This is part 2 of my initial 5-part series prepping the groundwork to support the IT community to thrive into the future of work.
I.T. has what it needs to thrive in the future of work. There is a more intentional way to approach work, from both the higher level strategic level down to the day-to-day tasks.
Smart IT is an approach to getting the important things done by transforming the way traditional IT thinks, works, and leads. It supports the disruption of the status quo, simplifies the complex, and mitigates risk. Composed of four dimensions—purpose, development, intentionality, and realization—this is the next generation of information technology.
This approach models a different way of thinking by framing principles on how we work. It is much more than a play on the mnemonic of SMART goals. It goes beyond a sense of natural intelligence or being good in school. It’s a way of thinking and working that is open to everyone in IT.
This Smart approach to IT is a construct for the profession of information technology. It frames the conceptual aspects of thinking about one’s role in the larger organization and the nature of the work itself. It illuminates the larger forces shaping the drivers of the challenges we face and the creation of new opportunities. This is a guide to inspiring the change that is needed in our professional world.
Smart IT is a way of working and being. It is about being conscious of our environments, new enablers, and opportunities to help our organizations.
Teams work differently, maintain their relevance, and provide more value to their organizations than traditional IT. Smart IT allows a business to maintain pace with the market. As in life, we want to hire smart people, send kids to school to become smart, and make smart decisions to have fulfilling lives. The same goes for business—we want IT professionals to embody the principles of SMART goals, an especially useful tool for attaining what you want.
Teams leverage this framework to see useful information other people can’t see or don’t notice. They then draw accurate, useful conclusions from that information. These teams design useful goals that take advantage of the information. Finally, they create an efficient and effective plan of action to attain these goals. They take pride in great work honed over the years in hands-on experience, professional training, established norms, and integrity.
At the macro level, these teams work at fitting the nature of a given technology with the underpinnings of the global economy. They drive organizational success. There are several characteristics of Smart IT. The first thing to emphasize is that this approach is purposeful. We are not relying on hope or luck to be successful, but rather explicitly going after our objectives. We choose real-world, proven problem-solving methods combined with an open mind to trying new solutions to produce successful outcomes. We use the resources currently at hand to apply the right leverage at influence points to overcome the sometimes seemingly insurmountable obstacles of complex systems. In this way, the impact of our daily work is multiplied. Even the smallest work efforts applied at the right points of our organization’s value chain can create the outcomes our business needs. Smart IT makes use of wise leverage to create needed impacts. Recognizing the mission of our work, we acknowledge this is an infinite endeavor with infinite players. IT is a multiplayer effort. We only succeed when teammates play the same game according to well-respected rules. This game we play is infinite. The journey may bring multiple waypoints we could not see earlier, but we work together to travel through them.
Smart IT is inspirational. It inspires others to join the cause, including internal customers across the business. They see what we do and how we do it. It’s our job to build the respect and resulting cooperation that gets the IT job done. We undertake our work through deep focus. Like a laser beam on a target, our focus on the most important work that benefits our business allows us to improve situations with steady attention. When we encounter difficulties, we are very resilient. We persevere to achieve our goals no matter the trials and tribulations.
Smart IT is empathetic. We observe our environment to discern both the problems and the solutions. We tune in to the human needs behind our services both inside and outside our organizations. That is how we identify the jobs to be done. We prioritize our daily work by the wants of both internal end users and external consumers. For example, if an end user wants access to certain information on her mobile phone while on the road, she doesn’t care about the app itself. The job to be done is getting her the data she needs when she pushes a button. For an external customer who wants to buy and pay for a product, the job to be done is presenting items for sale and arranging for safe payment.
We understand that because we operate within a complex web of systems, we need to have a multicausal perspective. Complex adaptive systems have multicausal problems. Smart IT recognizes this and decomposes problems to surface their root causes and target fixes for them.
This approach encourages distributed decision-making. Understanding that the entire organization can’t be centrally controlled, we push authority and decision-making down to the edges of the organization. We consider scalability limitations and inefficiencies so we can solve the problem. Many times, this will entail problem reframing. We don’t just accept the problem as it first comes in. Instead, we dig deeper to identify what needs to happen to solve a problem or make an organizational improvement. We find new opportunities and alternative actions.
