Mind the gap

One of the core skills you need as a leader of IT organisations is the ability to bridge the gap between the IT department and the business teams you support and/or partner with.  In my experience this is one the most common areas for problems arising between the business and IT departments in any company or sector.

I’ve outlined below the key concepts I think are essential for success in this area.

1. Relationship building: Don’t turn up to meetings with business leaders expecting them to see you as a peer or equal; to most business people IT is simply a support function that doesn’t generate revenue.  You have to win these people over and show that you deserve a place at the table with them.
2. Understand their pain: Don’t ever assume that what matters to you has any relevance to them.  Ask questions about what they care about; and listen!  If you go away and leave them with the feeling you’ve heard and understood them you’ll have gained a real foothold.  Following on directly from this;
3. Bring something to the table: You have to come along to your meeting with something that business leader will value, and it has to be more than your goodwill and best intentions!  If you don’t know what they value then ask around their team or peers, but you should have already worked this out (see point 2).  All the ‘C’ and board-level people I know have very little patience or time for informational chats, so if you don’t have something valuable to bring along then cancel the meeting.  They’ll appreciate it and you won’t earn a reputation as a time-waster.
4. Don’t be a bystander: This is aimed at board/staff meetings.  If you’ve been invited along to one of these meetings for example, you don’t have the luxury of being able to hang out and observe proceedings a couple of times before you contribute.  You have to be seen and heard, with quality, right from the start.  There’s no such thing as an innocent bystander in any proper leadership meeting.
5. Build your network: Don’t just rely on meetings for your contact with key business leaders, get out there and mingle at events and trade shows.  Creating a network of senior leaders across your company or business sector is the perfect way to increase the breadth of your knowledge, and to earn a reputation as someone that gets involved.
6. Find out their key success measures: What goals or key measurements are they using to gauge their success or progress?  What does their scorecard look like?  This is where you really have a great chance to show your value and keep your place on the team.  You must find a way to add your department’s numbers to their scorecard, and do it in such a way that they make sense to the business people.  By this I mean that it’s no use adding in the standard type of measurements IT teams use, like up-time or utilisation, you’ve got to find a way to make IT measurements show as business measurements.  If you can show a direct link between changes in IT and business measurements then you’re really adding to the bottom line!
7. Be a two-way translator: You have to be able to speak with your IT people in a way that makes it possible for them to see how what they do makes a difference to the business people, in a way that makes sense to them.  Equally, you have to be ready to counter the common belief that all IT people talk in jargon, by being able to describe IT concepts in a language the business people will understand.  Once you’re doing that you’ve really begun to bridge the gap.

The days of the IT department as an island in any company are long gone.  Don’t let yourself be turned into some castaway, get out there and make a difference to your business!