the IT organization's image as “service provider of choice” is one of the most important factors for a successful IT cultural transformation. By and large our clients don't understand what we do. We need to market internally to have a shot at increasing our credibility, building partnerships, and turning around any negative perceptions. We live in a world in which perception matters, and this is particularly true for internal IT organizations in today's business world. If clients perceive us as mere code changers, network fixers, and PC installers, how will they react when IT tries to move into a more strategic role in the organization?
In other cases, IT damages its own image and reputation by projecting an arrogant air that says, “We know what's best for the business because we're the technical ...
