IT May Have Become Too Invisible

Computerworld - There's no such thing as bad publicity, they used to say in Hollywood. Far better to be talked
about negatively than not to be thought about at all.
The IT profession may be in need of some publicity. The results of a recent survey of 55 of the top executive MBA candidates -- degree-seeking students who have full-time jobs -- at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University indicate that IT -- what it is, what it does and what it can do -- isn't on the minds of next-generation business leaders.

• 75% said they didn't think much about IT.


• 66% didn't know who the CIO was at their company.


• 48% had "never actually met an IT person."


• 63% were hard-pressed to articulate the IT strategy of the company they worked for.


• 84%, when asked to recall personal experiences related to IT, cited very negative situations, such as IT failing to deliver on something.

This data correlates with research conducted at the IT Leadership Academy that documented that IT has an image problem. In addition, large subsets of the IT tribe are experiencing an identity crisis, exhibiting pronounced uncertainty about the roles they play today and will play in the future.
The image problem involves the external awareness or perception of who IT is and what it does. The identity problem concerns an internal awareness of who IT is and what it does. Image is linked tightly to reputation, which is defined as the collective judgment by outsiders of an organization's actions and achievements. It's one thing to be judged harshly. It's quite another not to be judged at all.
Most IT leaders are probably familiar with emerging research that characterizes the contemporary enterprise as an assembly of skills tribes -- marketing, finance, operations and IT. These tribes should be -- but in most cases aren't yet -- integrated. Each tribe has its own language, belief system and set of rituals.
Success for the enterprise is seen as a function of whether leadership can get the tribes to play well together. Until recently, many in IT, myself included, labored under the impression that the first step on the path to success is to understand how each discipline thinks. We were wrong. The real first step is to make sure the other tribes know you exist.
The mission for many IT shops is to go unnoticed in the way that an elevator goes unnoticed when it's functioning properly. But have we become too invisible? Has IT fallen off the radar screen of the next