The economy sucks. There is no doubt that any and every company is taking a look at costs and trying to find ways to streamline them. As such, IT leadership is being asked to do more with the same budget, or in many cases with less of a budget, or in some cases the IT leadership is being moved out of the executive suite altogether. It seems like a daily occurrence that a C-level or D-level IT professional is asking me how I think they can go about innovating the organization with less of a budget to do so.
As an experiment I asked a number of people who I highly respect to then define innovation. The answers all trended towards cost reduction; and certainly cost reduction is at the forefront of many an IT leaders mind. However, innovation is not just about cutting costs. It is about taking a long hard look at old problems and using the technology in front of you to frame them in a new way. The challenges that an organization faces doesn’t just include cutting costs. The challenges also include process improvement, process management and change control, which many in IT seem to also understand. But true innovation breaks the mold, transforms an organization and ultimately makes you more competitive at an organizational level, either directly (and therefore quantifiable) or indirectly (therefore more likely qualitative).
The challenges that we face are similar to those faced throughout history, and those faced in other departments in any organization. What is different today is the same thing that was different in the 1960s or the 1900s for that matter: we have exponentially more tools at our disposal to deal with those problems.
Those tools are the good and the bad part of the life cycle of technological breakthroughs. They are good because you, as leaders in IT, now have more to pull out of your tool belt. But they’re bad in that they can result in too much white noise to ever manage to get anything done. This makes many in IT reactionary even while we think we are being proactive: we are proactive in looking for ways to reinvent the wheel so-to-speak, but we are reactive to technological breakthroughs to be able to do so.
But this is where relevance, leadership and strategy come into play. Keep your innovations relevant to the organizations purpose. Define a strategy to bring those innovations in sync with the organizations goals. Then provide the leadership to get those innovations implemented according to the strategy that was laid out. But be a good leader, be malleable to interpretations and modifications to the strategy that will arise (be agile).
Also be willing to take the failures along with the successes. The failures tell more about you as a leader than the successes do, and those same failures likely teach everyone something about the organization. Something that the non-technical leadership of the organization can benefit from.
There is no doubt that budgets are feeling tight. But provided that you can revolutionize an organization (and we all can) then it will be less of a burden to overcome the budget hurdle. There is risk in bringing new innovations to market. But provided that they are relevant and have a good strategy behind them then the plan is well founded. Innovation doesn’t have to have a high price tag. But realize that there is a price behind every venture and so you have to keep focus. Not all innovations will work out. So use even the small failures as a learning experience so that the organization realizes a return on their investment. But most importantly don’t box yourself into looking at innovation as a means to cut costs. Look at the big picture, whether it’s getting products to market faster, streamlining processes or revolutionizing how your organization does business by implementing a new approach through technology.
Do not be concerned about your place at the executives table. Too often we get bogged down with our own places within organizations. Instead look at how you can improve your organization. Don’t constrain your view. Look to the past and to the future. If you innovate, and I mean innovate (not just by reactively cutting costs) then you will revolutionize the organization. Provide the necessary leadership to allow the organization to make it to the next level and your other problems (stature, budget, head count, etc) will fade into a distant memory.