Time to change the 'sign' of IT & Technology

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.

I just read a short article on the Enterprise CIO Forum written by Charles Bess titled Landing a few points about cloud and the shifting expectations of a CIO.  In the article, Charles talks about a few different things but one sentence really caught my eye. Charles wrote:

Many view IT as a subtractive (a cost cutting activity) as opposed to the additive activity that the business should expect — focused on increasing the value of the enterprise as a whole

I never really thought about it that way…but he’s absolutely correct.

In the past, IT and Technology were some of the first areas to get hit with cost cutting measures.  In addition, most CIO’s and IT leaders are extremely focused on ‘cutting costs’ using technology and ‘doing more with less‘.

The focus on cost-cutting and efficiency has led IT groups and CIO’s to become uber-focused on the subtractive areas of IT and technology.  We’ve become focused on what we can do to save money and increase efficiency rather than what value can be brought to the organization via technology.

Rather than focus on taking things away…how’s about we start thinking about adding to the organization?  Let’s change the default sign of IT from a subtraction sign to an addition sign…and maybe we’ll start changing the attitude toward IT from that of a negative to a positive.

Photo Image: Plus or Minus (+/-) By Tom Raftery on flickr

This post sponsored by the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP.