Comment: How can IT managers achieve a central role?

As you will hopefully have read last week, IT Week recently completed a major study into the relationships between IT and finance leaders. And as we highlighted, things could be a lot worse.

According to some observers, IT managers have become corporate Jonahs, blamed for the turbulent dot-com storm and fit now only to be fed to the fishes. But as our study showed, it ain't necessarily so. Business leaders know that the blame for e-commerce over-enthusiasm falls all over the place, not just in the lap of IT.

So on the whole, finance leaders give their full backing to IT departments, most often saying that the business gets decent value from its IT investments and that the IT leadership is doing a worthy job.

It is fair to note that the most dismal pictures are painted where IT has no voice in the central decision-making process. Where the IT department is not directly represented on the board or its equivalent, IT is more likely to be seen as a negative force: draining resources, failing to add value, and generating little confidence in the data it provides. Equally, in these organisations the IT leadership is much more likely to admit a lack of knowledge about wider business issues.

All of which is great for those that have a voice on the board. But what should an IT manager do if they are among the ones shut out, reporting to a bean counter who ranks IT alongside the cleaning staff? I've spent the past couple of weeks asking knowledgeable people for their top tips, but unfortunately I haven't made much progress. As one pundit put it, "the options are not great". The IT leader can agitate directly to be elevated to the board, but if IT is already held in low esteem, this is not going to work.

It seems clear that the most successful IT departments are outgoing, with their staff working in cross-functional teams. So disenfranchised IT managers have to find ways to broaden their contacts and to spread their web of influence. They must grasp such opportunities wherever they occur.

Job-swaps are a great way to broaden someone's outlook, but it is likely to be impossible for IT managers to participate directly. However, they should leap at the chance to have members of their staff seconded to other departments. The IT manager will then gain more knowledgeable lieutenants, and some of their experience will filter upward. Even the process of organising job swaps will raise the IT manager's profile and demonstrate a willingness to make a difference.

This kind of proactive action also characterises successful IT departments. They don't wait for others to identify a problem that needs fixing - they seek out the business pain points and find ways to ease them. In practice, this starts with talking to key people in other departments on a regular basis.

Ultimately, for an IT manager to make progress in the task of raising their own profile, the motivation has to be there. They must be able to envisage working as part of a multifaceted, business-focused team. If that picture jars, the dissatisfied IT leader might do better to look for a less stressful role in a different company.

Many readers have already made it to the board. If that's you, and you have tips of your own, I'd be happy to pass them on to less fortunate folk in a future column.

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