The upraising concern for information technology

Throughout the years, with the upraising concern for information technology, the Chief Information Officer or Information Technology Director embraces a new role today, from one being head to strategic consultant, to being a business integrator and a source of innovation. However, most of CIO’s are struggling with this new reality. Many lack credibility as strategic decision makers and based on the research conducted by Professor Joe Peppard in Cranfield School of Management in UK, he observed that many CIO’s lack leadership to drive their organizations forward in use of technology but also miss out on establishing relationship with appropriate stakeholders; however, they have a very important place within the organization. Peter G.W. Keen, researcher, speaker and advisor to top management has been interviewed by Omar el Sawy, a Professor of Information and Operations Management on engaging into conversations between CIO’s and CxO’s that matter. A statement that is 2 elaborated by Peter Keen in the interview throughout questions in which he talks about raising change on CIO’s focus, towards controlling operations cost. Furthermore he introduces the concept of innovation and invention as conversations that do matter and should be debated by CIO and CxO’s before concluding the interview by giving insights on the profession of IT, the core characteristics of IT professional worker and also on academics as researchers and teachers. To analyze ideas put forward by Peter Keen in the interview, it is interesting to relate to what he has expressed in the social impacts of computing, the Information Systems and Organizational Change. According to Peter Keen: ‘’the aim is to explain why innovation is so difficult and to point towards effective strategies for managing the process of change. Many commentators have drawn attention to the problems of implementation that result in systems being technical successes but organizational failures.’’ (Keen, 2010) Peter Keen stresses a lot on the need for good internal communication, especially among departments’ heads. Chief executive officers are mainly in charge of the ultimate management responsibility for an organization, including the management of senior executives, whereas an IT executive (CIO) is mostly responsible for information technology management and information systems that support enterprise goals. Typically, business people dislike hearing too much technical information using highly professional IT language; instead, they want things to be simplified and precisely related to the overall impact on the company’s abilities and performance. Often, IT managers tend to be very peripheral in their interactions with the business units of their organization, and Peter Keen describes them as lacking business Savvy-meaning they are not able to have a sensitive perception of all the dimensions of business issues and accordingly are not flexible if further changes are needed in the future. I agree with Keen’s idea saying that IT people so focus on their areas of specialization that they often miss the overall picture of how to use IT capabilities to rationalize business processes and mainly strengthen their relationship with business managers, which makes CEOs having less interest in hearing IT news within their organizations. Ideally, IT is an agent of transformation that CIOs must use to contribute beyond their functional responsibilities; that is to say, IT people have to be aware of all IT features, including business dimensions within to management teams. Nowadays, if business managers are indifferent about the advantages IT can attribute to their organizations, it simply means that they are not motivated by IT people and their two-way relationship is not practical, And that is the reason why “the dialogue is needed at the top” (Keen, 1991). The CIO has to "make sure that what the user gets is what they want, not what the CIO thinks they want," says Herb Foster, CEO at CivicBank of Commerce in Oakland, Calif.

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