Like an overplayed recording, everyone
exhorts IT professionals to become better aligned with the business areas
they support. Far too little time is spent explaining why alignment
is important and how to go about becoming better aligned. This Executive
Report aims to fill these voids and give IT professionals practical
advice for seeking and attaining alignment with the business of their
company.
Everyone would agree that the 21st
century IT organization is an essential and integral component of
corporate operations, and that technology plays a dominant role in
corporate strategy. For many companies, their applications are the
predominant way in which they interact with their customers. Moreover, new
employees are increasingly computer literate and technically proficient,
demanding access to powerful technologies and applications to perform
their jobs. Technology and business processes have become inexorably
intertwined. Business and IT are no longer mutually exclusive terms.
Technology may be growing in importance,
but at the same time IT organizations are subject to the identical
business pressures reshaping their companies. In a results-oriented
economy, value-adding skills -- activities that are unique and
offer competitive advantage -- are cherished over commodity skills,
activities that tend to be generic and have little competitive worth.
Applying this yardstick, the worth of the IT organization today is
measured by the unique value that it can provide to the business, not by
the commodity functions that can be easily sourced to outside providers.
For IT, survival clearly means shedding
commodity skills and moving up the value chain. To punch through the
proverbial "glass ceiling," IT must become more business-focused
and take a larger role in originating and implementing strategic,
value-adding ideas. Moving up the value chain gives IT the ability to make
a greater contribution to the success of the business, brings better
recognition and pay, and allows IT to better predict and prepare for
trends before they affect the company.
A pre-requisite to moving up the value
chain, however, is having a broad base of business knowledge.
The Knowledge Bases
Underlying all issues of IT / business
alignment are the twin pillars of knowledge and perspective. A
knowledgeable IT organization will inevitably become a value-adding one.
Gaining the perspectives of business users by "walking a mile in
their shoes," gives IT a basis for identifying and proposing ideas
that are truly value-adding rather than incremental.
There are three main types of knowledge
that every IT professional must acquire: company knowledge, industry
knowledge and functional knowledge. These knowledge bases, coupled with
well developed consulting skills are the power that will fuel IT's rise up
the value chain.
Company Knowledge
You can never know enough about your
company. The cornerstone for moving up the IT value chain is developing a
detailed understanding of your company -- its goals, performance,
products, services, operations and strategies. Only through this business
knowledge can IT identify and implement internal solutions capable of
enhancing efficiency and improving operations. Combined with industry
knowledge, company knowledge permits IT to identify strategic
opportunities to enhance performance, build markets, outflank competitors
and offer solutions proactively rather than reactively to business
demands. At a minimum, you should know your company's mission statement;
structure and organization; management team members; historical
performance; product and service lines; marketing and sales strategies;
competitors, partners and major customers; and the "way things
work" -- the informal network for getting things done.
Industry Knowledge
Industry knowledge covers the environment
in which your company operates, giving you an awareness of the market, the
machinations of competitors and peers, and pressing issues and challenges.
Following industry trends allows you to discover potential opportunities
for improvements or ways to create additional value through new products
and services. Without industry knowledge, you lack the context for
evaluating your company's performance and the effectiveness of its IT
initiatives. You should be familiar with market issues and opportunities,
regulatory pressures, trends, challenges, key players and IT usage in your
industry.
Functional Knowledge
A set of functional areas such as HR,
accounting, customer support, marketing and IT underpin every business.
Each function is its own specialty, with its own knowledge, challenges and
needs. From a business perspective, deep functional knowledge is a
valuable specialty skill. Developing value-adding ideas and systems for a
functional area requires strong knowledge of that area. To gain knowledge
about a particular functional area, you should learn the roles and
responsibilities of the area, general issues and trends affecting it, best
practices that can be applied within it, and company-specific issues,
challenges and opportunities.
