Where do IT and your most senior IT leader belong on the Org Chart? Economic decline and increased understanding of technology have lead organizations to re-evaluate the proper placement of their most senior IT leader. This series of articles is aimed at reducing the complexity of this evaluation to three manageable phases.
In our last article, we discussed Phase 1: The Business Value of IT and Phase 2: IT's needs. Today, we will review the final phase, Evaluation of the IT leader.
Phase 3: Evaluation of the IT leader:
Every member of the organization has an impact on the corporate strategy and tactics. This evaluation is aimed at determine the level or type of impact the senior IT leader will have on the organization.At this stage, the IT leader may be a bit biased, so they can no longer make a positive contrbution. This process and the resultant decision must now be placed in the hands of the CEO, the proposed supervisor, and possibly the board of directors. The following are a few key points for the descision making team to consider before moving forward.
Points to consider:
Will the proposed supervisor have sufficient bandwidth to support the technology unit?
Will the CTO/CIO have an appropriate level of influence on business strategy under the proposed leadership? Too little or too much influence can be devastating.
Will the CEO have an appropriate level of influence on the IT strategy under the proposed leadership?
Does the IT leader possess greater strategic or tactical strengths?
Does the proposed placement allow the organization to fully capitalize those strengths?
There are many additional points to consider before making your final decision, but the answers to these questions should identify much of the risk related to poor placement.
Remember, regardless of placement on the Org chart, the IT leader can play a role in strategy definition without reporting directly to the CEO. Often times the IT leader can have the greatest influence through limited participation in leadership committees that transcend the org chart.
Additional Phases:
Phase 1: Evaluating IT's business value
Phase 2: Evaluating the IT Team's Needs
About the Author:
Brian Blanchard is a highly accomplished professional who is successful in creating vision, identifying opportunities, building organizations, and delivering strong revenues and profits within intensively competitive markets. His strengths include anticipating industry changes and driving the introduction of new products, services, and best practices to improve market positioning and strengthen bottom-line financial performance.
He is skilled in partnering with clients, teams, vendors, and management to guide the architectural design, development and delivery of customer-centric technology solutions with high ROI.
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