Eight Things We Hate About IT

Susan Cramm: It is the IT system so it is the system that consists of the processors, the technology, the people that it seems like no matter what we do we get too little for too much too late. It's important to know that nobody hates the people in IT and nobody in IT hates the people that they work with across the business but everybody hates the system, that really everybody is a loser and nobody is a winner.

Rachel Salaman: Can you actually generalize like that about IT systems in general?

Susan Cramm: I think you can and what confirms that is, you know, I wrote a blog in the middle of 2008 with the name "The Eight Things We Hate About IT" and it was the number one blog picked up I think that week in terms of the number of comments and hits and that kind of stuff, so I think one thing I learned through writing the blog is the experience that I've had over the past 30 years working within IT and the relationship I have with my clients that I've developed over the past 12 years of IT leadership coaching is pretty universal.

Rachel Salaman: So why do business leaders so often feel overwhelmed and baffled by technology or IT systems?

Susan Cramm: There are three reasons. One of them is the fact that we are still dealing with a relatively new technology so I've been in the field for a little bit more than 30 years, I worked on the first micro computer and I'm not a senior citizen so it tells you how relatively new this field is and we have people whose sole leadership roles are what you call digital nomads, meaning they kind of moved into this land of technology versus growing up in it, now that is shifting with the millennial generation. And we also have this disconnect between consumer technology and our experience within the enterprise so whereas I can buy an iPhone and get an app for that and it's 3.99 and it's delivered in less than a minute, I don't have that same experience with respect to enterprise technology.

Rachel Salaman: So what specifically about enterprise technology causes the most problems?

Susan Cramm: Well it's the new technology, meaning that it doesn't deliver everything that we hope it does. It fixes some problems and provides some new functionality but then along with introducing new technology, you inadvertently introduce new problems. It's the old technology because I kind of like to think about our current technology platforms and architectures as geological formations because they literally over time, program by program, change by change, technology version by technology version, old hardware, mainframes, servers, we end up with a very complicated technology, what's called a technology footprint and it is very difficult to change and very difficult to operate. We have difficulties with small technology and big technology like ERP systems, very, very expensive, very difficult to implement, high levels of failure and difficult to manage.

Rachel Salaman: What's an ERP system, just for people that don't know?

Susan Cramm: Thank you for that, thank you for that – Enterprise Resource Planning. So those are the systems that have been, really that were introduced as part of the Y2K sort of changeover, oh my gosh we've got all these old financial systems, human resource systems, procurement systems, distribution systems and we really can't be thinking about these stovepipe applications, we should be thinking in terms of the supply chain process so these big – and they are big – ERP systems have been introduced and created a whole new industry over the past 10 to 15 years.

Rachel Salaman: Your book, and before that the blog that it grew out of, pointed to this lack of partnership between business leaders and IT leaders, how widespread and serious an issue is that?

Susan Cramm: The other word for the partnership issue is called IT business alignment and it's a term that is actually in a little bit of disrepute. People don't like to use it any more because it's been around for such a long time but there's an organization, a professional IT organization that polls IT leaders after their top issues and has done so for at least 30 years. IT business alignment or the partnership disconnect if you will, between business leaders and IT leaders, has been in the top one or two positions on that survey for the past 30 years. That's a long time.

Rachel Salaman: So what's the problem?

Susan Cramm: As we discussed before, we have an emerging asset if you will, that changes and morphs and that's technology. We have got people who didn't grow up with it and we are still in the process of developing the practices necessary to manage it so there's good reasons for the fact that it's difficult. The opportunity that lies in front of us, which is why I wrote this book, was the fact that only one out of four business leaders skill smart about IT. They don't feel they have the competence to manage IT and it's very difficult to create a partnership when you don't have both partners who understand what the responsibility is, what their shared goals are and so I really wrote the book – and it's the first one, it's the only one we could find that targeted business leaders. There are a number of very fine books that target the C suite level about how do you target IT strategy and how do you manage the funding processes and realizing value but there hasn't been anything for what I call the operational business leader to really say okay, on a day to day basis, what is my accountability for managing this asset and what should I expect out of my IT counterparts?

I'd love to tell you a little story. I was talking with a business leader, a client of mine, and she was expressing frustration about technology and she actually used the word hate. She said "Everybody hates working with that organization" and I said, "Well give me some background, tell me what happened" and she said "Well you know, I have initiative that I need for my function that I run" – and she runs a staff function and not a line function – and she said "I have been in the process, basically begging for money for a year so that I can get this technology redeveloped." So I said, "Tell me, did you link your request to a strategic initiative or an objective of the company, did you align your initiative with something that's important to an influential line leader, someone who actually runs a P&L?" and she kind of had that look on her face that dogs do when they hear a noise they don't understand, she kind of cocked her head and said "Well I have a job to do."

