What do you do if innovation is hindering your strategic IT management decision making?

1 Assess your innovation maturity

Before you can decide how to manage innovation in your IT department, you need to understand your current level of innovation maturity. This means evaluating how well you define, measure, and execute innovation projects, as well as how you foster a culture of innovation among your staff and stakeholders. You can use frameworks such as the Innovation Maturity Model or the Innovation Capability Assessment Tool to help you with this process. By assessing your innovation maturity, you can identify your strengths and weaknesses, and set realistic and achievable goals for improvement.

2 Align your innovation strategy with your business strategy

One of the most common mistakes that IT managers make is to pursue innovation for its own sake, without considering how it aligns with the overall business strategy and objectives. This can lead to wasted resources, conflicting priorities, and missed opportunities. To avoid this, you need to align your innovation strategy with your business strategy, and ensure that your innovation projects support your strategic IT management goals. You can use tools such as the Business Model Canvas or the Strategy Map to help you with this process. By aligning your innovation strategy with your business strategy, you can ensure that your innovation efforts are relevant, valuable, and impactful.

3 Prioritize and manage your innovation portfolio

Another challenge that IT managers face is to prioritize and manage their innovation portfolio, which consists of all the innovation projects and initiatives that they are involved in or responsible for. How do you decide which projects to pursue, which ones to scale, and which ones to kill? How do you allocate your resources, time, and budget among them? How do you monitor and evaluate their progress and outcomes? You can use tools such as the Innovation Project Scorecard or the Innovation Portfolio Matrix to help you with this process. By prioritizing and managing your innovation portfolio, you can optimize your innovation performance and efficiency.

4 Experiment and learn from failures

One of the key aspects of innovation is to experiment and learn from failures. This means that you need to adopt a mindset of curiosity and exploration, and be willing to test new ideas and approaches, even if they are risky or uncertain. You also need to accept that failures are inevitable and valuable, and use them as opportunities to learn and improve. You can use tools such as the Lean Startup Methodology or the Design Thinking Process to help you with this process. By experimenting and learning from failures, you can discover new insights and solutions, and foster a culture of innovation.

5 Communicate and collaborate with stakeholders

Finally, one of the essential skills for IT managers is to communicate and collaborate with stakeholders, both internal and external, who are affected by or involved in your innovation projects. This means that you need to engage them in your innovation process, solicit their feedback and input, and share your results and learnings. You also need to manage their expectations and address their concerns, and ensure that they are aligned with your innovation vision and goals. You can use tools such as the Stakeholder Map or the Communication Plan to help you with this process. By communicating and collaborating with stakeholders, you can build trust and support, and create value for your organization.