We’ve all heard about the horsemen of the IT revolution that we're living — mobile, consumerization and cloud — and the changes these trends will demand of IT organizations to deliver their benefits. It seems that companies have to meet the insatiable demands (and desires) of business users and employees, as well as those of external customers. Compounding the pressure are the Millennials, or the Connected Generation (Gen C), and concerns about their presence in the workforce.

In my view, this demographic — combined with the new technologies they covet — will require huge changes inside the IT organization. The Gen C individual isn't just an IT customer, but an integral part of it. At a fundamental level, it means that how you engage in the business of IT itself has to change along with the services that you offer. In other words, you have to start an IT revolution from inside the enterprise, starting with IT itself. Old ways won’t work with new generation staff, as this CA slidecast explains.

Supporting the Support Staff

Let's use a simple example: IT support. IT teams typically have some way to rotate engineers through an on-call schedule. It amazes me how many still rely on physically handing off a device — usually a BlackBerry and sometimes a pager — to the person who is on call. That engineer is supposed to walk around with this device, whose sole purpose is to act as the on-call "bat-phone," should he or she be needed. Consider how ridiculous this is in today’s consumer driven-IT environment. All Gen C employees in IT likely have their own smartphones, so why saddle them with a crusty BlackBerry just to "page" them? I bet this approach is mocked mercilessly internally and with outsiders, and it causes credibility problems for IT. (You want to avoid the perception of systems administrators shown below, after all!)

Clearly, IT should walk the walk and use consumer IT in its own shop before it can manage it throughout the organization. What happens when an IT team takes something simple in the everyday work process, such as updating a problem ticket, accessing a knowledge management system, approving a change or getting information from diagnostic tools, and puts a barrier between the engineers and the systems they need? Inefficiencies result. For instance, if access to your IT management tools requires calling the service desk or operations team, or else powering up a laptop, connecting to your corporate network VPN, and then launching a fat client to get a simple task done, you're guilty of making things unnecessarily difficult and inefficient. We all have our favorite productivity apps on our smartphones and tablets; why not use them on the job? Ease of access to IT tools is not something that’s nice to have; it's a Gen C expectation. 

If IT organizations don’t change the way they themselves operate, various staffing challenges and problems will result. Chief among these are an inability to attract and retain the best talent; IT people working around IT policies; and IT’s inability to fulfill the mission of supporting the business.

Many changes are not difficult to make, but they require you to commit to change and include younger workers in determining what parts of your IT processes are either broken or ripe for improvement. A simple formula to start with is:

• keep your people connected, mobile and engaged with the end users they support;
• offer them consumer-technology choices,
• and above all, keep it simple.

Taking these steps may not solve all of your staffing issues, but these policies will help establish a credible IT organization that can attract and retain strong IT people.

Additional reading and resources:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9224568/How_mobile_BYOD_and_younger_workers_are_reinventing_IT

http://pcrsbdc.org/2012/10-tips-for-managing-multiple-generations-in-the-work-force-%E2%80%93-february-2012/

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/weinschenk/it-departments-plan-for-millennials/?cs=49821

http://www.onlinegraduateprograms.com/millennials/

http://ozarksfirst.com/fulltext?nxd_id=511647

Cloud. Mobile devices. Social media. At a time when new technologies are coming at IT leaders fast and furiously, how can you evaluate whether these technologies provide real business value or whether they are the latest technological fads?

I know that most IT leaders don't need much help in evaluating the purely technical merits of new products and services. I believe, however, that technology may well be the least important of the decision-making criteria you need to use. If so, what other criteria will help you make wise and rapid purchasing choices in response to ongoing business demands?

I believe the fundamental question that you need to ask and answer is: "What unique value will this technology provide my enterprise?" In a previous blog, I had argued that maximum IT value can only be delivered at the level of corporate goals; anything else is suboptimal. It follows, then, that any technology that can help the enterprise grow revenue, be more profitable, better satisfy customers and/or gain greater competitive advantage would be highly desirable. Conversely, if it doesn’t meet these requirements, it may not warrant your consideration — and dollars.

Demonstrating Unique Value

How do you apply this to your daily IT life? Well, for example, when client/server technology emerged in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I was asked by a CIO how he might explain the new technology to his senior executives. I had learned that it was fruitless to explain new technologies in technical terms; senior executives relate much better to business terms. So I explained to the CIO that the client/server technology era was the first time since the agricultural economy that we had the potential to put the person, the work and the technology back together again. In the intervening hundreds of years, successive developments had served to isolate these elements. With client/server technology, I explained, people now had “power on the desktop" with which to enhance the work they performed and to use it for the organization’s success. That was of unique value to the enterprise.

