When David Behen became IT director for Washtenaw County, Mich., the department was little more than an order-taker. And not a very good one. It was like the server who makes you wait, then brings the appetizers with the entree and pours you a glass of Chateau Latour when you asked for the house red.
Fast forward a few years, and that same IT department is implementing a wireless project that delivers on the county's promise to improve service to its citizens and bridges the digital divide between far-flung residents.
This innovative initiative was born within that same, previously disdained IT department and stands as evidence of the organization's evolution from a reactive entity to a proactive business partner.
Behen, now Washtenaw County's deputy county administrator and CIO, says he has reinvented his job, transforming it from enabler to "policy-maker and community engager."
This kind of change is hard. But when it happens, it elevates the status of IT and brings benefits to the business. Here, Behen and three other CIOs, from DePaul University, Foley & Lardner and Pitt Ohio Express, share the steps they've taken to lead IT's shift from prodigal back-office order-taker to forward-thinking partner in innovation.
1. First, build a foundation
When Doug Caddell became CIO of Chicago-based Foley & Lardner eight years ago, leaders within the 2,600-employee law firm didn't look to IT for much of anything, let alone business innovation.
Caddell spent the first few years just fixing what was broken. "We provided a basic, solid infrastructure and built back-office technology that actually worked," Caddell explains.
Then he looked for a way to help his tech-skeptical lawyers understand what IT could do for the business, adopting the credo "Build it and hope to hell they will come." So, without any formal buy-in, IT developed new Web-based revenue-enhancing systems it knew could benefit the business.
"This was totally against what I learned [about delivering systems] in school," says Caddell. "But I knew if we didn't do it, we'd just be running Exchange servers and managing document management systems forever."
It worked. That suite of Web-based technologies enabled the firm to boost revenue and began to transform IT's role. When the firm's executives created a team to develop new ways to increase business with existing clients by cross-selling legal services, the Client Share initiative, IT was invited to the very first meeting.
Lawyers, says Caddell, have always "kept the clients to themselves, even if there were attorneys in other areas, like M&A or bankruptcy, that might have other services the client needed." It's the "eat what you kill" mentality, he says. But the Client Share system that came out of that meeting enabled lawyers to share clients.
"After years and years of trying to get IT involved from the inception, we finally succeeded," says Caddell. And this in turn has made IT more effective.
"For a change, we were able to understand what the objectives were from the very start and make suggestions on ways we could help," says Charlotte Logullo, an internal IT consultant who's still involved in all Client Share meetings, setting business strategy and not just IT plans.
For Vince Kellen, who took over as CIO at DePaul University almost five years ago (he is now vice-president of information systems), transforming IT meant setting technology aside for a while.
"IT had just installed an ERP system at a lot of cost," says Kellen. "It was perceived as a black hole of money."
The malady, Kellen knew, was the lack of a comprehensive IT strategy and an architecture to support it; the cure would be a service-oriented architecture (SOA). But Kellen needed time to make his case and time to build the SOA.
"Change begins with talking," says Kellen. "You have to talk. And keep talking. And keep talking."
Kellen's biggest problem was the guy who hired him. His method for managing his demanding and results-hungry boss? "I kept my list of goals in one pocket and my resignation letter in the other," says Kellen.
The SOA took three years to complete, after the first two were spent building a proper organizational structure, assembling a management team and laying the philosophical groundwork for the change.
"You have to carve out that window of time where the executives leave you alone to get this done," says Kellen.
2. Next, reorganize your department
Kellen also needed time to address his own organization's concerns. His staff believed it couldn't do the ERP upgrade without spending millions on external consulting. But after interviewing all 100 employees, Kellen came to a different conclusion.
"We had plenty of people, some managers and some worker bees, with 10-plus years of experience, wickedly sharp minds and passion for pushing the future. We had everyone we needed."
But they just weren't where Kellen needed them to be. So he started on the org chart, devoting nearly a year to the effort.
"The biggest element to enable innovation is the organizational design piece," says Kellen. "We spent 10 months in intense organizational design thought, and most of that was spent coming up with bad ideas."
Kellen finally organized the department around 14 crafts - "mutually exclusive, knowledge-intensive areas" - and created a rotating team of five managing directors to coach the craft leaders who would serve six-to-nine-month terms.
He also placed IT salespeople within the university, consolidated five IT departmental budgets into one and put a managing director in charge of it all.
Continued: Look outside, then share the risk
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