And this is where human nature once again plays a major role. While many business leaders understand that IT is important and that they cannot run their businesses without it, they still fail to see just how ingrained IT has become in the day-to-day.
"The terms I hate are when someone says, 'We need to align IT with the business.' That's like two planets that align once a year. I use to use the word integrate but … IT is so embedded in the business it can't be left to IT. It's the electronic pathway of your processes and you have to own them and we haven't made that transition," said ITGI's Thorp who is also the co-author of The Information Paradox.
Some of the other attitudes towards benefits realizatoin that continue to plague Thorp and his peers are:
The 'Who cares just give me the tools' mindset: "'If it's got an IT label it's and IT issue and I don't have to worry about it,'" said Thorp.
Holding colleagues accountable: Someday it may be them being held accountable so they are reticent about holding someone else's feet to the fire. Also, they may be friends.
Moving forward: "At the executive level, although every now and again there's a very visible crisis, there's no burning platform—business is running, we're moving forward, probably we could do better but were no worse than anyone else."
Sunk costs: The money has already been spent.
Procrastination : Going back is not human nature.
Hope: Managers hope off track projects get back on track and deliver promised results, but, as Thorp says, "Hope is not a methodology."
"We still tend to be focusing on the cost of tech verses the investing in technology-enabled change," concludes Thorp. "Investing takes a whole different mentality … Management of change is the most talked about least done thing in most organizations."
Images
IE 7
Firefox 2.0
•