Later, in the ’90s when the Internet appeared, I was asked to lead a panel at the World Economic Development Congress on "IT and the Global Corporation." It was a new subject at the time, and I needed to do research to prepare for the event — a perfect opportunity to use the search capabilities of the Internet to see what I could find out about my topic.

I was amazed to get back in seconds 10 initial responses that appeared to be related to my subject. In fact, the first paper on the list, written by a professor in Switzerland, was perfect for the subject, and I subsequently made contact with the author, who directed me to other sources that helped with the panel topic. This experience led me to later communicate to my audience at the Congress that the benefit of the Internet was its ability to "reduce time to knowledge." In other words, it enabled people and organizations to learn faster. Even more significantly, it tied nicely at the time with the strategic imperative that the only sustainable competitive advantage was to learn faster than your competitors.

What Social Science Can Teach Us

While these examples clearly make the case for emerging technology investment, it’s not always that simple. Besides strategic value, the historical, human, social and cultural correlates of technology must be considered. After all, technology has its own unique history and is heavily influenced by personal psychology, group dynamics and cultural expectations.

A number of studies describe the relationship between technology and organizational culture. (See, for example, Shoshana Zuboff’s seminal book, In the Age of the Smart Machine.) For IT leaders, it may come down to asking: "Is my network compatible with my organizational culture?" One case that raised this issue was when IBM shut down an internal user network, VNet, in the 1980s because it fostered too much dissent. At the time, IBM had a strong command-and-control culture and didn't tolerate a free flow of internal expression. However, earlier social science research, conducted as far back as the 1940s at Carnegie Mellon University, had already demonstrated that many-to-many networks did indeed enable free expression of thought.

Today, IT leaders dealing with similar issues, such as social media use within the enterprise, can also look at social science research for advice and precedents. Despite some popular belief, for example, recent studies — including my own current research — have concluded that social media is not conducive to personal and professional effectiveness and can also be an inhibitor to creativity.

Learning from Mistakes

IT leaders can and should use a historical perspective to evaluate new technologies. The philosopher George Santayana related, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” As an IBM salesman in the late 1960s, I sold computers to many organizations that previously had their processing done in the "cloud" — known as service bureaus at the time. It turns out that companies decided to bring their computing back in-house mostly for nontechnical reasons. With our current interest in the cloud, it remains to be seen whether we have learned from those mistakes.

The point is that today’s emerging technology decisions can’t be made in a vacuum despite the need for speed. Historical, organizational and social factors all have to be considered to yield the greatest value for the business.

******

Peter S. DeLisi is President of Organizational Synergies and Academic Dean, Information Technology Leadership Program, Santa Clara University.

Organizational Synergies is a strategy consulting firm located in Fremont, Calif. Previously, Pete spent 16years at Digital Equipment Corp.---eight of those years as a consultant to large, Fortune 500-size customers.

He has been published in the Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business  Review, Business Horizons and Journal of Management Inquiry. He is also an internationally recognized speaker.

Pete is also a member of Smart Enterprise Exchange and can be reached on this site.

At one time, rulers, generals and CEOs believed that the only effective way to organize and manage was through a system of command-and-control. The king/general/boss gave the orders; everyone below did what they were told.

The system contained hidden assumptions: First, the boss knew more than anyone else. Second, workers could be trained — or threatened — to follow orders unquestioningly. Third, any other system was inefficient and slow to react to threats and change.

Today, probably thousands — perhaps millions — of rulers, generals and executives still believe that command-and-control is the only way to run things. Meanwhile, social media is rapidly undermining that approach to management. Leaders are seeing the old, ordered world they know and understand crumbling as citizens, customers, employees and partners become empowered by new tools that were almost unimaginable 15 years ago.

The Good, the Bad and the New Realities

Since writing my book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, (Jossey-Bass, 2010), social technologies have mushroomed. They are clearly giving employees new ways to collaborate with each other — and that’s a good thing. They have also unleashed new opportunities for employees to grumble publicly about their jobs — a not-so-good thing. Problems that once were resolved through private channels such as phone calls and emails are now publicly exposed.

The truth is, many IT leaders are terrified by the power of social technologies, but they are also intrigued and excited about the opportunities. While some organizations have taken steps to embrace social technologies and are doing well, others have failed. My new research shows the biggest indicator of social media management success has been an open mind — the ability of leaders to let go of total control at the right time, in the right place and to the right degree.

