Your Role as a Technology Leader

I’ve been in Technology, aka IT, for about 25 years. And today, more than ever, the question I hear people ask is — what role can a IT leader play. This is in the context of cloud providers, SaaS, and even BPaaS (business processes as a service). Business leaders can go and put things together, hire specialist firms and get stuff done they know they want to get done — why go to your internal IT teams?

The one image to frame your thinking is… consider that your company as a team planning a mountaineering expedition, and they need to plan for all sorts of things - water and food supplies, the route and where to camp, booking places along the way, weather check, permits, media, funding, etc.. Each is incredibly important. Think of yourself as being responsible for one of those areas. No-one doubts that technology is an incredibly important area. You are the one focused on technology the exec team is relying on to make sure your company is prepared for on the journey ahead.

Technology is enabling things to be done differently. Apart from delivering solutions, you’re essential to conceiving what’s possible. Can you enable 2-hour delivery, through anticipating customer demand? Can you allow people faster access to their money? Can you change the check-in experience so it’s seamless and there’s not a 20 min wait? Can you enable paying at the ‘pump’ without needing to swipe a card or touch your phone?

This is an amazing time to be a technology leader — step into it!