Author: Brett Gibson, CEO at SilverFern Software

I remember being asked once how shipping and handling was calculated in a client's system. I thought it was an odd question, but I was being asked by a Senior V.P of that company so I thought it best I cooperate. I’d been working there as a consultant for only about 2 months, but there was an expectation that I should know the answer “because it was in the code” and well, I was in the code too.

I think he could see the double-take on my face that said, “So how long have you worked here and been a Sr. VP? You don’t know how your own freight is calculated? Couldn’t you ask your CFO?”

But this sort of business-to-IT dialogue is common. After some research, I was able to look through the code and provide the somewhat convoluted calculation for him. He looked at the calculation and then…get this…he began to press ME as to WHY it was calculated the way it was. 

“Who made that decision?”, he proceeded to ask me as if the IT consultant that had been at the company for only 2 months could go back in time and be a fly on the wall when that decision was made. 

This scenario is an all-too-frequent and frustrating conversation between business and IT. But who else did he have to ask? Performing a witch hunt for an employee who no longer worked at the company was a worthless pursuit and, even worse, the inter-departmental politics were extremely ugly (Let's just say he didn’t want to ask Accounting.)

So why does this scenario keep happening between business and IT?

It’s inevitable that employees leave companies and that obviously includes IT staff as well. As new employees arrive, the software a company uses is often the only living record of all those historical decisions – both good and bad – and the business itself starts to look at those decisions (wrongly) as an IT responsibility. 

But then something even more dysfunctional starts to happen. Not only is IT held responsible for past decisions that were made when they weren't at the table, they are then asked to offer new ones. This continues the cycle of mystery accountability for business decisions as time goes on. Many times consulting, clients are expecting IT to help them not with technology decisions…but with business decisions. 

Soon, leadership begins to excuse themselves from the decision table. They start seeing business decisions as coding issues, and this is where a serious misalignment with IT and your business can occur.

In the absence of effective, engaged and decisive leadership, IT starts making business decisions. Which begs the question…..

Should IT be making your business decisions?

Would you call a communications professional and rely on them solely to “create” some pretty words for your website – relinquishing the responsibility of communicating the critical message of your company's culture, services and more?

Would you call a social media company for guidance and then sit back and hope that LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook would require no effort or input while yielding magic results?

Would you send a sales rep into the field to just “go make me some sales…” without communicating the company message and positioning – hoping that along the way he or she is going to create a company brand for you?

These are all leadership responsibilities. And so too is IT. 

Some "leaders" believe that giving money away to IT means that they have paid for a solution and therefore are absolved of all responsibility and accountability going forward. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The more money you spend on something, the more involved you should be to ensure you’re getting what you want.

Creating good software requires close collaboration if you want it to accurately reflect your business needs and daily operation. This should not be performed in an information-vacuum followed by a grand  presentation of choices to be adjudicated by the business. If business doesn’t know what they want, or chooses to absolve their responsibility for the decision, you will have IT folks making "best guess" business decisions and your software (and business) will be negatively impacted for years to come.

The bottom line is this: Business leaders MUST come to the table. They MUST be engaged. They MUST be curious. They MUST evolve from their 20^th Century fear of technology.  

The role of IT in that disovery process should be PARTNER – not DRIVER.

Leaders need to lead. Your business depends on it.