The first step is recognizing that you are not in control; your customers, employees and partners are. Then, the key is to think of letting go as a relationship issue. After all, leadership is a relationship between those who aspire to lead and those who choose to follow. At a time when employees are redefining how they make and maintain relationships via social technologies, business leaders — especially in IT— need to rethink the foundations of organizational relationships.

Redefining IT Leadership

As an IT leader, your role is shifting from “controlling” IT to enabling the safe adoption of these new open technologies. This means establishing the policies, processes and procedures that will help you manage openness. Put another way, you have to plan how, in effect, to control openness.

Openness needs structure and prioritization to offset risks. You have to determine what you will and will not be open about and what you will and will not permit. There must be limits — otherwise, chaos will ensue. Don’t be shy; make the rules and involve your employees in writing what I call the “sandbox covenant” to govern how you enter into these new, social media-driven relationships.

A sandbox has clearly defined boundaries within which it’s safe to play. On the other hand, the sandbox still has rules: no throwing sand at other players, no taking someone’s truck without permission.

A key part of a covenant is accountability — spelling out what happens if either party doesn’t keep its side of the bargain. If employees don’t act responsibly with the new freedom, it will be taken away. And employees can also hold leaders accountable if they haven’t acted in a way they have promised. Think of it as providing the guardrails within which being open can take place. Unless you clearly define what the limitations are — and every in the first place. organization has limits to how open they can and want to be — people will not have the trust and confidence to be open

We are in a period of fundamental social change akin to the rise of the automobile or the introduction of television. A generation that has always known the Internet and believes that openness is as natural as breathing is coming to work. Tomorrow’s leaders will align their strategies with that openness, and they will establish policies that make explicit how open the organization will or won’t be. The time to take your first step toward that future is now.

Charlene Li is the founder of Altimeter Group in San Mateo, Calif. This post is adapted from portions of her book, Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead. She is also a member of Smart Enterprise Exchange and can be reached on the site.

One question we are frequently asked by the media is: What is happening to data center jobs? As the reasoning goes, cloud computing, automation, outsourcing, data center consolidation and virtualization are conspiring to render data center occupations extinct. The actual data, however, tells a more complex story.

When viewed as a percentage of total IT staff, data center staffing levels appear to have leveled out, following a decade-long decline, and may even be on the rise again. The reason for this is not entirely clear. It may be that we are at the beginning of a very different trend: the build-out of data centers to accommodate even greater computing workloads. Or, it may be that recession-driven cost-cutting has caused a temporary disruption in the longer-term trends.

At Computer Economics, our annual “IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks”  study shows that data center functions survived the global recession just fine. And during the past few years, “just fine” is about as positive as it gets. System administrators, programmers and engineers, as a group, were at the front of the line when it came to job protection. Staffing levels among this group rose from 8.5 percent of the typical IT staff in 2008, to a healthy 10.2 percent this year. Some of this rise is attributable to a decline in overall IT staffing levels. A reduction in the programmers or network personnel in an organization, for instance, would cause data center personnel to look bigger as a percentage of total staff. But that is not the total explanation.

It may be too early to see the full impact of current data center technology shifts on IT employment. During the global business recession, the outsourcing of data center work seemed to suffer a setback as organizations hunkered down, took fewer risks and focused on eliminating all but the most necessary functions, including the very managers needed to reengineer IT processes. Now that IT spending is recovering, organizations may begin in earnest to shed data centers in favor of cloud-based resources. Today’s IT organizations are certainly investing in virtualization of all kinds, and use of Software as a Service (SaaS) is rising briskly.

Change is slow, however, and many of these same trends contribute to improved data center productivity — fewer data center workers are managing more servers, terabytes of storage, and applications. That only enables enterprises to absorb more computing resources. It’s called the law of supply and demand. As the cost of operating data centers declines, organizations can afford to invest in more data center capacity. It is little wonder, then, that system support personnel make up a rising portion of the IT staff today. IT organizations need people who know how to build and support the flexible infrastructure that can embrace the cloud while maintaining critical resources in-house.

We could, in fact, be entering a new golden age of data center employment where productivity gains will be present endless new opportunities for those with the right skills to manage and build virtual, flexible infrastructure and cloud-based resources.

For the time being, the future remains cloudy, but promising for data center employment.

