In turbulent political times, IT can be a difference maker

The always-evolving global economy has become hyper-politicized.

Despite the old line that the US government is, in all actuality, little more than a military attached to an insurance company, the seldom-of-the-same-mind three anchors on CNBC’s Squawk Box recently stated that they can’t talk about the economy without talking about American politics — specifically tariffs and White House/agency interventions.

CEOs at Big Tech, Big Media, Big Agriculture, and Big Manufacturing and other important societal actors are spending a whole lot of time and attention seeking to “avoid the wrath of the government.”

Entire wings of the C-suite — think marketing, supply chain, and HR — have had their agendas and operations disrupted by changing political winds.

Enter IT and the CIO. In a world gone political, CIOs and their IT workforces can transform IT’s much-lamented invisibility into a secret superpower. We can quietly and without any political drama or partisan shenanigans continue to go about our core mission of making the world a better place. We are delightedly apolitical.

Political scientists advise governmental neophytes, “Don’t wrestle with a pig. You’ll just get muddy and annoy the pig.”

Fifteen years ago, I remember addressing IT leaders at CIO’s events exhorting everyone to conceptualize and then deploy IT systems that would “render the competition irrelevant.” I still believe that IT — done right — can be a source of sustainable competitive advantage.

Doing IT right

Every CIO knows there are fundamental IT truths that require monitoring and earnest interventions.

US Representative Dr. Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) is a critical-care physician. A big part of that job is determining whether a patient is sick or not, and if sick what medical intervention should be implemented.

CIOs need to step up and serve as critical-care physicians for the totality of their organization’s digital experiences. IT needs to anthropologically assess the gestures, postures, language, and mindsets of people at work. Are there systems that are sick and require intervention? Are there digital experiences people are “mad about”?

The best way of addressing the IT health question is to spend time with the people using our systems. We need to pay attention to our stakeholders. How much time do we actually spend listening to user voices? Do we understand the battle stakeholders wage in their daily lives? Are we, a la Ted Lasso, “helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves”?

Putting a digital spin on the powerful question “How was your day?” will pay significant dividends. CIOs need to periodically check in and gut check the adjectives front-line workers use to describe IT.

Modern-day presidents speak to “the people” more than their predecessors did, in large part because of the economics and capabilities of communication technologies. Similarly, modern-day CIOs need to conduct authentic conversations with the constituencies they serve.

Stakeholders should not be strangers to us. Nor should we be strangers to them. We need to de-encrypt our identity for our stakeholders.

Think like economists should but don’t

Over the past two decades the economics profession has lost significant influence. At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association in San Francisco several panels concluded that economists need to “do a better job about understanding the problems people care about.”

Additionally, the credibility of the economics profession as a whole is increasingly being called into question due to some high-profile forecasting errors. Greg Mankiw, a Harvard economist who was a top advisor to President George W. Bush, admits, “We’ve always been bad at forecasting.” Track record matters.

The undiagnosed value cancer eating away at IT is the below-the-radar perception of IT efficiency. Do IT stakeholders believe IT’s budget is being spent wisely? The Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh was self-aware enough to self-commit to the mental health asylum at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Are we courageous enough to look in the value mirror or step on the value scale?  Does IT have to be so expensive?

Get grounded in reality

To be faithful advocates for the future, CIOs must strike the balance between being “ahead of our time” and relevant to today’s problems at hand.

This requires transcending the “AI is IT fentanyl” magical thinking that describes so much of our discussion about the future.

Instead of getting lost on where we hope to go with an IT panacea that may never truly arrive, CIOs and their IT teams must connect with all corners of their organization and customer base and bring clarity to that most human of questions, “What should we do next?”