What is IT’s role in innovation? Is it just about making IT better or is it about driving business value too? We asked 592 business and IT leaders in the US and UK this question in our latest Diamond Digital IQ survey by asking them to choose what innovation role they thought their CIO and IT organization played from the following list:

1. Improve the IT Function
2. Improve Business Processes
3. Improve Customer Service
4. Reach New Customers
5. Create New Products/Services

Over three-quarters of our respondents said their CIOs primary innovation role is to improve business processes or IT. So, the vast majority of the innovation work we do is focused on internal improvements. It makes sense that IT focuses on areas it has the most influence and control over its own processes and the business processes it automates. However, as the CIO desires to improve ITs business impact, she strives to have IT drive value too.

Most of the conversations I have with CIO’s are, however, about how to bring new technology-fueled business ideas to the table. Are these desires just wishful thinking or are they really in-line with the role the CEO and business leaders want IT to take on? I don’t know the answer but I suspect that the explicit conversation on IT’s role in innovation doesn’t happen too often.

Just for fun, I uploaded the survey results into Tableau Public, a very powerful (and free) data visualization tool. My colleague Amaresh Tipathy introduced me to it and uses it for one of his latest posts on FEMA disaster data analysis. Enjoy exploring this data and let me know what you think.

Holmgren Saying Goodbye by Tlianza

With the NFL playoffs in full swing*, most of the league’s teams are on the sidelines thinking about how to get better for next year. Most of the introspection involves evaluating coaches and players. One new front office hire that is particularly interesting is Cleveland’s recruiting of Mike Holmgren as its new president. He is known as the architect of very successful Green Bay Packers teams (75-37 record) and the cultivator of a high quality coaching tree, which included Andy Reid, Steve Mariucci, and John Gruden.

What is interesting about Holmgren’s hire is that it is modeled after Bill Parcells role at Miami – The Football Czar.  He’s not the head coach and he’s not the GM (who usually handles personnel).  Instead, he is something else.  It is a role that leverages his expertise as a position coach, a head coach and a GM.  One that sees the bigger picture and is able to evaluate players AND coaches from a fresh and more independent perspective.  It is a position created to drive the “rebuilding” of a program – something Miami and Cleveland badly need.  In Parcells’ case, he took an 1-15 team and got it into the playoffs the next year with an 11-5 record.  Part of the Parcells formula is to bring in a core of coaches and players that he trusts and who know his systems, both offensively and defensively.

What could all of this mean to an enterprise and specifically, to the Information Technology function?

The IT Czar

The default IT organization is some derivative of the “Apps, Ops, Other” model, in which one group (or set of groups) deals with building and maintaining business applications, one groups deals with computer operations and support, and one group (or a few groups) deals with everything else, which usually includes IT planning and budgeting, enterprise architecture training, HR and measurement/reporting.  Of course, more complicated and/or sophisticated organizations deviate from this, but most have this basic lineage.

One of the downsides of this model is that the CIO is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the team (“the coach”), the personnel (“the GM”) and the executive roles of strategic planning and alignment.  As I’ve detailed here, I believe that some people are just not cut out to wear all of these hats at once.  But, with the team’s collective strengths in mind, a CIO can build a leadership group capable of succeeding across the market and business cycles.

What if we apply the Football Czar model to IT?  What if we think about the traditional CIO role as really two roles:

1. IT COO – runs the IT organization day-to-day, Apps and Ops
2. IT Czar – technology strategist and representative in senior business leadership discussions, IT COO reports to the IT Czar along with Planning, Architecture and Measurement/Analysis

While they don’t call it anything like a “czar,” one of my financial services clients is structured in a similar way.  In their case, the IT COO and CTO report to the CIO.  The model has promise in their organization but has caused the CIO to become too disconnected from the IT organization and their issues.  But, maybe that’s the point?

* sorry Toby, another Yank centric post