John Longwell is VP of Research at Computer Economics , an Irvine, Calif.-based IT research firm, founded in 1979, that provides metrics for IT management. He is a member  of Smart Enterprise Exchange and can be reached on the site.

For additional Smart Enterprise Exchange content on workforce and employment trends see the Professional Development  track and the following:

Global Workforce Update

Creative IT Hiring Strategies for Net Gen Workers

Women in IT: 12 Tips for Advancement

It has long been a principle of information technology that the software and employees use must be strictly limited and controlled by IT. Otherwise, all hell would break loose: Employees would try to connect every imaginable contraption to the enterprise network using all kinds of software and putting at risk vast amounts of sensitive information — indeed, the integrity of the entire system.

As we know, that principle no longer applies. Younger employees now expect their company’s IT department not only to tolerate their smartphones and tablets, but to help support them and give them complete access to the Internet. They want to stay connected with Facebook friends, follow their Twitter feeds, play games, and generally mix business with pleasure over the course of their “working day”—which itself has fewer defined hours than ever before.

These trends will only accelerate, as the cohort born after 1990 joins the ranks of the world’s workers and consumers in growing numbers over the next decade. At Booz & Co., we call them Generation C—the C stands for connected, communicating, computerized, content-centric, community-oriented. Over the course of the next decade, our research indicates, this group will make up close to 50 percent of the worldwide workforce, and up to 40 percent of all consumers in the developed world.

Too many CIOs see nothing but risks associated with the rise of Generation C. From their short-term point of view, the security issues will continue to trump the added flexibility and employee loyalty to be gained through the consumerization of corporate IT — not to mention concerns about lower productivity, reputational risk, compliance and costs. Yet companies that can keep ahead of this trend will ultimately be giving themselves a real advantage in a matter of even greater importance: the race to meet the digital future head on.

Digitization's Impact

“Digitization” — the process by which technology is shaping every aspect of our public, commercial and private lives — is inevitable. Already, pervasive broadband, ubiquitous connectivity, cloud computing, and social networking, are all converging to transform how we work, play, communicate, socialize and do business. No CIO can afford to ignore or discount this process, as it will transform how every enterprise operates, both internally and externally. It will vastly increase the amount of insight businesses can gather about their customers; it will open up major new opportunities to capture value; and it will provide a huge productivity boost. As such, it holds the key to growth for global companies in virtually every industry as well as for government agencies and non-profit organizations for the foreseeable future.

CIOs looking to stay on top of the ongoing digitization of their employees, customers and overall operations need to understand just how well-prepared — or not — they are to meet this trend. On an internal level, they must assess their readiness to handle the needs of the coming wave of Generation C employees. The graphic below shows the tool we use to assess overall readiness to handle more consumer-oriented IT, as well as examples of average readiness in several different industries:

The assessment tool considers a number of criteria that determine readiness for consumer-oriented IT. Based on these factors, we can make the following assumptions:

• Security and privacy requirements: Companies in industries with stringent demands for security and privacy should move to a consumer model more cautiously.

• Maturity of IT support: Companies that already use ITIL or COBIT will be more prepared for the shift.

• Use of Web-based applications: Web-based applications have less dependence on PC-based software to function correctly; hence, they fit a consumer IT model better.

• PC-usage profile: Laptops fit the consumer IT model most strongly.

• Legal and compliance environment: A complex legal and compliance environment makes the use of consumer IT riskier.

• Risk culture:Risk-averse organizations are less likely to accept the risks associated  with consumer IT.

• Employee profile:Tech-savvy employees are more demanding but more comfortable supporting themselves.

• Working culture: A flexible culture requires looser security measures and is more open to the use of personal devices.

• Type of work: Employees who typically work 9-to-5 are less likely to mix work and life.

As part of this assessment, the critical issues to consider are security needs and the nature and culture of employees. An aerospace manufacturer, for instance, will naturally have a greater need for maintaining a high level of security than an advertising agency, for instance. And its employees are, perhaps, less likely to be the young, creative and Web-savvy employees an ad agency would attract.

The internal transformation, however, is only a first step in mounting an offensive strategy in the face of increasing digitization. Every organization must also expect the trend to affect its business model and must determine the capabilities it will need to create value in the future. Digitization, we believe, will affect industries in different ways, depending on three major factors:

1. Industries, such as retail and media and entertainment, where barriers to entry are low will look to digitization early, as a means of gaining a competitive advantage.

2. Industries where information in some form or another is the primary product or a key success factor are ripe for digitization. Here, examples include financial services and, again, media and entertainment.

