IT Missional Misalignment vs. Strategic IT Investment

Often when working with businesses and organizations that (1) have an IT department, (2) have contracted a third party to act as an IT department, or (3) have the solo “IT Guru” on staff, we find that there is a disconnect between what that IT person/department thinks is their job and what their job really should be.  Most IT personnel think of themselves as virtual firefighters – just keep the existing IT-related equipment and software running.  Certainly, that is an important aspect of their job, but it is far from their primary responsibility (or should be).

Every Organization Today Is an IT-Driven Organization

Think about this for a second – what organization in the 2020’s doesn’t have mission-critical reliance upon IT-related technologies and communications?  Every organization needs Internet access, email and other digital communications, a reliable network infrastructure, and IT devices that provide users consistent and reliable access to these necessary services.  If those IT services and devices malfunction, the entire organization suffers losses from losses in efficiencies, lost opportunities, and potentially monetary losses.  Since every organization is IT-dependent, it’s time that business owners and investors look at IT as foundational to their company’s success, rather than an add-on.

The Short-Sighted IT Firefighter

Many times, IT departments and personnel fall into the day-to-day trap of keeping everything running and mistake that for their mission.  IT personnel further tend to create “job security” through unnecessary complexities and artificially creating reliance upon their personal skills.  This is often in response to a siloed department structure where each department is vying for supremacy and importance.  The departments begin to build walls over time and engage in turf-protection, or even worse, turf wars to protect their departments. 

Nevertheless, no matter what the reason, mistaking firefighting (resolving the day-to-day issues) as the primary mission of IT is incredibly short-sighted.  Having this mindset creates a house of cards over time as IT finds band-aid workarounds to keep things moving along until there are too many balls to juggle and plates to spin. 

Since every organization has as part of its foundation a dependency upon IT, we must rethink our approach to IT.  IT is no longer a convenience – it is a business investment that yields real return.  Imagine the lost opportunities and efficiencies when an organization’s IT house of cards collapses, or the proverbial juggled balls and spinning plates begin to tumble.  You can only cheap your way out in IT for so long before you pay the consequences for doing so.

Strategic IT Investment and Missional Alignment

The IT department (either internal or contracted) needs to see themselves as a critical driver for the missional success of any business or organization.  IT should be represented in organizational strategic planning.  Most large companies can afford a CIO to provide that IT strategic overview.  Smaller companies might get input from their staffed IT person; but IT personnel, while great at problem solving, often have not been exposed to strategic planning initiatives and engineering best practices for IT deployment.  Adding the mindset of trying to keep everyone happy and not spend any more money than they think necessary, and that further complicates their contributions to strategic planning.

 Accordingly, it is often beneficial to employ third party consulting to partner and advise on how to align their dependence upon IT with the mission of the company or organization in a way that is sustainable, secure, and efficient.  At TCS, we call this our vCIO service.  Our mission is to empower organizations and businesses to better serve their client base by using secure and efficient business systems.  One of the ways we do that is by providing insights as how best to approach (and sometimes reboot) their IT goals and approaches moving forward.  We can accomplish that by coming alongside your existing IT personnel and assisting them with mission alignment, or we can completely manage IT as a contracted third-party – whatever and whichever works best for your organization.  Simply put, the business of TCS essentially is to transform IT from a liability into a force multiplier and competitive advantage for respective organizations.  We succeed to the degree that you succeed, and we wouldn’t have it any other way!