Partnering With the CIO: The Future of IT Sales Seen Through the Eyes of Key Decision Makers

Don’t Assume That Everyone Plays by the Same Rules

Not long ago, we listened as Michael Lewis, author of Money-ball, spoke to an audience of IT executives about lessons the corporate world can learn from Major League Baseball. He touched on many fascinating topics and told intriguing stories. One that stuck in our minds was about how Billy Beane, the visionary general manager of the low-budget Oakland As, had established standard management processes across the organization’s farm system.

Beane did this so players could be transferred from one team to another within the A’s organization with as little sense of dislocation as possible. He knew instinctively that if he could ratchet down the level of confusion, the players would be more productive.

It would be nice to think that one day someone like Billy Beane will come along to standardize IT governance processes across all the companies in the world. As it stands today, it seems that every company practices IT governance in its unique manner.

That’s the harsh reality facing IT suppliers. IT governance is a subset of corporate governance, which makes it something of an organizational orphan. Unlike finance, which has evolved standard procedures over centuries of practice, IT has little in the way of tradition or history to guide it. And because only a handful of CIOs have moved on to become CEOs, it’s fair to say that IT governance issues are not particularly well understood at the topmost levels of many organizations.

“People ...