I want to address a controversial aspect of IT Leadership, and why I see it being a relatively common contributor to why IT organizations get stuck in the middle of Level 2 Business-IT Maturity.
Many years ago, while leading a multi-year longitudinal study of IT organizational transformations, the research team hypothesized that the leadership style and approach needed to transform from Level 1 to Level 2 was quite different from that required to get from Level 2 to Level 3. In my last post, I referred to Joseph Juran’s Managerial Breakthrough book of 1964, where he distinguishes between “control” and “breakthrough.” I believe that the Level 1 to Level 2 journey is largely about controlwhile the Level 2 to Level 3 journey is largely about breakthrough. I have seen CIO’s that are much better at leading a control-oriented IT organization, and other CIO’s that are better at leading one that is breakthrough-oriented. I have rarely seen CIO’s that are equally adept at both, and that are therefore capable of leading their IT organizations on the entire journey from Level 1 to Level 3.
IT leadership, of course, is about much more than the CIO. The CIO’s leadership team, IT managers, and ultimately, everyone in the IT organization has a leadership role. However, if the CIO is not bringing the right leadership style and focus (e.g, breakthroughto get from Level 2 to Level 3) to organizational transformation, her leadership team is unlikely to do so. If the IT leadership team is not bringing the right style and focus, it is highly unlikely that IT managers will, and so on. While I don’t believe that change always begins at the top (though it often does), transformational change is ultimately led from the top.
As an example, I recently worked with a systems development organization to help them redesign their IT Operating Model for increased speed and agility. In trying to model the desired end-state behaviors, we have moved quickly through a series of highly participative workshops and reached agreement on the design of the new Operating Model that everyone agrees is just what is needed. The organization’s members were (mostly) excited about the changes, and eager to get on with it, but quickly lost momentum as the CIO insisted on more and more detail, financial business cases and so on. He put the leadership team through a lengthy series of monthly reviews. Nine months later, little change has happened, the enthusiasm is waning, the momentum that had been established is gone, and the organizational has been “hoist by it’s own petard” as the saying goes – the strong control mindset (prevention of bad change) squeezing out the ambitions for breakthrough (creating good change).
I think one lesson here is reflected in Einstein’s quote, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” If you are trying to get from Level 2 to Level 3, look carefully at the leadership and management practices that got you to Level 2.
