How Do Technologists and the Business Find Common Ground?
Business Units and technology organizations must find common ground — and a common language — so that they jointly pursue the objectives of the company. When they can’t align on priorities, the enterprise suffers. Common estimates place the failure rate of technology projects at over 65%. So how do you get these two groups on the same page?
In a technology-driven world, businesses can’t afford to misfire on technology efforts. Business leaders must explain their objectives in terms that resonate with their technology organization, and technologists must convey their approach and progress in a way that aligns with their business colleague’s mindset.
It’s all too easy for business people to throw up their hands and say, “My tech team isn’t getting the job done,” or for technologists to become frustrated with their business colleagues because they don’t appreciate technical nuance. So how can the two sides work together and achieve their goals?
“Sometimes the two sides just need to have a common reference point — the overall objectives of the company,” says Inderpal Singh, who runs Northshore Partners, a Detroit-area strategy consulting firm. “The business is looking at particular program objectives or targets they need to hit. At the same time, technologists may be focusing on the best way to achieve something from a technical standpoint, rather than fully orienting what makes the most sense from a commercial point of view. Their mindsets, experiences, and priorities are often different, and their mode of expression may be different.”
Singh has a talent for ensuring alignment. And in a recent engagement as Acting CTO and Head of Product for a new sports league launching in 2020, he had to exercise this talent.
“The league is going to make a notable investment in technology,” Singh says. “This includes all sorts of technology-enabled experiences, from the stadium experience to digital products. Executing the business vision in a responsible and efficient way requires a strong collaboration between business and technology talent. Too often, these groups aren’t able to collaborate in a way that leads to peak outcomes.”
Singh says that in some of the situations he’s been brought into in order to resolve the business-technology tension, technologists have been firmly attached to “pristine architecture” or “hardening the infrastructure.” That is, “They want to enhance and stabilize systems, which is always an important and enviable goal. But it needs to be tied to the question of whether the work is necessary in order to further a particular business objective. In other words, will the solution be more elegant? Yes. Will there be meaningful ROI? Let’s determine that before proceeding.”
By contrast, Singh says “Often the business thinks in terms of ideas and problems, without a full appreciation of the complexity that may be required to bring those ideas to life or resolve the problems at hand.”
So what can be done to align the business and technology sides of an organization?
Singh states the importance of all aspects of the company working together from the outset to align on goals and objectives. He also offers an example of how a technology organization may devise approaches to a business problem that cost $6 million, $8 million, or $10 million.
“Technologists must be able to explain to their business colleagues what outcomes those expenditures will yield,” Singh says. “In my experience, it’s an uncommon skill to be able to succinctly make the business case at different levels. Technologists appropriately spend much of their time developing their technical skills. Yet in situations such as this, the lead of the story should not focus on line-item detail, but on what the outcome is at each investment level as tied to both short-term and long-term business objectives. How will each investment level enable the business? Being able to craft the story is a skill that in my experience must be developed.”
The more this type of communication can happen across the organization at every level, the healthier the relationship between the technology and business units.
Singh says that his role is to understand how technology and business units can collaborate in the best way for the organization he is working with. He notes that each organization has its own unique culture and communication style that must be accounted for.
“The alternative — both sides talking past each other — would be an unfortunate lost opportunity,” he says.
Singh is modest about his ability to create connections and understanding where little existed. “It’s not really magic,” he says. “It’s just a thing that is often overlooked. My work at McKinsey helped me develop the ability to reduce business complexities and synthesize to concepts that everyone can understand.
“The primary thing I’ve learned from running my consulting firm is that in those elusive instances when the business and technology organizations get on the same page, great things can happen.”
