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Internal and External aspects of the IT Leadership Role.

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

There are two sides to the IT leadership role: the external side and the internal side. The external side has inputs: technologies, suppliers, business trends, economic trends, world events, and competitors. Then internally, the IT leader interprets and develops strategies, manages meaning and attention, creates understanding and challenges the organization to cross boundaries and develop new products and markets. Finally the external outputs are of course customer and stockholder focused in new products, new markets, saleable competences and ultimately stockholder returns. Two other external output areas involve the community within which the organization operates and the natural environment which the organization may affect, for better or worse.

And you can see, there are six sets of stakeholders in any organization:
    financiers
    suppliers
    employees
    customers
    the environment
    the community.

Interpreting the External Inputs
The IT leader should look at the ‘input’ side of the external world by focusing on:
    technologies
    suppliers
    business trends
    economic trends
    world events
    competitors.

1)    Technologies
o    track old and new technologies
o    know where they are in their life cycle
o    know which technologies are opportunities, threats or neutral to the organization
2)    Suppliers
o    know the general product sets
o    know the company – reputation, reliability, service, culture, etc.
o    know the quality/risk trade-offs
o    know the supplier’s financial standing and strategic progress
3)    Business trends
o    understand changing trends in business governance, business stakeholders, boundaries, etc.
o    understand business structures – mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, etc.
o    be aware of generic business strategies (product, customer or operations focus, people strategies, balanced scorecard, etc.)
o    understand people trends and track changes to the psychological contract – understand knowledge management, telecommuting, paternalistic to peer management styles, complex adaptive systems, etc.
4)    Economic trends
o    understand broad economic concepts
o    understand the difference between the traditional trade-based economy and the ‘flow of money and information’ economy
o    track the technological economy within the world economy
o    understand globalization and its implications
5)    World events
o    keep track of world events and take a position on the effect they will have on the economy, business, technology and your organization
6)    Competitors
o    track the business progress of your organization’s competitors, their financial health and technological capabilities
o    identify technologies that can be opportunities or threats to your competitors
o    keep an eye on the competitors of your major technology suppliers.

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