Best Balance: Keeping IT Staffers' Business Skills Sharp

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June 19, 2006 (Computerworld) -- Whether they're network administrators, IT project managers or LAN specialists, most workers want to feel like they're empowered to make a difference.

For successful IT organizations, that can-do attitude is often centered on identifying and understanding the needs of the businesses they support. To do that, this year's Best Places take a multifaceted approach to developing the business knowledge of their IT workers. For many of these companies, such training goes well beyond instructor-led courses (see the complete Best Place to Work in IT 2006 special report).

13th Annual Report:
100 Best Places to Work in IT 2006

List of Best Places Winners

"We feel the state we've gotten to [as an IT organization] has provided us with a competitive advantage," says Gary Scholten, CIO at Des Moines-based Principal Financial Group Inc., which ranks No. 29 on this year's list. "True innovation happens at the intersection of business and IT. IT has to be at the table for that to happen, and IT has to have a certain amount of influence for that to occur."

One of the steps that Principal's IT group has taken to develop its business knowledge is requiring IT workers to participate in a new job-shadowing program with business staffers. The program, which was launched in late 2005, enables IT workers to learn how each of Principal's financial services businesses operates and how external customers interpret the company's financial products, says Scholten.

One IT staffer at Principal who has benefited from the job-shadowing program is Stacy Hansen. A senior business analyst, Hansen spent time earlier this spring with various business staffers who work with internal and external customers. Among other things, she learned how "those roles interact with each other to meet our business needs and how they impact us in IT," says Hansen, a nine-year company veteran.

Hansen also attended a full-day training session in May to learn more about how the work of Principal's IT staff affects the company's revenues and profits. For instance, this includes identifying priorities in systems changes requested by business managers that ultimately go toward helping those business units meet their strategic goals and helping the company reach its profitability targets, she says.

As with other companies on the 2006 Best Places to Work in IT list, Principal requires its 1,500 IT staffers to create a set of annual career development goals linked to the company's business strategies. Those goals are reviewed quarterly by supervisors.

Cross-pollination

At Tellabs Inc. (No. 21), business and IT managers work together to identify seminars and conferences that their respective staffs can attend to help encourage a "cross-pollination" of ideas, says CIO Jean Holley. For instance, the Naperville, Ill.-based communications company recently sent a mix of nine IT and business workers to a supply chain management conference to learn more about best practices that they could apply to Tellabs' logistics, demand management and planning activities, she says.

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