What is IT Leadership? Exploring IT Service Management Leadership

The IT leadership group is the senior executives in charge of an organization’s information technology (IT) infrastructure and applications that support and propel the overarching business strategy and objectives. The chief information officer, often known as the CIO, is typically referred to as the senior IT leader, however at some organizations, this duty is now shared with several other “information chiefs,” including the chief digital officer, the chief analytics officer, and the chief data officer.

There are many different types of IT leadership, including paternalistic and servant leadership. Examples of crucial leadership abilities include the capacity to motivate staff to use IT to streamline procedures, hard skills, and soft (interpersonal) skills.

Strong IT leadership is crucial to coordinating IT and the business since businesses are increasingly focusing on using IT for revenue-generating activities and as IT drives business change.

The Changing Landscape of IT Leadership

IT and business are becoming increasingly linked as organizations place greater emphasis on ideas like social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (or SMAC) and establishing a digital enterprise. In addition to more cutting-edge SMAC projects, IT leadership executives are focused on maintaining fundamental systems like payroll and accounting software. However, business executives still have a need to understand how to use IT.

Indeed, as automation and outsourcing become more prevalent and cost-effective, IT projects like these are increasingly being limited to particular business units. Additionally, industries are observing an increase in shadow IT as cloud computing has evolved and made it easier for business divisions of organizations to engage IT specialists directly rather than through the central IT division. In these cases, a business unit uses hardware or software that is not supported by the IT department of its corporation to carry out specific IT tasks. Alongside shadow IT, enterprise resource planning (ERP) is undergoing potentially revolutionary advances, such as robotic process automation. As a result of these changes and the growing popularity of federated IT models, more IT duties and leadership positions are being transferred to departments outside of centralized IT.

In light of all of this, executives must decide if IT organizations will continue to exist independently of business organizations.

Transformational Leadership

Teams for IT and service management are often composed of individuals with technical expertise who may not always have prior customer service experience. Although technical knowledge is vital, service management professionals need to understand how their work affects the customer in order to deliver great customer service.

The needs of service management professionals may change, and transformational leadership makes this possible by reframing their perspectives and motivating them to act in fresh and original ways.  By establishing expectations, it conveys the goal by giving people something to strive for.

Proactive Communications

Overcommunication is preferable since it ensures that everyone receives the message. But it’s quite easy to communicate incorrectly or not at all.

Service management teams should be urged to take into account the emotions of a customer who has submitted a ticket or is waiting for a response. What type of service would they expect if they had to wait behind the counter? Proactivity, a simple yet effective tactic, is the outcome. Service management experts may profit from encouraging proactive communication until it becomes the norm in order to anticipate and effectively solve client demands.

Six Key Factors Propelling IT Leadership Success

Communication skills are essential for an IT executive. Here are six communication-related concepts that IT leaders need to thoroughly understand:

• The company and IT must communicate effectively with one another.
• Effective value metrics that make evident IT’s contribution to the business are a must.
• IT should create efficient methods for operational, tactical, and strategic governance.
• IT must encourage cooperation between IT and business stakeholders.
• IT must properly communicate its scope and architecture to business leaders in order for them to understand the extent of their contribution and that the technology is operating efficiently for both internal company use and external clients.
• IT leaders must possess both leadership and IT skills.

Successful IT leadership requires an understanding of the two-way nature of the interaction between IT and the business. Even if IT leaders have the necessary skill set and motivation, they still can’t accomplish it alone. Collaboration with business partners inside the organization must be efficient in order to accomplish IT initiatives and have an impact on the whole business.