A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how centralization (or decentralization) doesn't matter, about doing the right things at the right places. With some further discussions and feedback, I wanted to write a follow-up on where IT fits and how democratization of technology is the key to the process.

Mona Heath, our deputy CIO, pointed out that there is an important distinction at play with the path we have taken. We want to empower every user to be able to accomplish what they want. Each faculty member and each student has their own wants and needs for what they are trying to do. For many, the technology used is irrelevant.

In a recent discussion of the progress of IT@Illinois and comparing it to "rationalization" efforts at some of our CIC peers, the group felt that we have found the way to do IT "right" for a large research institution such as our campus. It is not a question of centralization or decentralization but rather positioning a given service at the highest level where scaling can actually be achieved and value provided. In other words, centralization (or decentralization) doesn't matter.

You need to make yourself as valuable as possible to your employer in any job market, but especially a market like the current one where there are lots of people eager to have a job. Being good technically is only going to get you so far though. Technical skills are relatively easy to replace because searching resumes and interviewing people will eventually get an employer the technical skills they need. You set yourself apart by understanding the organization, building relationships and getting to know the industry.

Last Friday was an interesting point in the IT@Illinois discussion. Together with Craig Jackson, Chuck Thompson, Dan Jacobsohn, and Kelly Bridgewater, we organized the Friday morning caffeine break to be an open dialog of the IT@Illinois project. It turned out to be really valuable. These are some thoughts I had coming out of the discussion.

The top priority for everyone is getting the mission actors what they need and not taking away the people they have locally positioned. All the concept authors want to give the faculty, staff, and students the tools they need to do their work. This core value translates into a needed agility at the mission actor level in order to be able to provide them what they need as quickly as possible.

This post is going to be somewhat of an open response to Ingbert's comment to my post on the IT@Illinois launch, and it will segue a bit into talking a bit about some aspects of a concept I've been working on with an amazing group of IT people from around campus.

Yesterday was the kick-off of the IT@Illinois project to envision the future of IT at the Urbana-Champaign campus of University of Illinois. Going into the day, we knew a little of what Sally Jackson, CIO of the campus, had in mind, but we did not know a significant amount of detail of what the Provost was thinking. We knew that the project of transforming IT on the Urbana-Champaign campus was going to be launched, but we did not know what that meant. What did we learn on the day of presentations?

Andrew McAfee is a professor at the Harvard Business School, and he writes some interesting things in his blog about his research and thoughts on the new dynamics of the enterprise. In his latest blog entry, he talked about some of the research behind a new paper he co-authored about how IT is a driver of competition among companies in the same industry. That blog entry and that paper are what got my thoughts going.

This is a column I wrote for Systems Management News that I am reposting here.

Being a manager in IT is an challenging and often thankless job, but there are steps that we can take to make things better. Making things better though involves keeping multiple things in mind - the company, our team, and ourselves. To get things going in "The Savvy Manager," let's look at these components and some of the issues we should have in our thoughts.

The new issue of Systems Management News is out with my latest column. In this month's column, I talk about adding value to your organization by building better understanding of your organization and its industry. As a leader and manager in IT, we cannot sit in front of our computer screens focused on our technical work. We need to get out into the organization in order to gain knowledge and build relationships.

One of my blog's visitors asked me some questions about technology accelerators as described in Good to Great, and she said it would be ok if I posted the response here as well.

If technology cannot make or break a company's level of greatness, but only serves as an accelerator of greatness or demise already in progress, then why did everyone fall in love with technology for technology's sake during the 1990s?

There are three main reasons in my opinion, and some companies might have more than one of them.