Smart IT is resilient, agile, and thoughtful. Smart IT can be viewed from the perspective of four dimensions: purpose, development, intentionality, and realization.
Purpose
Purpose denotes relevance, professional pride, or perhaps a higher calling. Purpose answers the questions of why you do what you do and why you think in the way you do. The purpose of Smart IT is to support the disruption of the status quo, simplify the complex, and mitigate risk for their organizations. Purpose separates viable decision paths from the sea of noise. When your goals, strategies, and principles are clear, your methods and technology become clear too. Simply put, Smart IT is the shift from how IT does technology to how businesses use IT in the marketplace. At the macro workflow level, every IT group is a service provider. All technology projects are business projects. IT is the master orchestrator of each consumer/provider ecosystem. High-performance IT teams make new technological advancements available to larger organizations. We are the vital link between new technology and business use. Smart IT can empower organizations to say yes, to be nimble, and to be resilient. We can help design and empower business initiatives. It is one thing to technically be able to do something; it’s quite another for your organization to capitalize upon that possibility. You can equip your organization to know the secret sauce and execute the actions that profit from it. IT must view the world from the perspective of business thinkers. Business leaders innovate and transform their business models. IT supports digital transformation efforts. This means we must be masters of the technology systems complexity that enables more options for these leaders. We must show agility. The purpose is clear: support the disruption of the status quo, simplify the complex, and mitigate risk.
Development
Enter development, the process of attaining and improving your professional and interpersonal skills. This lifelong skill set means you can be ready when an opportunity presents itself. Education is the gate-way to developing yourself so you can succeed at both work and life. The IT workforce of tomorrow will need a well-rounded set of professional skills to thrive. Job titles that don’t exist now will pop up, requiring a combination of business, social, and technical know-how. Ten core professional skill sets, broken down into the following four levels, are vital to IT professionals to be successful in their future work, no matter their job title. Ten core professional skill sets, broken down into the following four levels, are vital to IT professionals to be successful in their future work, no matter their job title. This will be explored in great detail in subsequent posts and a dedicated platform for shared community thinking and collaboration.
Level 1 - Fluency. Develop these two foundational skills
Business literacy
Digital fluency
Level 2 - Expanded thinking. Focus on what’s most likely to happen
Systems thinking
Analysis
Probability theory
Level 3 - People-first focus. Notice what people need, then in-struct machines to aid human efforts
Human-centered design
Coding
Level 4 - Engagement. Encourage shared goals in the people around you
Leadership
Communication
Team building
Intentionality
IT professionals clearly identify goals and the actions needed to accomplish them, and they set out every day to get there. Successful intentionality is at the center of our interest. We lock into the task at hand. We become deliberate. Intentionality is a mental state that represents a commitment to carrying out an action or actions. Intentionality involves mental activities including both planning and forethought. We will be part of teams that have seemingly unlimited possibilities to accomplish our goals. To be intentional, we can leverage five widely known goal aspects: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Realization
Making it happen is Smart IT’s role in organizational success. We use realization to do this. Realization makes real something imagined or planned. Realization fulfills or accomplishes the tasks, goals, or mission. Making it real requires the three critical work actions of model, sprint, and adapt.
The future of work with SMART IT
Every day is an opportunity to shape the future of the way we work, live, and play by leveraging new technology. I.T. is looking to transform itself to be more strategic for their organizations in a dynamically changing world. I.T. is continually behind schedule and caught spending too much time firefighting. I.T. wants to be in front leading as trusted advisors inside the business. Getting the important things done by out-thinking your problems with the Smart IT approach.
Build a systemic perspective of your environment to understand your roles and the factors in play.
Develop agility and resiliency needed to overcome the status quo.
Pave the way ahead to drive business success through the intelligent use of technology.
The SMART IT platform will launch in January 2023 to fully support expanded discussions on these ideas and principles. It will invite industry leaders in multiple disciplines to discuss these concepts and bring to life how to apply them to the real world challenges IT faces.
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