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CIO Resolutions 2007 According to Gartner
EGHAM, UK -- Gartner Inc. unveiled a preview of its annual CIO New Year Resolutions, advising CIOs what to “start, do more of, stop as well as learn” in 2007. The Gartner resolutions are designed to help CIOs create more value for their business and differentiate their own performance from that of their peers.
“2007 will see mounting demand for business growth and agility, rapid development of consumer technology and increasing availability of new infrastructure tools, at the same time as the evolution of the IT organization continues to pick up pace,” said John Mahoney, vice president and analyst at Gartner. “This will require CIOs to have a fairly ambitious list of new year resolutions for 2007, in addition to the big main agenda projects that other people depend on them to deliver in a timely way.”
Gartner’s advice on what CIOs should start in 2007:
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Create an IT leadership generation succession plan
Track and improve the environmental performance of your IT
Identify, enable and provide incentives for true innovators
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As the baby boomer generation, born 1946-1964, start to retire en masse, IT departments will lose wisdom and leadership. According to Gartner, this also presents an opportunity to clear out some dead wood; for example people that were over-promoted in the early days of IT and some out-dated attitudes stifling progressive thought.
In addition, identifying individuals with the creativity, ability and a determination to overcome corporate inertia and take new ideas to action is paramount for IT to deliver business innovation. In a poll at the Gartner Symposium this autumn, 80 percent of respondents said this is a priority, however, only 20 percent had a systematic innovation program in place.
Gartner’s advice on what CIOs should do more of in 2007:
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Help HR become strategic
Improve frontline business experience
Re-establish visibility of total enterprise spend on technology
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Social networks, collaboration, remote working, collective intelligence and web 2.0; the range of socio-technical phenomena allowing people to interact, create value and contribute it in new ways is changing fast. This will transform the nature of business organization, labor supply, rights and responsibilities.
CIOs should also consider a scheme to get the IT leadership team into frontline jobs for at least one week each year to experience the daily realities of how the business operates. Over time, this transforms the business’ perception of the IT organisation's commitment and reveal powerful new insights on issues like system utilisation and change management priorities.
Gartner’s advice on what CIOs should stop doing in 2007:
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Returning savings from cost efficiencies
Treating IT governance as procedure
Obsessing about the minutiae of technology
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CIOs have become masters at managing and reducing IT costs. While sometimes essential, Mahoney warned it has become damaging to longer term strategies for growth and leads to under-investment in infrastructure.
“Just like losing weight, giving up smoking and reviewing your pension – there are some important things in IT leadership without deadlines that never quite seem to get done,” said Raskino. “Set them as 2007 resolutions before it’s too late.”
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