Chapter 12 of The Adventures of an IT Leader  entitlted "Communication" provides an excellent example of some of the obstacles that a CIO encounters while trying to build strong IT-Business relationships within an organization. This novel is a real page-turner, I actually read the entire thing before making any posts, I believe that this helped see the big picture of a CIO's trials and tribulations they will encounter, and really shows an accurate description of the complexity of the IT-Business relationship. In the novel, Barton and his team just went through a fairly significant crisis when a denial of service attack combined with a "spam attack" crippled their systems for a few hours, leaving the entire company in turmoil right before an important meeting with analysts. 

Barton manages to survive the attacks, but barely. There were people fired for retaliating against the CEO's decision of neglecting to inform the public of the possible breach to their system and customer information. Absolute chaos ensued, and now Barton is left with a very complicated situation wherein the rest of the company lacks faith in their IT department. Now, he is forced to tread carefully around the CEO. Barton and his team must find a way to regain the confidence of their peers, senior management, and the public. 

The reality of the situation is that Barton's lack of trust in the IT department, and IT's inability to convey the importance of security to senior management while he was in the Loans department indirectly led to a significant security breach. Talk about irony! The moral of the story here is that with a stronger IT-Business relationship and better governance of communication protocols between IT and the other business units could have certainly gone to avoid the possibility of the security breach in the first place.

The next important point I have to make is in regards to IT's effectiveness in conveying information to the less tech-savvy business departments. As I mentioned in my previous post, IT representative are very analytical and tend to be organized and technical in the way they present facts. The problem is that when conveying technical information on a subject that is complete jibberish to the audience, there will be no productivity that ensues. It's important for IT representatives to convey their project proposals in terms of how they provide business value to the company, risk in terms of how it affects their customers and other departments, and work with customers and other departments to arrive at the most constructive plan of action. 

Joining forces and receiving input from various business units can be rather difficult to coordinate and may require restructuring of the organizational structure, employee training, and the development of new company protocols. This type of rework is very expensive and is often a deterrent for smaller organizations. It can sometimes be difficult to see the tangible benefits of more efficient and effective communication between departments; it always feels like you're just spending. The long-term benefits of being more efficient can provide an organization even the slightest competitive advantage, which can mean everything in today's severely competitive and collaborative businessplace. 

It is important to note that as much as the IT department should do their best to keep the best interests of the business in mind when making project decisions, it is equally as important for other departments to consider technological implications of their decisions as well as to become a lifelong technology learner. New technologies are a constant in today's marketplace that will undoubtedly be a trend that continues to grow for years to come. The latter will be discussed in more detail in my next journal entry, as I will be delving into how organizations must become leaders in technology-enabled innovation to remain competitive and keep up with the educated consumers of today's marketplace.