As executives shift their attention to 2025, global minds are open — ever so briefly — to focusing on actually understanding and acting on technology trends and opportunities.
Those of us who read tea leaves for a living lament the fact that IT trend analysis has, for the past three years, been hijacked by the term “ChatGPT.”
Yes, every board member has played with generative AI. And yes, I recognize that AI is different because previous hot technologies such as client/server and cloud didn’t get a parking space in the boss’s brain box.
But still, few will contest that just about everything associated with IT has become a discussion of generative AI. And despite Gartner forecasting that , we are told, “Most organizations achieve less than 30% of the impact they expect from their digital investments.”
The IBM Institute for Business Value .
At the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2024 in Barcelona, . This can best be achieved via three levers:
- Transparency, so that people know how much and where money is being spent
- Control, so that people have a say in how much and where money is being spent
- Explainability, so that people understand why money is being spent where it is
The value IT creates cannot be generalized — i.e., “We didn’t have any significant security incidents,” or “Uptime was pretty good last year.” Returns on IT investments must be atomized to the individual department, stakeholder, and employee level. Stakeholders need to be , “It’s not enough just to produce this technology and toss it over the fence and say, ‘OK, our job is done. Just let the world figure it out.’”
There are toxic attitudes and assumptions regarding technology floating around most enterprises today. As Arnold Schwarzenegger commented, “A lot of people are worried on artificial intelligence; I’m more worried about basic stupidity.”
Just as CIOs have to atomize/personalize how they articulate the value being delivered by IT, so too do they have to atomize/personalize the training associated with technology initiatives.
At the Department of Transportation in the State of Ohio, Deputy Director and CIO Charles Ash and his team recognizes that technology literacy is not evenly distributed throughout the stakeholder base. They tailor technology projects to the full spectrum of IT literacy ranging from technology-resistant to advanced technology users.
Shouldn’t you?
If you want IT’s reputation for creating value to turn around, you certainly should.
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