At last - IT adding value

I think we have all collectively got there. Technology deployments are now actually generating real change and impact. For several decades, since the advent of organisational computing in the 1950’s, there has been the perennial promise of changing the world for the better and really making a difference. In the 1960’s, however, this was about automating existing processes that became easier to handle with scale but didn’t fundamentally change much. It precluded some employment but didn’t change the overall shape of business. In science it was different, as the space race and the moon landing proved. Commerce was less exciting.

In the 1970’s and 1980’s some shapes started to blur at the edges. Mini-computers and Personal Computers, later networked together, started to enable new ways of working in many fields of life including commerce. Again, much of the investment was aimed at automating tasks that had pre-existed or producing something better and quicker by smoothing out supply chains and workforce planning for example.

In the 1990’s things started to really change with the internet becoming the key agent of change. Things that were simply not possible became almost commonplace. Whole rafts of task were made self-service and businesses relationships with consumers moved dramatically. New information and data businesses started to emerge. The pace of change moved inexorably onwards as change fed upon change and datasets vastly increased, affording new analytical opportunities.

This takes us to the 21st century where the rate of change has left many businesses seemingly standing. On the one hand some things have become vast – Amazon for example and Google to name just two. Other vast enterprises are terminally ill such as General Motors, Marks & Spencer and sadly Thomas Cook.

I am not equipped to analyse all the reasons why we are where we are, but it strikes me, in my narrow slice of the world, that technology has now matured to such an extent that real change, promised for decades, is now emerging. A new generation has emerged who have different personal and cultural drivers. Willing to try and fail; collaborative; politically and culturally much more sensitive; more intuitive with change and innovation; less vested interests; ambitious and free from shibboleths and boundaries of the past; better educated and more diverse. I also believe that the fragmentation of politics in western democracies to issue-based new groupings is exacerbated by the massive proliferation in communication channels and the emergence of multiple sets of “truths”.

On top of all those attributes in Generations Y & Z, the speed of enablement is geometrically enhanced by technology. I was reading about the recent measurements of the 1970’s Moore’s Law observation and found that geometric growth of processor power has exploded by millions of percent. So, you have change being fed by massive expansions of technology capability.

In terms of people driving change, we see increasingly youthful talent sitting at the apex of change. Willing to fail and move on rapidly they have a different framework of thinking. Intuitively they don’t relish control and oversight but recognise its importance. They are willing to outsource aspects of control and process that do not add value. The focus on adding value is timely and long overdue. Many Gen Z are also very personable. Possibly in a diverse world they have been brought up in more diverse communities, with parents who were Generation X and Y and themselves even more liberated than baby boomers and before. Having said all of that there is still one set of attributes that even todays’ innovators and technical skills don’t intuitively have. It’s the set of attributes that loosely tie together to form effective leadership. Communication skills, stakeholder engagement, team leadership, people selection and evaluation, motivational capacities are mostly all learned attributes and they cannot be accelerated. Yet.

What todays’ technologists do enjoy, however, is the unequivocal capacity to effect change and add value supported by a culture and zeitgeist of innovation and experiment. Heady times to be a CIO at last.