Consulting Knowledge
While not business knowledge in the pure
sense, consulting skills immeasurably improve your ability to acquire and
communicate business knowledge. Developing and selling breakthrough ideas
to management requires broad business and technology knowledge, strategic
thinking and presentation skills. Learning these basic skills will help
you to think "out of the box" and present your ideas to others
in a compelling way. Strong consulting skills include analytical skills,
strategic thinking skills, sales skills, presentation skills and writing
skills, combined with a broad technology viewpoint.
The Knowledge Sources
Building a base of valuable business
knowledge is a lifetime pursuit, but as with any large endeavor, it takes
place a step at a time. The categories of business knowledge that an IT
professional will find useful are broad. Yet for each category, specific
steps and actions can be taken to acquire the relevant knowledge. Many
techniques, tools and tricks exist to help an inquisitive learner begin to
amass a formidable amount of knowledge.
How much business knowledge is enough? In
truth, you can never have enough business knowledge. The best approach to
acquiring business knowledge is to strike a balance between the desire to
seek knowledge and apply it in a real-world environment. To that end, the
golden rules for acquiring business knowledge are:
- Set aside daily time for learning --
devote at least an hour a day to learning, and your knowledge base
will quickly grow.
- Concentrate on what is relevant -- be
wary of spending an inordinate amount of time learning details that
aren't applicable to your work situation and focus instead on what is
relevant and important to your job, company and industry.
- Practice "just enough"
learning -- resist acquiring knowledge for knowledge's sake, but
learn enough to bring immediate value to your job.
The Action Plan
Gaining knowledge through on-the-job
assimilation is possible, but most IT professionals will want to follow a
plan of action to ensure they are acquiring the right categories of
knowledge. A plan of action sets reasonable goals for knowledge
acquisition given the time available for study. It identifies how the
desired knowledge will be obtained and sets milestones for its attainment.
Action plans for learning can be created as a personal guide, or more
formally as part of the IT career planning process. First, evaluate your
current level of knowledge. Then pick areas that you need to concentrate
on and set appropriate goals. Identify the sources of knowledge that you
will research, and lay out a schedule, ideally over a one-year horizon, to
accomplish your goals.
Techniques to Acquire Business Knowledge
Every person learns according to his or
her individual style and pace, but there are some basic tips, tricks and
techniques to jumpstart the learning process and make it more effective.
When applied diligently and creatively, these techniques can be enormously
successful. Of the dozens of potential activities that an IT professional
could perform to acquire knowledge, here are eight techniques that have
consistently proven to boost business knowledge.
- Review corporate information sources,
both written and oral, to learn about the inner workings, strategies,
plans and future directions of your company, competitors and
customers.
- Research your company's and
competitors' web sites to gain invaluable insight into operations and
performance, and review industry sites to discover trends, issues and
opportunities.
- Follow the trade press, including
magazines, newspapers and newsletters to add another layer of insight
into your organization, its products, customers or competitors.
- Participate in industry groups and
roundtables to pick up business knowledge, acquaint yourself with
issues dominating your community, network with similarly situated
peers and polish your presentation skills.
- Attend tradeshows to gain industry
knowledge, network with peers, establish contacts for future
information-sharing and gather vendor/product information.
- Take courses -- formal degree
programs, executive seminars, commercial training, or e-learning -- to
gain specific business knowledge.
- Offer corporate "tours of
duty" to allow company personnel to experience and explore the
workings of other departments, and temporary transfers or exchanges to
obtain a deeper sense of a particular area.
- Find a mentor, ideally from the
business side of the company or a management consultant, who can
contribute to building a base of business knowledge and professional
growth.
Happily, the days of closeted IT
technicians are over. More than ever, executives are turning to technology
as a way to gain competitive advantage and build stockholder value. To
thrive in the future, IT organizations must become originators of new
technology-based business strategies rather than remain
implementers and operators of other people's ideas. A solid base of
business knowledge is essential to this goal. Every IT professional should
create a long-term plan for acquiring business skills, starting with the
simple investment of an hour a day.
