Chapter 1. Where We Are, How We Got Here, and How to Fix It

There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.

—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)

It is Thursday morning, you are the CEO of a large, publicly traded company, and you just called your executives into the conference room for the exciting news: the board of directors has approved the acquisition of a key competitor, and you are looking for a call-to-action to get everyone planning for the next steps.

You talk to the sales executives about the integration of both sales forces within three months, and they are excited about the new prospects. You talk to the human resources director, who is ready to address the changes HR must make within two months. You speak to the buildings and maintenance director, who can have everyone moved who needs to be moved within three months. Your heart is filled with pride.

However, when you ask the CIO about changing the core business processes to drive the combined companies, the response is much less enthusiastic. “I’m not sure we can change our IT architecture to accommodate the changes in less than 18 months, and I’m not even sure if that’s possible,” says the CIO. “We simply don’t have the ability or the capacity to integrate these systems. We’ll need new systems, a bigger data center. . . .” You get the idea.

As the CEO, you are nonplussed. While the other departments are able to accommodate the business opportunity in fewer than four months, IT needs almost two years?

In essence, IT has become the single-most visible point of latency when a business needs to change. Thus, the ability to change is limited by IT. In this case, the merger is not economically feasible, and the executive team is left scratching their heads. They thought IT was about new ways to automate the business and had no idea how slow the IT folks are to react to change.

However, it does not have to be this way. The survival of many businesses will depend on a fundamental change in the way we think about and create our IT infrastructure going forward—that is, if you are willing to admit where you are and are willing to change. There is much work to be done, and reading this book is a great first step.