A "Perfect" Disruptive Storm

I'm in Orlando this week at Gartner's Symposium/ITxpo.  It is one of those long day, drink-from-a-firehose events where I'm together with over 10,000 people like me.

Scary thought.

But there's an even scarier thought brought out by Peter Sondergaard, SVP of Research at Gartner Inc.

Peter Sondergaard Photo: C/Net

There's a perfect storm of disruption coming, and since IT supports so much of the business of the world, the storm is coming to IT.

We can't do things the same way anymore. CIOs need to be out front, leading the change.

We need to re-Imagine IT.


The three points of the keynote, underlined and unpacked by Peter and all the other speakers were these.

Today's CIOs need to:

- Embrace post modern business.  This is about putting your "business" out to where your customers are. This is about flexibility and adaptability, working to new rules of design (much like post modern architecture.)

- Pursue simplicity. This is about making technology invisible by putting users at the centre of design. (It's official! I'm now not the only one promoting "invisible" technology. But I probably should have trademarked the phrase...)

- Practice creative destruction - Be willing to stop doing things to focus your energies on things that will transform your organization into the type of IT department that thrives. (This part really reminded me of Geoffrey Moore's Core/Context analysis framework I highlighted in the Most Important Post on Strategy You'll Ever Read. If what you are doing isn't differentiating your organization, think about not doing it, or outsource it.

In a nutshell, I'm not a lone wolf crying in the wilderness. Gartner delivered the message of change to over 10,000 IT leaders.

If you have written me off as "not getting it", I am feeling very vindicated right now...

But now the hard work really starts.

Actually changing.