The CIO: The U.S.-based Business Units are fools. I offered my services, they refused. So did the European Business Units. Now they can both pay for their mistake.

James Bond: World domination. The same old dream. Our asylums are full of people who think they're Naploeon. Or God.[1]

[1] Not-so loosely based on Ian Fleming’s “Dr. No”.
 

CIOs continue their struggle with shrinking Capital and Expense budgets while being asked to wring out faster delivery against the backdrop of complexity and brittleness of their current systems. Moreover, they are being asked to become “Social” at the same time.  What’s a CIO to do?

Many adopt a “Dr. No” stance in an attempt to maintain a traditional command-and-control structure, even in the face of unrelenting technical innovation across business and consumer IT.  Further, instead of leveraging the considerable “dark pools” of IT-savvy, business-based talent that exist within their organizations, they insist on risk-averse, status quo programs that sadly have no chance of capturing the imaginations of their key stakeholders.

We present 3 ways that CIOs can foster critical relationships with these “Citizen Developers” and can actually create environments where speed, quality, and a measure of control can all peacefully co-exist.

• Understand your “Secret Agent” Users: virtually every company has hidden IT-savvy talent squirreled away within the Lines of Business. As a regular part of your joint contacts with these teams, carve out some time to discuss their informal IT projects.  Typically, the “Lead Users” will be happy to expand on their “skunkworks” projects, either within the Enterprise walls or as part of their consumer/at-home activities.  You may very well find out that there are people within the business units who know as much about IT than your most senior Architects: Listen to them.
• Create a “Walled Garden” to Learn and Teach: gone are the days when spinning up servers and procuring software and development tools took serious time, effort, and funding.  Instead, the CIO can provide sandboxes and environments where the Lead Users can “play”.  For example, Salesforce.com’s Force.com or Heroku Platforms are amazing sources of “sandboxes” where your “Citizen Developers” can see their ideas come to life.  Dedicating a small amount of informal time per week to discussing these efforts will also bring rich dialog between the Citizen Developers and your IT staff, and allow you to both learn and teach.
• Lead the Dialog: if the CIO can build an effective partnership with the IT-savvy business community, such efforts will yield powerful side effects, including increased trust, deeper alignment, and consensus.  Also, as business-justified IT trends become visible earlier and earlier, the CIO can better plan for change and use the same feedback mechanisms to accelerate adoption.  Truly, the CIO has the opportunity to become an agent of Social change.

How well do you understand the IT Talent that is operating within your Business Units?  More importantly, what are you doing to provide a place and a process by which they can bring their passions to bear on common problems, including the ones you are currently struggling with?

Or are you still playing “Dr. No”?