Names do matter.
Especially in organizational settings, what you decide to call your aligned group can have a subtle yet powerful effect on perceptions: both within the organization, as well as how people outside the group percieve your role and intended value proposition.
And if you don't think perceptions matter that much in organizational settings, well ... you're wrong.
How Did This Come Up?Especially in organizational settings, what you decide to call your aligned group can have a subtle yet powerful effect on perceptions: both within the organization, as well as how people outside the group percieve your role and intended value proposition.
And if you don't think perceptions matter that much in organizational settings, well ... you're wrong.
It was a customer briefing, of course, and the CIO had brought his senior leadership team.
The gory details don't matter, but the big picture does: the new CIO had come from elsewhere in the business to lead the IT team through a transformational journey.
How things had come to be was less relevant than that they needed to change, and fast.
During the opening part when the CIO was laying out his game plan, I made the mistake of referring to his function as "IT".
"No", he corrected me, "we've renamed the group IM -- information management".
It took about 10 seconds for that to sink in, and then it hit me: brilliant!
In one fell swoop, he announced to his team -- and the broader organization -- that their real job was maximizing the value of their corporate information portfolio. The technology used to do this was simply a means to an end, and not an end unto itself.
He also announced to the broader external organization that his team's role and aspirations had significantly changed.
And -- most importantly -- he sent a clear message to the leadership of the entire organization that -- yes -- information matters.
In two words.
Why This Was Important
The existing IT organization had been largely constructed around acquiring and deploying technology assets. "Tin and links" as one person put it. Their situation is not entirely unique, by the way :)
As a result, the EMC sales team was focusing on giving them exactly what they were asking for: better tin (e.g. storage) and better ways to use the links. Tactical, not strategic. Not ideal, but -- as a vendor -- perfectly understandable: we're programmed to be responsive to customer requirements.
You want to talk about storage, or security, or virtualization, or whatever -- that's what we talk about.
As the conversation progressed, it was pretty clear to me that the new CIO had thought through his game plan at a conceptual level: for example, deliver services, not technologies. Or being smart about what's done internally, and what can be done externally better, faster or cheaper. Or investing heavily in the bits that matter to the business, and do "good enough" everywhere else.
Given that their business value proposition centers around a cadre of highly-skilled mobile knowledge workers, it was clear (at least to me) where they'd want to "go long: on IT investment. So I asked a few questions, and got the answer I was looking for.
A new IT (er, "IM", sorry) team was being formed to look at new forms of collaboration and non-linear workflows. Another team was looking at knowledge management and re-using intellectual assets. A new team to think about security and GRC from an information perspective.
They'd found a promising rock star to lead the creating and formation of the service catalog they'd aspire to deliver, and the processes needed to make them better over time.
And so on. All good.
They Were Surprised By Us
Let's face it -- when you say "EMC" most people immediately think "yeah, those storage guys". Fair enough -- after all, we've been #1 in the storage market for quite some time. And, as market brand positions go, I'll take it. Much better than being #2 or worse :)
When EMC people present, they usually make a big deal that "we're much more than a storage company now", pointing at all the non-storage technology assets: virtualization, security, information management, big data analytics, etc. etc.
Still a technology vendor, though :) Just more stuff to talk about ...
Like so many IT functions, technology was quickly becoming a means to an end: they needed to transform from classical IT to IT-as-a-service. They needed to change the way they did things.
Technology alone won't do that for you.
Who would be their vendor-partner for that journey?
That was the positioning I sought with them. Please think of EMC as a vendor-partner who can help you on your journey. We've done it ourselves, and we're currently helping thousands of organizations like yours figure out where they want to go, and help get them there faster, with better outcomes and less risk.
We spent an entire two hours on IT transformation: how to go from silos to services. What worked, what didn't, where we saw the problems, how people came up with clever solutions. I onlymentioned one bit of technology along the way (Vblock, of course) as an enabler rather than an end-goal.
I don't think they were really expecting that sort of discussion with us. Part of it was their brand association with the name "EMC". I guess we have our own perception-changing "opportunities" ahead of us :)
More Names
As I look across newer forms of IT organizations, the names are changing. Private cloud infrastructure group. Services management group. Foundational technologies group. User enablement. Global operations. The old names and traditional silos are getting less popular with every passing day.
And I think that -- in this specific context of organizational change -- names can be powerful things indeed.
By: Chuck Hollis
