As a business executive, every year can be viewed as frantic, stressful and demanding. Add to that mix 2011’s global economic uncertainties, persistent unemployment and heightened pricing pressuring in every industrial sector — and the stress mounts.

Yet I believe that IT executives faced greater challenges than most this year, making it possibly the most disruptive one yet. Not only were they dealing with the same external pressures as their peers, but also with unprecedented pressures from within their enterprises. Never before have so many stakeholders, with so many demands, questioned everything they do. Answer correctly and you’re a hero; fall short and you may be out. It clearly wasn’t a year for traditionalists or for holding onto the past. Forget old formulas and fixes; this is a new era of IT — the Era of Now, as Peter Hinssen describes it.

As executive coach Dina Lichtman wrote earlier this year, “... businesses have forever changed ... [and] CIOs face a unique challenge in dealing with these massive disruptions.”

Seen this before, you say? Not really. When PCs came into the enterprise, they didn’t threaten to displace every corporate app and demand access to corporate assets from the far corners of the world. But that’s what consumerization of IT and mobile devices are doing. Customers have as much say in which social media platform a business chooses as the enterprise architect. When in the past have CIOs been told to sanction “bring your own device” (BYOD) technology and to embrace leaderless leadership?

Similarly, when businesses sent back-office processes offshore years ago, it meant job losses and reengineering, but it didn’t cause the upheaval in data centers and among individual business units that cloud computing models seem to be producing. The pent-up demand for services, coupled with resentment against IT’s sluggish responses, are widespread. As former CIO Joe Puglisi acknowledged in his blog, “the breadth and scale of the offerings” are unlike those of the past.

How can CIOs even contemplate innovation in this environment? It’s difficult. Even the giants in health care, such as Kaiser Permanente, are still taking relatively small steps to develop fresh IT solutions to age-old problems.

At Smart Enterprise Exchange and Smart Enterprise magazine this year we have tried to offer strategies, resources and tactics for IT executives facing these real-world challenges every day. Those who are ahead of the pack, such as the CIOs and IT teams at Sprint Nextel, Volvo and JetBlue, aren’t magicians, nor do they have unlimited resources. They do have lots of flexibility, real desire for change, and good relationships with both top management and the business units they serve. They are taking risks and accepting what CA Technologies CIO Greg Valdez calls the IT leadership challenge to change and adapt. We’ve also offered enterprise architects their own forum to exchange ideas, strategies and tactics in the Smart Architect group.

My final suggestion for the year, then, is this: Rest, relax and enjoy the holidays. Recharge and reflect. Then, get ready for more disruption ahead: Consumer driven IT, cloud migration and mobile madness will continue full speed ahead. One tool you’ll have on your side is the Smart Enterprise Exchange community to offer guidance and assistance at the speed of business.

Health, peace and joy to all,

Paula Klein

Editor and Community Manager

Smart Enterprise Exchange