I said, "Okay, let's just step back for a minute, so if you called your boss and said I'm not going to worry about what my P&L looks like or hitting my budget, I'm not really going to worry about managing people because I have a job to do, what would the reaction be?" But that's the accountability disconnect that exists with respect to technology. McKinsey wrote a study a few years ago and they used this terms that just stays in my head, they said business leaders do not have a permanent sense of responsibility for IT, they get kind of drafted in as business sponsors or project owners or subject matter experts, they get kind of drafted into working on an IT project and they kind of reluctantly go along with it and then they sort of escape as quickly as they possibly can to get back to "their real job".

Rachel Salaman: Well you called your book "Eight Things We Hate About IT" which may sound like it's going to be a big grumble fest but actually it's not at all, it's very helpful and it's very positive. I'm just interested in why you called it that, I know that you called the blog that it grew out of the same thing.

Susan Cramm: Well you know, it's interesting because I was actually quite reluctant to name the book the same as the blog because the blog led to a lot of very emotional posts and some of them were not all that complimentary. There was nobody saying – I mean I have heard some say I wouldn't call it hate, I'd call it frustration. All right, all right, I get it but the point is it hit a cord and it resonated so my publishers were saying okay Susan, this is important because this labels a real issue and the point is, you want to get attention because you want to help resolve this issue so I said okay, all right, I'll go along and so we worked really hard on the sub-title, making sure that the title was attributed to other people on these sound bubbles and the sub-title which is really how do you move beyond the frustrations to an informative partnership?

What was interesting about the eight is that I was really quite concerned after I signed the book contract and when I did, I dug in and really developed a deeper thesis on this, whether there would be like seven or twelve! You know, the research says what it says and the good news is that the structure held together and I didn't find that gee whiz, I needed to add an 8.5 or something like that. So the number one comment I get from people is how did you reduce it to only eight?

Rachel Salaman: That's positive.

Susan Cramm: Well it was interesting, only eight? Well okay, maybe I should call it the biggest eight things or something like that.

Rachel Salaman: Well let's look at some of those hates now. The first one in the book is "You need service and IT needs control", so what's the scenario here?

Susan Cramm: Well this sounds like yes, but. This is when a leader says I need to redevelop or make a significant investment in technology and IT knows that they are evaluated on how well they partner, align and serve the other parts of the business and they say yes, but their actions say yes, but. The reason the but is there is that business leaders, by their own admission, want what they want when they want it and they don't really care about the broader enterprise interests so in the partnership the only ones who is representing the enterprise interest are the IT leaders. I mean they're the ones that have to figure out how to allocate a precious set of IT resources and IT funding against the highest and best use, they're the ones that are held responsible for whether or not, in many, many companies, whether or not the technology initiative actually generates business value or business impact. They're the ones held accountable for whether or not they are increasing the total cost of IT operations through introducing new technology or reducing it, they're the ones held accountable for whether or not the IT effort is secure and whether or not there are proper controls so that, you know, against hackers and things like that, so the "yes but" comes from the fact that business leaders don't have that permanent sense of accountability for IT, aren't aware of these enterprise interests and want what they want when they want it.

Rachel Salaman: So what's the resolution then?

Susan Cramm: Well it actually is simple in that if business leaders get on the balcony and look at things from an enterprise point of view and, oh by the way, that's what all leaders should do if they want to contribute in a broader fashion to the enterprise they're part of. You get on the balcony, you look at things from your boss or your boss's boss's point of view and to make sure that your activities matter at a higher level. So if business leaders understand the broader business strategy, they link their initiatives accordingly, they figure out how to deliver tangible value, they listen to their IT counterparts about what needs to be done to ensure that it integrates with other systems and that the proper controls are in place. It's just a matter of saying hey, what's important to you is important to me and I make the point within the book that partnership is not 50/50, it's 100/100 with each party doing whatever they can do to make the other party successful.

Rachel Salaman: Right, so it's kind of a change of mindset that needs to happen here.

Susan Cramm: That is actually very fundamental. Very fundamental is the change of mindset and it is exciting for me because I'm hearing from business leaders who have been trapped in unproductive relationships with IT who are saying I have hope, I now get the fact this is my job and you've given me some tangible practices to move forward.

