Today’s technology leader, the 4T’s & the M.A.S.T.E.R principle

What matters more is not the shoes we wear but the steps we take!?

Given the influx of technology tools around us these days, the statement above fits so well in the context of IT leadership.

We all have been witnessing an unprecedented pace of technological revolution since a few years now. In fact, in the last 2 years the technological fire has spread even more, with Covid-19 fueling the most of it. For businesses, situations such as these, offer both challenges and opportunities. However, this time, the onus was more on the IT functions to sustain and drive their business for a majority of the organizations globally. Thanks to the proactiveness and resilience shown by the IT leadership of all the organizations that successfully sailed through the storm.

In my technology sales experience thus far, I along with my team have had the fortune of working with several D/C level IT leaders across various industry verticals globally and learn about the new approaches and shifting priorities of the IT leadership today. Via this write up, I want to share my observations about the actions of the successful D/C-suite skippers in these challenging times. ?I prefer to call it a 4T Model for easy reference.

1.??????TABLE: The word here signifies “Tabling the discussion”. Gone are the days when IT used to be a support function. The focus is on Delivered IT now than on Consumed IT. In this tech-forward world, successful CIOs are asserting for a seat on the table and working with businesses to generate direct revenue streams. Be it banking through cell phones OR booking sales orders on mobility devices, IT is at the forefront and IT leaders are dominating the way forward.

Among several recent examples, I remember one vividly in which a customer (a VP IT at a large manufacturing firm) pushed for an IoT enabled product to stay ahead of the competition. We worked with his team to enable the “voice skills” functionality in the company's new products, resulting in higher revenue and an increased market share for the company.

2.??????TRUST: Trust is the ultimate currency when it comes to business. In our experience as well as in the context of IT leadership, however, two facets of Trust are of paramount importance to a lot of IT leaders. First, when a new technology is introduced, it is imperative to instill confidence in the customer base/supplier base/employee base etc. that their data is going to be safe with the introduction of the newer technology. Privacy is the key. The second most important piece is to trust in your teams while they are working on new initiatives, trust your IT partners in difficult times for they have handled a variety of hairy situations before, and trust your business partners if they are recommending changes as they are the ones who are closer to the customers, suppliers, lenders, or competitors etc. A successful IT leader takes everything in consideration while taking crucial decisions. One of the CIOs, I and my team worked with, we observed how he established the communication channel with all the stakeholders while taking up a complex initiative of sunsetting some third-party applications and building those functionalities in the existing systems. The initial discussions were quite noisy but by focusing on the moot points, the CIO established trust among all the stakeholders across the ecosystem and created a WIN-WIN for everybody.

3.??????TRAIN: Digital adoption is a magnifying constant in the business world. Older technologies are being replaced by newer options at the blink of any eye. To keep up with the pace of technology and ensuring the current IT workforce is still staying relevant, TRAINING to fill the gaps is an area of strategic importance to the successful IT leaders. Off late we have been witnessing a demand for training the client resources and at the same time building technology center of excellences for the customers at their own site or build GICs offshore. While the CIOs are always drinking from a firehose, the successful ones chalk out a strategy well in advance by striking a fine balance between internal resourcing and outsourcing. A few of our Fortune 500 customers saw this trend many years ago and successfully navigated through this resourcing challenge by partnering with us on many aspects discussed above.

4.??????TIME: There is no denial of the fact that the most precious resource we have is Time, however, a majority of the leaders struggle to manage TIME to ensure a good return on their invested time. Successful IT leaders are now, more than ever before, measuring time saved as one of an important yard stick of progress and establishing the dollar equivalent of time saved as a KPI. For example, moving to a cloud platform has several benefits but the agility it brings in terms of application development, the down time saved because of modular architecture, or the time saved in provisioning etc. are important wins as these are leading to greater levels of productivity. Typical of a progressive CIO, one of my customer POCs worked with us collaboratively on automating several mundane tasks and focus on RCCAs (Root Cause Corrective Actions) to reduce the firms application management effort to free up skilled resources to focus on revenue generation rather than on business continuity. By finding out TIME from different pockets across the organization the CIO was able to drive significant productivity for the business.

By focusing on these 4T’s, IT leaders are taking their organizations to the next level of productivity. We have observed these common traits in all the successful IT leaders we are working with. While the underlying focus is on the above 4T’s the principle they are following can be called as the M.A.S.T.E.R principle as shown below.

If you are an IT leader, my question to you is: Are you a M.A.S.T.E.R?

Let us “learn about your MASTER principle”.