Ninety days that will define the decade

In IT we are just beginning the most crucial three months of the 2020s. We currently have a unique and long-awaited chance to show business leadership through IT. But I believe it will only be an open window of opportunity until September, as governments worldwide ask many organisations to open up again and contribute to rebuilding the world economy.

No-one needs reminding that we’ve just experienced the weirdest and most disruptive three months of our working lives; and for many people, the saddest and hardest three months. At work, strategies, plans, operating procedures, expectations and even workplaces have been turned on their heads. People who would never have entertained radical change have had it thrust upon them. Some were ducks to water; most swam; a few sank. It has been a period of full-on disruption in both its old-fashioned and trendy new senses.

In many organisations, this degree of change is not being owned. Instead, it’s being seen as an externally-imposed challenge, something to be got-through-and-put-behind-us. In this context, it presents a once in a decade – maybe once in a career – moment of opportunity for IT to take firm ownership, whilst minds are still open to new thinking.

Anyone who is frustrated by IT taking a second-fiddle role (being the facilitator/implementer, not the designer) has to take action immediately. He/she needs to do something this week: sit in a darkened room and have a good think. How can you use this unprecedented sidestep away from normal to reposition IT as a leading force in your organisation?

Take a torch into your darkened room and try these questions out:

• What will stop your organisation working to its full potential in The New Normal? Where can you apply IT to facilitate it getting back to full speed?

• What typical thinking is preventing the organisation from using ideas like those you had in the answer to Q1? Who is driving/is the source of this obstructive thinking? How can you influence that thinking at source? Whose ear(s) do you need to bend?

• What do you expect will be the resistance to your solutions? Put your torch on at this point: this will be a long list, from Brian in Accounts not liking newfangled processes; to shortage of budget; to lack of understanding of the benefits of your nifty ideas. For each point of resistance, write down a solution.

In your darkened room, you’ll then be the proud owner of three lists, entitled What, Who and How.

Of course, many of you are reading this and are quite rightly thinking. “Yeah, I already know all my answers to those questions, so no need for thinking in any darkened rooms, which would be an even weirder thing to do than the stuff I’ve been doing since March.” For you, my fourth questions is:

• If you know What needs to be done, with Whom, and How, then what’s stopping you doing it? Why haven’t you started already?

I strongly believe that a door that’s been closed for years to many people in IT has been pushed ajar by the pandemic. It will slam shut again by September, as people snuggle back into their comfort zone, doggedly seeking The Old Normal or accepting the muddle-through approach. IT needs to jam a collective foot in that door.

An excellent resource is The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins. It assumes you are at the start of a new role; in fact, we all may as well be.

Don't squander your once in a decade chance of being heard. You have 90 days…