For several years now, we have observed the frustration-sometimes even exasperation-that many business executives feel toward infor mation technology and their IT departments. | Top executives often feel uncomfortable making hard choices about information technology. But when they abdicate responsibility they set their companies up for wasted investments and missed opportunities. BRYAN LEISTER 84 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW Six IT Decisions Your IT People Shouldn t Make by Jeanne W. Ross and Peter Weill For several years now we have observed the frustration -sometimes even exasperation-that many business executives feel toward information technology and their IT departments. Our center runs a seminar called IT for the Non-IT Executive and the refrain among the more than 1 000 senior managers who have taken the course runs something like this What can I do I don t understand IT well enough to manage it in detail. And my IT people-although they work hard - don t seem to understand the very real business problems 1 face. Perhaps the complaint we hear most frequently from the execu-tives-most of them CEOs COOs CFOs or other high-ranking officersis that they haven t realized much business value from the high-priced technology they have installed. Meanwhile the list of seemingly necessary IT capabilities continues to grow and IT spending continues to consume an increasing percentage of their budgets. Where s the payback Indeed our research into IT management practices at hundreds of companies around the world has shown that most organizations are not generating the value from IT investments that they could be. The companies that manage their IT investments most successfully generate returns that are as much as 40 higher than those of their competitors. While a number of factors distinguish these top-performing companies the most important is that senior managers take a leadership role in a handful of key IT decisions. By contrast when senior managers abdicate responsibility for those decisions to IT executives disaster often ensues Recall the high-profile instances of botched adoptions of large-scale customer-relationship-management and .
