Gartner advises CIOs on New Year's resolutions

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Business leaders should ensure that continued innovation, front-line business understanding and the confidence to stand up to finance directors feature heavily on their New Year's resolutions lists to avoid being left in the shade by competitors.

So says analyst Gartner, which has just released its annual chief information officer (CIO) New Year resolutions report focusing on what those in the driving seat should commence, continue and cease, as well as providing additional key learnings and words from the wise.

"Next year, as an individual you might plan to buy a car, go on holiday to Spain and put your child in a new school," said Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner fellow.

"There will be other stuff that you ought to do like give up smoking or start a pension. But these are things without deadlines. There are no marketing forces or kids tugging at your shelves to achieve them. These are the types of [IT] things we are focusing on with [this study].

"2007 will bring some genuinely new puzzles that CIOs must solve for themselves or risk 'following the rest of the herd over the cliff'."

Before turning their attention to new or increased focuses, Gartner advises CIOs to stop doing certain things to clear the decks.

Behaviour that shouldn't continue into 2007 includes obsessing about the minutiae of technology and treating governance as a procedure.

"Governance is a human thing, a persuasion thing," said Raskino.

"It's as much about going for dinner in the evening with key people so that they understand what you're talking about as how many minutes are taken or ensuring you use an online tool."

Once the old has been gotten rid of to make room for the new, Raskino suggests that IT managers should focus on frontline experiences, by going back to the shop floor regularly so that they really understand what makes their users and their business tick.

"Tesco is world class in terms of making every manager in the entire company, including the chief executive, go and work on a till once a year. That's great general management behaviour.

"We can all sit around in dry HQ meeting rooms with a whiteboard trying to innovate. But if you take those same people and brush them up against the customer facing side [of the business] they will come back with some great ideas."

Despite average budgetary increases in recent years, equating to some companies with much more spend and some with much less, IT departments have still been under mounting pressure to shave overheads.

This streamlining is often then targeted anywhere but back into IT, suggests Raskino.

IT departments must therefore start to develop their backbone and earmark savings for other technology projects, for example, server consolidation savings can go towards the acquisition of new laptops, rather than elsewhere in the business.

"After the belt tightening and budget squeezing of the past few years, it's time to say 'no.' It's time for IT managers to say that they have done as much as they can safely do," said Raskino.

"Financial directors are right to request the saving of money in IT, but those savings should be redirected into other IT projects. Savings should be linked to re-investment."

Gartner's research also suggests that CIOs should starts creating IT leadership generation succession plans, track and improve their technology's environmental performance and ensure they provide incentives for innovators.

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