Rachel Salaman: Well let's move forward now to the second hate which is "You need results and IT needs respect". Those two things don't sound mutually exclusive so what's going on here?

Susan Cramm: You know, it's interesting, people are very selfish by nature so when they have a goal, and it's not easy working within our business today, I mean we all have way too many things to do, we've got calendars that are jammed and it has been proven that when people get into a state of frenzy, when they get busy, they lose their empathy, they lose their ability to connect with others. So you've got a stressful environment within the IT organization and across the business, these people are relatively narrowly focused because the functions of silos, if you will, or the way we've organized and it's difficult for people to put the soft skills, the softer relationships in front of the hard results. It's not human nature, even though it sounds like it should be.

Rachel Salaman: So how can they move forward from that?

Susan Cramm: Well one thing that is absolutely true is that familiarity doesn't breed contempt, familiarity breeds empathy. When people get to know each other and spend time together, they actually start saying, oh I see, oh I didn't realize it, oh that's what you're dealing with. So we've got to take the relationships, if you will, out of the conference room or out of the structured meeting form of the service request or the business of what I need and we need to take the relationship into the team, we need to take the relationship into how do we get to know each other better, how can we spend more time together, how can we sit closer together, how can we share the objectives that we're after, the challenges that we're facing, how can we figure out how to work together so that both of us win?

Rachel Salaman: Well the third hate is "You need to focus on tactics and IT needs strategic alignment". Now that sounds a little bit like jargon, could you explain that in plainer terms?

Susan Cramm: Well there's an infinite demand for IT resources and limited dollars, so when we invest we need to ensure we are investing strategically. That's with, if you will, the right brain, that's very creative and so of course that's the right so the left brain is held to a fixed budget and a fixed time frame and a new product that needs to be rolled out, a new distribution channel that needs to be opened, a factory that needs to be opened so we know we should be thinking long term but the nature of our work is day to day and so when business leaders make requests they're typically, again, thinking relatively short term and if you ask them if you are thinking relatively short term, over 50% of them say that they make half baked requests and don't care about enterprise impact because that's the phrase, that's the phrase on the survey – I did the survey, it's part of the book – and that's the phrase, business leaders make half baked requests and don't care about enterprise impact and over half the business leaders say yes, that's me!

Rachel Salaman: Wow, I'm surprised that they admit to it.

Susan Cramm: Well I was too because again you see the dynamic going on and I saw it mostly from the IT perspective because I spend most of my time with IT leaders and in order to ground myself, that's why I said I've got to make sure I've got the balanced perspective so I was surprised. I mean can you imagine 75% of business leaders saying, no, I'm not IT smart? That's why this is an important area of research.

Rachel Salaman: Well moving on to the fourth hate now, it's "You need IT funding and IT needs returns". Now you sum this up in the book as expense or investment, where does the tension lie here and how can it be resolved?

Susan Cramm: Less than 10% of companies measure their returns from IT enabled investments and part of the reason they don't measure their returns is that it is difficult to do and one of the reasons it is difficult to do is they are looking at the line of sight between the actual investment and financials versus using the leading indicators for financial returns which are operational measures. So what's happened, because there isn't this enterprise requirement to invest according to actually realizing returns. What happens is there are a lot of requests that actually don't meet the minimum quota for common sense and there is sort of a business case process which pretends like we can measure these things and requires everybody to put together these complicated ROI scenarios but in reality, because no one is held accountable for the returns, the business case is just a process to get funding and then it is pretty much, as I say, filed and forgotten.

What happens is, instead of IT being viewed as an investment, it's managed as an expense so what do you do with expenses? You minimize them versus optimize them so when you have got over 50% of business leaders once again saying they want what they want when they want it regardless of ROI, you've got an issue and an opportunity. The issue is, is that we under invest in IT because we really don't measure the returns and we mis-allocate the investment and the opportunity is that business leaders who are willing to sign up and say I will commit to delivering business impact because I can measure cycle times or service levels, I can measure the number of sales calls that are closed by my sales force and I will drive this initiative towards delivering those results and if it is not proving those are delivered, I'll kill it as quickly as possible. Those business leaders have a huge advantage over the rest of business leaders who are unwilling to make that level of commitment. So, like I said, it's an issue at a broad base but it is an opportunity at the business leaders standpoint for those who are willing to tie their expenses, if you will, or their requests for funding and convert them to investments.

Rachel Salaman: Well number five is "You need on time delivery and IT needs quality". Why would you not both want on time delivery and both want quality?

