IT Strategy

IT Strategy Consulting Challenges

September 28, 2009 by Raj Sheelvant

David Clark is a former Managing Partner for Gartner UK Consulting.  Prior to that, he has been in senior positions at a few of the other “tier one” consulting firms and a couple of enjoyable stints as a CIO positions in industry. His career spans about 25 years during which time he has delivered around fifteen or so IT strategies and had four “done to him”.  It’s always a good idea to hear from someone in the trenches about challenges of IT Strategy Consulting rather than reading Business School Case Studies.  My brief chat with David validated that.  I learnt a lot from my conversations with David and hope you do too!

Raj: Any common theme you found in your IT Strategy Consulting?

Dave: What I’ve found again and again and again is how much a strategy and the IT function all too often mirrors the personality of the CIO and when moving into implementation it can end up costing way more than it needs to if the CIO has ambition beyond their pockets.  Every consulting firm, regardless of what any of them say approaches strategy in a fairly similar way – and most of them can arrive at a fairly obvious and sensible outcome.  Some can do it in a few weeks and some spin it out for eternity.  My point about the CIO’s personality is that I’ve noticed over the years that more often than not the strategy eventually twists and turn into something that they then rationalize to fit their own original thoughts.  Unless of course it’s Accenture delivering it then he or she will probably be lucky to remain the CIO.

Raj: So you reckon that managing the CIO’s ego is also part of a consulting job?

Dave: Without question, although I’m not sure it’s managing it or simply recognizing it!  I think the thing that I have found, more than anything else over the last twenty five years, is that everything boils down to people.  It might on the surface look like a technology issue or perhaps a process problem but seriously – when you dig down – 9 times out of 10 it’s a people problem.  It boils down to a mixture of ego, ability, personality, capabilities, behaviors which then manifest themselves in all sorts of ways.  I can wax lyrical on this one for hours – so I’ll try and stop myself. It’s also what really makes business interesting so I shouldn’t complain!

Raj: What did you find out about CEOs and CMOs involvement during your IT Strategy Consultancy?  Are they interested in defining IT Strategy or do they delegate it to CIO?

Dave: Hmmm. I think this is a really interesting question about the other members of the exec. I think that the challenge around aligning the business, and I have to say I hate the term aligning with the business – how often do you hear that Sales is aligning with the business or HR is aligning with the business, sorry off on a tangent there, as I was saying all too often the business itself lacks a true strategy – I’ve often encountered companies who say they have a business strategy and don’t and then IT have to try and align to something that’s ill defined and often bland.  I’ll give you an example – we reviewed an IT strategy for a large commercial company – the business strategy was sell more services to more customer in more sectors, which in itself was hardly incisive and their IT Strategy: be more efficient, modularize and optimize.  Yea – sure – they don’t need IT Strategy Consultants to tell them that although they had actually had one of the tiers one firms in for quite a good few weeks before we got involved. Perhaps one day there will be a single integrated strategy for the business with IT as a thread within it – some companies are now doing this so hopefully it’ll catch on.

Raj: So the other ‘C’ level executives know what IT can do for their business strategy?

Dave: They think they know, or rather they have some ideas, which today is perfectly reasonable, as so many business have graying boards -  i.e. the CEO knows IT is important but he’s 55 years old and in many ways only “gets” a bit of what IT should mean to his company.  The COO often views IT as the function to blame when any operational issue occurs, or they can’t deliver in time.  The CFO will as ever be asking about costs and where savings can be made, etc etc… this scenario plays out time and in again in so many companies.  So the CIO has to mash all of this together and then deliver something interesting, engaging and compelling usually for less money that it really needs and in less time than he would ideally like.

Raj: So, what should CIO do to get the board interested in IT Strategy?

Dave: I think the CIO has to really create a highly visual and compelling story to try and engage his/her board – I’m a big fan of the story teller CIO – so for example in the case I mentioned earlier – we attempted to condense the IT Strategy into a compelling idea and then build the story around this – but in all honesty Raj this is really to try and get the attention of people who I personally think should pay attention in any case!  Over the next few years I think it will start to change as a generation hits the board room who have been raised on smart IT.  I find it difficult to imagine any of my children for instance needing to have the benefits of collaboration explained to them, or accepting it will takes eight months to introduce a new application….!?  As an aside collaboration and corporate are in many cases mutually exclusive, they weren’t built to collaborate – but that’s probably a topic for another day.

Raj: Moving on to a different topic… What do you think of SaaS and Cloud computing?

Dave: I’ve got very strong views on this so here goes…whilst the various consulting firms and technology vendors argue about definitions, security, total cost of ownership, transferability, cost per server, cloud, SaaS, PaaS, on-premise, off-premise what they seem to miss is whether they like it or not small and medium size companies are happily buying services over the internet.  For them it’s all down to cash flow, flexibility and scalability and these small and medium sized companies are just as important, if not more so to the economy than the industrial giants.

I often think therefore that the debates themselves tend to re-enforce the IT geek model.  However I do accept that for larger companies SaaS and cloud has quite a few more implications, but really it’s just another delivery model that the CIO can factor into his strategy and thinking. So, I’m not sure if you agree, but I think we are sitting at a really interesting point in IT – a sort of tectonic plate shifting time – eventually the whole SaaS/Cloud stuff will make a difference across the industry, regardless of all the debate and I personally think it’s going to cause some interesting shifts in the traditional Consulting/SI firms – which is good for the customer as well.  At least I hope so as I took the plunge of leaving Gartner to start a new consulting/SI type firm which is really founded on this new generation services that are starting to appear.  Sort of put your money where your mouth is approach!

Raj: So what’s your vision for your new consulting company?

Dave: Oh no the dreaded elevator pitch – here goes then…a business and technology firm formed from collaboration with many active members across the globe linked by great systems and sharing capabilities, knowledge and profits in an equitable and ethical manner.  I just don’t believe that it makes sense anymore to have 10,000 people on your books, in a hierarchical model, driving you to make decisions that are so often sub optimal for the client – and I know this is the case because in my time I’ve seen it happen – lots.  I described our company recently to a customer as “An efficient 21st century workers co-operative!”

Raj: All the best with your new endeavor.  Keep us posted.

Dave: Thanks Raj, likewise with the blog -it’s good fun and it makes me smile and think a bit – which is what it’s all about really.

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