What DON'T You Want to be Great at?

In many companies, the goal is to have an IT organization that would hail from Lake Wobegon – an organization that is better than average at everything technology related.  CIOs conduct benchmarks and measure themselves against their peers, striving to make their team better than all the rest - in all categories...

The goal is admirable, but perhaps not realistic.

I would argue a better approach is to start by identifying what does not matter, what you do not need to be great at.  If you ask different questions, you may get different (and more impactful) results.

Consider:

• What aspects of IT are a commodity in your industry, necessary perhaps, but not something that will set your company apart from the competition?  
  
• What functions can be performed “good enough” by an outside partner without consuming valuable IT headcount?
  
• Where am I spending money, but not separating my company from our competitors?
  

Once you know what is less important, then you can focus on what does matter:

• What is your core competency?  
  
• Where can you differentiate your organization?  
  
• What capabilities would provide a significant competitive advantage?  
  
• What are the skills and competencies you should be building now to help you succeed in the future?
  

As we adapt to the consumerization of IT, what truly differentiates an IT organization is changing.  Having the latest hot technical skills may not be as critical as it once was.  In the new world, critical skills may be:

• enterprise architecture design
  
• business processes management
  
• security architecture design
  
• program and project management
  
• vendor partnership management
  
• data governance
  

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