3. Industries that are the most intensive in their use of capital — whether financial or human — offer big opportunities for digitization to reduce capital intensity and increase return on capital. Healthcare, and the public sector in general, fit both conditions.

As digitization takes hold, it will be the job of the CIO both to manage the transformation and to help prepare for the changes in the business and operating models needed to win in this environment. And that particularly means connecting, communicating and building communities with younger workers who will be leading the charge.

Roman Friedrich is a Booz & Company partner, based in Düsseldorf and Stockholm. He leads the firm’s communications, media and technology practice in Europe, and specializes in the strategic transformation of these industries in the context of digitization.

How much IT is valued in an organization largely depends on the CIO’s ability to demonstrate it.

One of the topics I am most frequently asked to speak about is the need for CIOs to effectively market the value of IT. Despite its importance, this is a topic that is often treated with a certain degree of disdain by CIOs. First of all, many IT executives are introverts by nature and the thought of marketing and bragging about anything is extremely distasteful. Furthermore, many of us were raised to believe that good work is automatically recognized and that bragging about our accomplishments is gauche. This mindset is very naive.

Often when I present on this topic at a conference, I will play a little game with my audience. First, I mention that marketing is critical to the success of a CIO. This often gets me the proverbial “eyeball roll” from at least 20 percent of the audience. I proceed to ask the following questions:

• “How many of you consider yourself to be experienced at marketing?” Normally, in a room of 200 people, 10 hands might be raised. I then proceed to the next question …
• “How many of you are in long-term committed relationships?” This question usually gets about 80 to 90 percent of the hands raised. Now for the coupe de grâce …
• “So let me ask the first question again: How many of you consider yourself experienced at marketing?”

This usually gets a chuckle from the crowd, but they get my meaning!

I share with the audience that my wife is a beautiful and intelligent woman who could have had her pick of suitors. Of all the people she could have chosen to marry, I convinced her to marry me. If you don’t think marketing played a role in this effort, you are sadly mistaken!

All kidding aside, one of the main reasons that IT executives are uncomfortable with the idea of marketing is because they misinterpret what it is really all about. Many CIOs equate marketing with being a slick “snake oil” salesman. The word conjures up the need for $3,000 suits and “schmoozing” over a bottle of Dom Pérignon at the local steakhouse. This is not my version of marketing.

Follow the Money

To me, marketing is simply educating people about how the money they are investing in you and your IT team is paying dividends. It is explaining the value that your services and efforts bring to topline revenue, lowering bottom-line costs, and finding innovative ways to engage customers in more effective and value-added ways.

For example, at the U.S. Tennis Association where I am CIO, we implemented a consumer-facing website that allows parents of young children to access everything they need to get their kids started playing age- and equipment-appropriate tennis. Any Web-hosting organization could have developed and hosted this content, but knowing what my business was trying to accomplish and understanding the unique calls to action to make this site happen — that’s the value IT added above the technical deployment of a solution.

Your unique understanding of your business, your clients and your processes is what distinguishes you as a valuable internal partner, not just another “everything as a service” cloud or network services provider. At a time when these one-size-fits-all services abound, it’s critical that you prove the ROI on the capital projects you are driving.

And knowing how to target your budget requests will go a long way as well. When I needed funding to strengthen our access-control security solution, for instance, I didn’t ask for a large sum. Instead, I asked for a one-time investment that would allow us to better secure one tournament while at the same time providing a real-time headcount of fans at the event. As a result, we increased ticket sales by about $1.5 million each and every year! I was able to demonstrate that a small, one-time investment of X dollars reaped a return of 8X dollars each year.

The value derived through other parts of your organization is easily understood. The board understands what the sales team is contributing. They know the value of research and development. But how many people intuitively understand the real business value of IT? It’s your job as a CIO to communicate this value proposition and educate this audience. Squander the opportunity at your own risk.

Editors Note: Read more about communications skills in an excerpt from Larry's new book, “Lessons in IT Transformation,” published by John Wiley & Sons. Read the chapter and download here.

Larry is also a member of the Smart Enterprise Exchange and can be contacted on the site.

Looking to a do better job of serving your customers? You could do worse than taking a lesson from Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, the big online shoe retailer.

Hsieh has declared that at Zappos, customer service is everyone's business. No exceptions -- and that includes the CTO.

To learn more, check out the Career Smarts section of the just-published issue of Smart Enterprise magazine:

http://smartenterpriseexchange.com/community/magazine

Read the full article here.