Out on a Limb--With Company

An interesting new book recently hit my radar screen, which further crystallized a thought that had been lurking in the back of my mind for some time. Countless articles and conference presentations continually drive home the complexities of business-IT alignment and IT’s role in a successful or failed partnership, but–and here’s where that little errant thought comes in–how exactly is the corporate level weighing in, and how should it? After all, if there is no touchable, concretely implementable enterprise strategy, what can a CIO align to? I think many among us assume the big-picture strategy simply exists . . . just like the air we breathe. But maybe it doesn’t.

I broached this issue in a column several months back based on disparate comments I was hearing. However, in a book published in April titled Alignment: Using the Balanced Scorecard to Create Corporate Synergies, authors Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton make the following observation: “Aligning organizational units to create value at the enterprise level generally gets less attention than creating value at the business unit (BU) level. Most strategy theories focus on business units, with their distinct products, services, customers, markets, technologies, and competencies.” Wouldn’t you agree this hits pretty close to home? (In fact, our cover story, p. 18, in the same vein, takes the pulse of the business side to assess its satisfaction level with IT.)