How to Move Beyond the Frustrations to Form a New Partnership with IT
Authors: Cramm, Susan
ISBN-13: 978-1-4221316-4
ISBN-10: 1422131661
©2010 | 1st Edition | 200 pages , Softcover
Pub Date: March 2010
Price: US$ 16.95
Crack the secret code of how IT departments really work and what makes IT professionals tick.
Why can’t operational managers ever get what they really want from IT? Why is the relationship so fraught with frustration from all parties? IT managers and business leaders simply don’t understand each other, the way they think, the pressures they face and the goals they are trying to achieve. Enter Susan Cramm, the prospective Deborah Tannen of the Business-IT relationship.
Personality-wise, if men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then the IT people are from Microsoft and their business partners are from Apple. In spite of great effort to become more business-smart, line and IT managers have very different backgrounds and experiences which make it difficult to communicate what they do and why and how they do it. Different pressures and incentives further increase the difficulty of forming positive IT-business relationships. While line managers need to ‘get ‘er done now’ to support the needs of their function or units (or pay the price in terms of near term business results and bonuses), IT managers need to ‘get ‘er done right’ to support the longer term needs of the enterprise (or pay the price in terms of fragmented, fragile systems.)
The key to reconciling these and other differences is to figure out how to manage the paradox. If you want to get what you want from IT, you need to shift your perspective and look through the eyes of your IT partners. Doing so will allow you to develop a single version of ‘truth’ and give you the insight necessary to change the relationship for the better.
Similarly, this book will help dispel the notion that managers can ‘hand off’ their IT responsibility to the IT organization and will provide the tools to incorporate the management of IT into their daily leadership agenda and repertoire. Business leaders should assume accountability for IT, much as they have assumed accountability for the management of the financial and human resource asset and build the necessary capabilities into their organization.
The core ideas in this book also promise to have applicability to managing other relationships between business units and specialized service providers. Think supply-chain management, or better yet, graphic design.
About the Author
Susan Cramm is the founder and president of Valuedance. Susan Cramm is a recognized industry expert on information technology leadership. She has helped pioneer the field of IT leadership coaching through her passion and gifts for developing others, as well as her keen insights regarding IT leadership, which are derived from extensive research and years serving in executive level positions. She has worked with executives from a number of Fortune Global 200 clients, including Toyota, Sony and Time Warner. Susan’s experience makes a difference and her clients describe her as ‘insightful’, ‘motivational’, ‘practical’, ‘tough’, ‘committed’ and ‘invaluable’. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and, since 2000, has authored the monthly “Executive Coach” column for CIO magazine.
Susan is the former CFO and executive vice president at Chevy’s Mexican Restaurants. She joined Chevy’s in 1994 to assist in the development of a nationwide Mexican ‘cantina style’ restaurant concept and assumed responsibility for finance, business strategy, restaurant development, franchising and legal functions. Prior to Chevy’s, Cramm worked with the Taco Bell Corporation and held the positions of CIO and vice president of the Information Technology Group and Senior Director for Financial and Strategic Planning.
Susan received her master’s degree in management from Northwestern University, specializing in finance, marketing and quantitative methods and her BA from University California, San Diego, summa cum laude, specializing in management and computer science.
Tables of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Service or Control
Chapter 2: Results or Relationships
Chapter 3: Tactics or Strategy
Chapter 4: Expense or Investment
Chapter 5: Quick or Quality
Chapter 6: Customization or Standardization
Chapter 7: Innovation or Bureaucracy
Chapter 8: Great or Good
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