Susan Cramm: Everybody wants both but they are contending opposites. They fight with each other, right, so the quicker I do something, sometimes I have to take short cuts so everybody wants both but they are difficult to attain so what IT often feels is that in order to meet the cycle times that the business requires, you know, opening manufacturing or whatever, they are having to cut corners and they are creating these technologies that are sort of stand alone, bolt-on, don't really integrate that well, expensive to maintain, that type of thing.

So in order to resolve that, both IT and the business need to embrace this concept that the way we solve big problems is through a series of small ones and we're willing to forego all the functionality and only work on the pieces of functionality that are directly tied to the value and prove out whether or not the concept is going to work. We are way past the point where we are just automating existing processes and automating clerical activities, we're now challenged with how can I change the way consumers behave when they're on the website? How do I take these very entrepreneurial sales people and change the way they do their job? Those are experiments.

So we can use these fast cycle techniques, together with this philosophy of experimentation and its focus on value to make sure that we are able to introduce changes into our business capability relatively quickly and at the same time, recognize that it is a journey to get to the ultimate destination. That's in contrast with business leaders saying I want my complete set of functionality defined in my functional requirements document and I need it done in half the time that you're saying.

Rachel Salaman: Let's skip to number seven now which is "You need innovation and IT functions in bureaucracy". What's the problem here and how can we move beyond it?

Susan Cramm: IT supports the needs of the enterprise and not the needs of the local business units. That means that IT is not really in a position to support broad based innovation and I mean they can do it in pockets but not across standing up and that is a function of limited resources and the fact that the technology that's in place isn't very flexible and that 70 percent of our IT spend is focused on keeping the lights on versus innovation so we have limited people, we have limited dollars and we have relatively inflexible technology in place today. So IT has put in, govern its processes if you will, to request funding and manage projects and requests for services and that type of thing, in order to figure out how to service 100 pounds of demand with 20 pounds of supply. The only resolution to innovation is for business leaders to develop IT smarts within their own teams and if you ask business leaders when you hire your people do you hire for IT smarts the answer I get is "not really".

Rachel Salaman: So that's a simple fix isn't it?

Susan Cramm: Well again, first you have to change your mind! But it's important. Then once you've got the IT, you're hiring and you're developing IT smarts, learn what your current systems do. Only 35 percent of the functionality of systems is actually used which means when we develop we're either developing functionality that's not necessary so let's not develop that and you do that by focusing on where the value is or our people aren't trained. Again if you ask business leaders, do you know how to use your technology, over 50 percent of them say "I don't".

Rachel Salaman: The final hate in your book is "You need good IT and IT can become great". Now this is playing on the good to great idea, could you summarize your points here?

Susan Cramm: I wanted the readers to know that we are on a journey and if both business and IT leaders embrace all the behaviors that are discussed within the book, that we'll have good IT but not great IT, because the current model is a means to an end and the end is what I call democratized innovation where the capability to service and satisfy day to day needs is in the hands of every business leader up, down and across the organization, so there is a lot more self sufficiency built in the ability to access data and to be able to change processes and change the way that the interface appears and adding buttons to websites and that type of thing.

So the goal is to be able to get to the point, there are a lot of very exciting technologies that exist that are pointing to that direction. Most people embrace this vision but a fundamental, if you will, critical success factor in getting there is IT smarts across the business.

Rachel Salaman: So why is it so important for business leaders to get smarter about IT?

Susan Cramm: The opportunity cost of the failed projects and the long timelines and the under utilized technology is business results. It is the inability to leverage this asset, to grow your business. What other assets do we have that are new and changing, that create different business models and create different ways to operate the business? What else do we have?

Rachel Salaman: So if you could leave us with three tips that would set us off on the right path today, what would they be?

Susan Cramm: Well I would ask business leaders who are listening to this to follow the lead of other people who are giving me feedback about the book and change your mind about your responsibility for managing the IT assets. Consider your responsibility for IT similar to the way that you consider your responsibility for human resources and finance and then reach out and connect with IT and together, work together to assess your relationship, identify where things are going well, where things are not going well, where you view things differently and come out with a common view about what the opportunities are. The third component is hire and develop IT smarts within your team because those business teams that have IT capability on their meter, they have transferred them over from IT or they've hired them within or they've developed them because those people have worked on projects – those teams know how to work with IT and leverage technology. They're smart consumers.

Rachel Salaman: Susan Cramm, thank you very much for joining us.

Susan Cramm: It's been my pleasure, thank you so much.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Susan's book again is "Eight Things We Hate About IT." There's a website to go with it, www.eighthates.com.

I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview, until then goodbye.