Setting High Principles in Running High-Mature IT Organization

Principles are general rules and guidelines and statements of values. Things that define why one make a decision one way or another. To accelerate digital transformation and maximize IT value, it’s important to set guiding principles for practicing the multitude of IT management. The guiding PRINCIPLEs should cover the customer, people, and quality from a holistic business perspective:  A well-defined set of IT management principles would guide decision making, bridge IT-business gaps, do more with innovation, measure right things before measuring it right.
Make sure your customer delightful and the business as a whole is winning for the long run: The principles should guide the decisions that a person, either a top executive or a front desk employee, makes on a day to day basis consistently to achieve high-performance business result. IT leaders need to have the ability to think analytically and synthetically,  set IT principles right and manage business solution via high-performance IT team. It means that the CIO is able to constantly and dynamically lead an IT structure that will seamlessly enable the business growth, enhance the business strategy, and to get well ahead of the business requirement; cultivate the ability to align the business requirement with the IT capacity, have the ability to interact with businesses in their processes and pain areas, and bring out a customer-tailored and technology driven solution. Often, the “IT vs. Business” mentality is still alive in the management team within the organization. Thus, it’s important to set principles for harnessing customer-centricity, and make sure the business as a whole is winning for the long run, build the strong business orientation and ability to bring the benefits of IT to solve business issues; and the business leaders and managers have to overcome silo thinking and empower IT leaders to manage information across the functional borders and unleash the full potential of the digital business.
Focus on strategy execution and results when innovating ideas: Innovation is a critical component of the business strategy. “Doing more with innovation” needs to be one of an important IT management principles to improve the organizational competency and maturity. Being able to become innovative or close is being able to think, and create new things based on its own needs, true knowledge is the optimal solution. Innovations happen because of specific business needs. Unique challenges become more appear as we push the limits of the available technology, which pushes us to find a solution to the problem on hand. To catalyze innovation, IT needs to ensure business strategy allowing for digital speedInnovative IT can only happen if IT is regarded as a strategic business partner and given the role in catalyzing innovation and driving the business. IT needs also to ride above the learning curve, to fostering business innovation via leveraging disruptive technologies. From innovation management perspective, even innovation management processes are systematic, the processes shouldn’t be too rigid to stifle innovation, but setting the right priority and laser focus on the most critical things which can make a difference to delight customers and innovate businesses at the dawn of the Digital Era.
Hiring growth mindsets -Learn something of value every day: IT talent gap is the reality, not a fiction. What kind of people should be working in your IT group? Guiding principles let the organization know what to expect when dealing with IT, and serve as a yardstick by which to guide IT talent management, and measure performance effectively. Hiring mindset means to discover the very talent who can "figure it out," and who has the growth mindset to keeping improving and innovating, who can keep their energy flow toward the right direction and make positive influences. The right mind is the foundation to build competitive capabilities and drive the right attitude. That flies in the face of "hiring just for skills." The mantra of talent management should be to put the right people with the right mindset and capability to the right position to do the right things. Consider the position and environment you are hiring for. One’s thinking capability and styles could well decide which position they may fit in. For example, if the role requires judgment, temperament, understanding global social capital, managing diverse interests etc, filling it with a more systems thinking, complexity thinking and empathetic thinking type is the right approach. The experience can make you be fluent in mostly linear skills, but without thinking capacity, you can not further sharpen the synthetic capability to jump start to the new horizons.
The guiding principle is like the light tower, navigates IT toward the right direction and speed up the organization to the well-planned journey of digital transformation. Understanding the guidelines used by senior leadership to make decisions, consistently applied by an organization, allows all -from top-down within the organization to make decisions in the same fashion as these executives, and as a result, are broadly supported and are seldom misdirection. However, principles are guidelines, not rigid rules, there needs to be a pragmatic way of applying whatever principles to the problem in a consistent manner, with the goal to achieve strategic goals and guide daily business activities effectively.




Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu