Making the leap: Retooling IT operations

Computerworld - Robert Brown recently took a step that many IT executives haven't taken in years: He added staffers. Brown, senior vice president of operations at Fremont, Calif.-based Tiburon Inc., hired two workers, including someone for the newly created position of IT manager.
A sign of better times ahead? Yes. But Brown's modest hiring spree also signals a shift in thinking for him, his IT department and his company.
"It sends a real clear message that there are changes that need to take place, that this IT group has a real spot on the front end," Brown says, explaining that his staff and the business units must work together to reach common company goals.
Industry studies and IT leaders alike report that after several years of cutting costs, CIOs now need to focus on supporting business growth. But IT execs must contend with a number of challenges as they make the leap. And while industry leaders say some CIOs won't have the skills needed to make it, they also point out that many are already rethinking and restructuring IT's role within organizations.
"There's no way to keep things [at the] status quo," says Karenann Terrell, vice president and CIO of Chrysler Group and Mercedes-Benz North America at DaimlerChrysler Corp. in Auburn Hills, Mich. "If you're going to make the transition to business value, IT can't just learn the vernacular, the vocabulary of the business. They have to do things with and for the business that are different."
That's a tall order for many IT executives. According to Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc., the intense focus on cost-cutting has weakened IT leadership, fostered silo behavior, created competing agendas and dampened the creative spark in IT. As a result, IT has become risk-averse.
Gartner concluded in a July 2004 report that few IT management teams are well positioned, in terms of the breadth and depth of their capabilities as leadership teams, to deal with the challenges of growth, change and innovation.
But CIOs know they need to change, says Gartner analyst Mark P. McDonald. "Many CIOs will be focused on building up their business and leadership skills," he says.
In an environment where CIOs aren't going to get a lot of seed money -- a January Gartner report says IT budgets will grow by only 2.5% this year -- CIOs need to build their reputations as leaders by "being much more explicit about what their contributions are," McDonald says. He points to one CIO who, in summarizing progress following a corporate merger, reported the actual dollar