Hal Kreitzman

IT leaders are facing an increasing number of new and progressively more complex challenges each and every year – and 2011 is certainly no exception. Experton Group has developed a model, the IT Leadership Pyramid, which encompasses what we have surmised as the overarching disciplines that IT leaders must acknowledge and embrace to provide effective leadership for their IT organizations and their enterprise for the remainder of this decade.

This pyramid is a visual representation of the delicate balance of ten essential dimensions required to lead a world-class IT organization today. Each of these dimensions will be discussed in more detail starting next month.

The IT leadership dimensions are helping on how to proactively respond to questions from your executive team like the following:

1. How do you effectively describe the services that you deliver to your internal clients?
2. What policies and procedures are currently in place to identify and classify sensitive information including customer credit data; and employee social security numbers, bank accounts, and medical records?
3. How do you effectively manage the complexity and cost of your IT operations?
4. How do you decide what project initiatives you should be driving?
5. How do you know if you have optimized the assignment of your human resources throughout the IT organization to support our enterprise?
6. How do you know if you are optimizing the value that your key vendor partners are delivering to your enterprise?
7. How does the efficiency and effectiveness of your operation compare to peer IT organizations across our industry?
8. What processes have you implemented to ensure alignment with the strategic goals of your enterprise?
9. Who in our organization should be making decisions regarding new information and communications technology investments?
10. How can we measure the value and return that we are deriving from our investments in information and communications technology – i.e. why should the IT organization be recognized as a strategic versus support function for our enterprise?

The Bottom Line: IT leaders that are able to adeptly and continuously prioritize and focus on these ten dimensions will be positioned as effective leaders for their enterprise with optimized resources to support delivery of information and communications technology products and services. Enterprises that engage their IT executives as an enterprise leader in all critical business decisions and strategic initiatives are truly positioned to capitalize on their IT investments for strategic competitive advantage.