As I catch up on my reading during the flight home from The Catalyst, the idea of differentiation seems to be popping out at me. In CIO's August 1 issue, the topics of getting smart, fast, and ahead are covered by looking at the CIO 100 award winners and how they are addressing their needs to deliver business agility. Likewise, Gary Beach @gbeachcio covers the importance of our educational systems focusing on developing analytic, collaborative, and communication skills. He goes as far as to say that our nation is at risk because so many of our institutions are not producing people with these skills. I have additional concerns about how we are and should be responding to the ever increasing rate of change and speed of business, the overall complexity of technology, and how ever changing requirements in the areas of governance and regulation work to slow technology delivery and adoption down.
Speed as a Differentiator in Business
Maryfran Johnson, Editor in Chief of CIO magazine, starts off by pointing out that most businesses do not see IT and CIOs as being responsive but instead as "slow-and-steady." We all know this to be true. As we focus on process, project management, vetting, testing, quality assurance, etc we can get bogged down. However, we all know that now more than ever our businesses need speed. And in a world where technology adoption is ubiquitous and essentially is the big normalizer, few differentiators exist. Speed, however, is one that remains.
A company's ability to integrate, deploy, and adopt new technologies quickly can truly create a short period of time where they have a strategic advantage. In this edition, Maryfran quotes Stuart Kippelman, CIO of Covanta Energy, as stating "Speed is a game-changer."
My concern as the rate of change of technology, and the speed with which we do and conduct business continue to increase, that the gap between what the business needs in terms of response and enablement to realize opportunities and our ability to respond are widening. Technologies are becoming more complex, regulatory requirements and the need for better governance and controls are continuing to increase as well. The net result is the gap is widening what do we do and how do we respond to this? How can we maintain agility and that entrepreneurial edge of smaller organizations? This is complicated even further by the fact that the skills that our needed to be successful in IT are changing as well by the same business needs and rates of change that are driving business. However, our educational institutions in many respects are moving the wrong direction.
The Widening Talent Gap
Gary Beach, in the same edition of CIO, points out in his article "Plugging the Talent Gap," that "This isn't just about math and science. We also need a way to teach other critical skills: how to think analytically, how to collaborate, how to communicate." Without these skills there is no way we Technology can be as responsive as our businesses need. A lack of these skills presents major barriers to progress on all fronts and certainly keeps a business from being able to realize opportunities to differentiate by being responsive. Gary goes on further to say "...today we need IT professionals who have not only technology skills but also communications skills and business savvy." How can a service organization even begin to facilitate the resolution of business problems without an understanding of their significance to and the impact on the business as a whole?
Overall, we have some things to consider. We need to find a way to be increasingly responsive in the midst of an ever changing environment. We need to focus on technologies and skills that promote agile acquisition and adoption. This needs to happen sooner rather than later. I fear that we are heading towards and impasse the will essentially bec