Calculus of IT - Episode 34 - 10/2/2024 - "The Next-Gen IT Paradigm - Part 2"

The Calculus of IT

Kevin Dushney and Joel Nichols joined Mike and me again to discuss whether or not the IT Paradigm should be changed and how we might do that if we wanted to. We discussed:

1. Evolving IT Leadership Roles
   • The changing role of the CIO - why do we still need a traditional CIO and where is this role going?
     1. Chief Digital Officer (CDO) - is this even/was it ever a thing that could sustain itself?
     2. Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) - will any CISO want to move into this role?
     3. None of the above/something else entirely
2. Innovative Ideas for IT Department Transformation
   • IT as an true internal consultant beyond the typical MSP model - been there done that but it could really really work well if there was some additional components not yet tried
   • Citizen development and low-code/no-code platforms and how much IT could theoretically be pushed back into the enterprise - this really dovetails wonderfully into decentralized IT - your leader is a policy maker/security wonk and everyone else is responsible for IT in the company (e.g., turning shadow IT into company-wide IT)
3. So how are we going to do all of this?
   • Assessing current IT capabilities and then plotting a delta between now and then - imagination probably wont be too far from reality
   • Developing a transformation roadmap beyond simply going digital because in doing so you will become digital by default (you have to) and you can go on to what is next beyond that - we cant keep having a digital transformation plan every single fucking year - eventually we have to go to the next thing.

Bottom line - what will the leader of tomorrow look like, be called, be expected to do? What will IT be called? What will IT do?

It was an awesome episode and though we left a lot of questions unanswered, we did cover some significant ground. Key points:
1 - To run IT requires the evolved ability to handle a significant amount of complexity all at once.
2 - Relationship building is at the heart of everything.
3 - You have to know what's going on everywhere, all of the time.
4 - You have to be able to constantly gauge time and emplace buffers before things even happen.
5 - You need an enterprise view of the data no matter what.
6 - The types of people we hire will dictate the strategy whether we want them to or not.
7 - Employee Experience management will be instrumental to success of any strategy.

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