Stepping Back and Stepping Up

The size and budgets of many IT departments have significantly increased in recent years, and this has led to these departments having substantial power over the systems and processes used by other areas of organizations. This should change. IT departments need to go back to being support departments, and primary business unit leaders need to step up and start leading on technology.

By Kevin Turgeon

16 April 2024

Over the past few decades, the role technology plays in our work lives has increased dramatically. In a relatively short period of time, we have progressed from using typewriters and calculators to get our work done to using stand alone computers, to then utilizing local networks of computers, to now relying on a global digital infrastructure.

As our reliance on technology at work has increased, so has our need for people to maintain it. This has led most organizations to substantially grow their information technology departments. IT departments that were once small and overlooked parts of companies are now multi-level organizational divisions with large headcounts and even larger budgets.

Organizations need large and capable IT departments to support their ever-increasing reliance on technology. However, increasing the size and budget of IT departments can also cause problems for organizations.

Increasing the size and budget of any part of an organization typically also increases the amount of power that part has over other areas of the organization. Thus as most organizations have become more and more reliant on technology over the past few decades, and appropriately increased the size and budget of their IT departments to support this, the amount of power IT departments have over other areas of organizations has dramatically increased.

In and of itself, the increased power of IT departments is not a problem for organizations. However, it can become a problem when it is used to significantly influence how other areas of an organization operate. It is especially problematic when IT departments use their newfound power to influence the operations of an organization’s primary business units.

In the past, IT departments operated as support areas for organizations. Their role was to help other areas find solutions to problems as they arose. In this role, IT departments did not have significant influence over how other areas of an organization operated. IT might have occasionally recommended and helped another area of an organization implement a solution to a problem, and this solution might have slightly altered how the other area operated, but in the past IT was not in the business of seeking out and implementing systems that dramatically altered how other areas of an organization operate.

However, as organizations have become more reliant on technology and the size, budget, and power of IT departments have increased, the role of IT has significantly changed. IT departments are now often the primary change agents of organizations. The days of simply helping other areas of an organization solve problems as they arise are over. IT departments are now responsible for proactively finding and implementing technology systems that will help an organization perform better, and the implementation of these systems often dramatically influences how their users can operate. As a result, IT departments are now becoming the de facto designers of many organizational processes. This is evidenced by the large number of organizations that are now attempting to undergo so-called digital transformations, in which existing business processes are often required to be dramatically altered to work with newly implemented technologies.

The problem with having IT departments operate as organizational process designers is that very few IT professionals are qualified to do such work. Most IT professionals are not experts on how the other areas of their organizations should operate. Nor are they experts on the best ways to go about developing organizational processes.

So what is to be done? Organizations need large and capable IT departments to support their increasing reliance on technology, but as the size and budgets of IT departments increase, so to does the power they have over how other areas of their organizations operate – which is something IT departments are ill equiped to appropriately handle.

Quite simply, the power IT departments have to determine which technologies an organization uses needs to be reduced. IT departments need to step back into the role of a supporting department, and the primary business areas of an organization need to start determining what technology solutions the organization uses. Of course, all such technology decisions should be made in consultation with the organization’s IT department, but the final decision should be made by the organization’s primary business units and then supported by IT.

In order for this to happen, not only do IT departments need to take a step back into a supporting role, but many organizations’ primary business units need to take a step forward and start accepting their responsibility to lead on technology. The power IT departments now wield within organizations did not happen in a vacuum. It was facilitated by a desire on the part of many primary business leaders to let technology be someone else’s problem. The leaders of organizations’ primary business areas need to be responsible for everything about these areas, including what technology is used. In this day and age, it is simply unacceptable for primary business area leaders to allow others to determine what technology is used by their staff. Technological competence should be a requirement for leading any primary business unit; anyone who is uncomfortable or unwilling to lead on technology has no place leading a primary business unit in the modern world.

Our reliance on technology to help us get our work done is never going to decrease, and we will continue to need large and capable IT departments to support us using such technology. But these departments are support departments. It is not their place to lead technology for organizations. This responsibility lies with the leaders of an organization’s primary business units. It is time for IT to step back and primary business leaders to step up.