Managing the many we’s of IT

Since leaving the jungle, humans have divided themselves into categories — a set of we’s. We 8.2 billion humans would be materially healthier, wealthier, happier, and safer if we could constructively and empathetically reconcile the hopes, dreams, and fears of the many we’s that make up our species.

Anthropologists and philosophers who study collective behavior embrace the premise that “we” has three foundational components: the individual (who am I?), the social (how do I want others to see me?), and the collective (who are we?). (George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton’s Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being is one such source.)

Before CIOs can understand IT in the collective (the “who are we?”), they must have a strong handle on their own personal identity. I have long argued that a critical piece of CIO success is autobiographical. CIOs need to be much more transparent. Your IT organization must know who you are — your values, what you care about, how much you care about it, and even your personality quirks.

Moreover, the CIO’s identity has to be an authentic and managed narrative. This is not an exercise in self-advertising, or in positioning yourself as an all-knowing technology messiah. Core elements of successful CIO identity involve being perceived as hard working, smart, humble, humorous, and genuinely interested in the success of others.

CIOs also need to know how others see them — the social component of collective behavior. Just as important, they need to know how others see IT. In the business context, that’s all about value creation.

Understanding IT’s ‘inner we’

As we all know, the inside-the-ropes “we” of IT is not homogeneous. IT’s “inner we” is a coalition of interest groups, an agglomeration of different communities. 

Many of the CIOs I talk to acknowledge that some of their “inner we” do not even identify as being part of a living, breathing, value-creating team. These disengaged IT workers are not excited or inspired by the task at hand. They come to work, keep their heads down, do what they are told, and go home — full stop.

Workforce engagement isn’t just an IT issue. According to Gallup, only 23% of employees worldwide and 31% in the US fall in the “engaged” category.

There are a number of best practices for improving employee engagement, but for IT, the best way is to make sure the technology in employees’ hands or on their desks is not undercutting their ability to perform their jobs.

Another IT “inner we” leverage point is the composition of work. Cisco Senior Vice President and CIO Fletcher Previn surmised that of the approximate 144 months of our lives we spend working, 60 months are spent in meetings, and another 44 doing administrative work, meaning that “~75% of your work life is spent doing stuff you don’t want to do.” We need to fix that.

Sitting around the water cooler in IT shops, a frequent topic of conversation is “vendors.” The people working inside corporate or government IT are not always happy with the behaviors of their vendors. Currently the general sentiment regarding key big-name vendors is less than positive. A software developer lamented, “These days, when I use [product X] from [vendor alpha] I just don’t feel like they’re on my side.”

Whether we like it or not, “we in IT,” as perceived by our stakeholders, includes our vendors. We do not get a pass saying, “That’s not our fault; that is vendor X, Y, or Z screwing up.”

We need to up our vendor management game.

IT’s ‘bigger we’

Technology value creation is a team sport. Getting to “us” as it relates to incenting effective IT behaviors is essential. In today’s business context that requires a fundamental shift in how we view the “we” of IT.

Rather than limit their horizon to the IT organization, CIOs need to insert themselves into the broader decision-making regarding how people conceptualize their group memberships across the business — in other words, how the organizations’ employees segment their world into “we” and “they.”

Following the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the editor at Le Monde declared unambiguously, “We Are All Americans.” But when major corporations suffer cyberattacks, such as Sony in 2018 or MGM/Caesars in 2023, the editors at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times did not proclaim, “We are all CISOs” or “We are all in IT” or “We are all potential victims.”

How do we get people outside of IT to understand that they are part of IT’s  “bigger we”? In the IT world, when we encounter the first-person plural pronoun “we,” who exactly is being referred to? Are we using “we” appropriately?

A frequently referenced African proverb begins, “It takes a village….” It refers to the entire community’s need to support and be involved in the nurturing of its young people. CIOs need to envision their organizations similarly, to ensure their “village” recognizes its responsibilities for IT value creation and security.

Whether that means being an informed first line of cyber defense or an engaged stakeholder helping to deliver IT solutions that improve work processes, embracing a broader “we” for IT involves breaking down old barriers and marshalling collective identification and contribution.

CIOs can and should have a role to play in bring this about. In fact, it should be part of the authentic and managed narrative of their identity.