IT versus the in-flight magazine

We all know the story: An exec takes a flight to visit a customer, picks up the in-flight magazine during takeoff before they’re allowed to use their laptop or tablet, and reads an article suggesting a new wave in technology businesses must jump on. You get an email as the plane lands or a visit to your office when the exec is back in town asking about IT’s strategy for that must-do technology trend.

Sigh. “Here we go again, thanks to those darned magazine writers!” you exclaim (silently if the exec is in the room).

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But why do your execs rely on unknown writers in throwaway magazines? Maybe it’s your fault as an IT pro. If you don’t provide technology leadership, such publications are all they have to rely on, especially since business titles such as the Harvard Business Review — the other sort of periodicals your execs read — don’t get into technology. Business executives aren’t going to read InfoWorld, Network World, or any other deep-tech website or magazine.

It’s either you or the in-flight magazines. It should be you. But if you’re not already doing it — and most of you are not — how do you change that reality?

What the absence of technology leadership looks like

Start by understanding what the absence of this technology leadershop looks like. To do that, think back to the mid-1990s. (If you’re among those for whom the mid-1990s more closely resemble history than current events, just read on and take my word for it.) Back then, travel agencies were a significant force. Most business travelers relied on them or their in-house equivalents to help plan all but the simplest trips and to arrange the majority of their flight, hotel, and car rental reservations.

These travel agencies had one characteristic in common: None were named Travelocity, Expedia, or Orbitz. And few exist today. Were someone to thoroughly research the history of an entire industry’s immense failure , I’m sure they’d nail down quite a few factors that led to its demise. Here’s one: Their CIOs and IT leaders were doing exactly what they thought they were supposed to do. They were:

• Being “business-driven”
• Taking care of their internal customers
• Making sure IT didn’t even hint at promoting technology for technology’s sake

That is, they were making sure they provided no technology leadership of any kind.

It isn’t as if travel agencies had no time to get ahead of the trend. They did — not much, but some. By 1995, it was clear the Web was going to be a very big deal, and Sabre didn’t launch Travelocity until 1997.

Here’s what didn’t happen in 1995: If any of the big travel agencies even conducted a basic SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, none of their CIOs spoke up to suggest that this newfangled thing called the Web fit into the opportunities and threats category.

SWOT, by the way, is backward, and the difference is far more than a minor nit. If you have a chance to influence such things, suggest inverting the sequence into TOWS. For strategic planning, threats and opportunities come first. If there aren’t any, business as usual is probably the best strategy; if there are any, weaknesses and strengths aren’t meaningful except in the context of the threats and opportunities the business is facing. TOWS works much better than SWOT.

Technology leadership: It isn’t just the CIO’s job

This failure wasn’t just their CIOs’, either. Companies keep their CIOs quite busy. By the time they’ve handled this week’s share of company politicking, defended the IT budget, dealt with the odd HR crisis or two, coached a wayward manager on better ways of handling difficult situations, and so on, CIOs don’t have all that much time left to stay on top of emerging trends.

If you aren’t a CIO or even an IT manager, there’s a question you should ponder: What did your counterparts in mid-1990s travel-agency IT do to head off the calamity and turn it into an opportunity?

Imagine yourself in that situation. Would you have had the imagination and inclination to develop a mock-up version of a travel website? Would you have done so on your own time? Would you have made an appointment with your CIO to demo it and suggest that, as some company undoubtedly would be doing this, the company’s only choice was to either get on the boat or watch it sail away?

Yes, on your own time and your own initiative. Because that’s what it would have taken. Nor would this have been an exercise in altruism — far from it. Instead, it would have been a powerful career investment. Even companies with indifferent management notice employees who have insights and initiative, as well as how to sell an idea.

Oh, and in case this isn’t obvious to you: Although the Web is no longer a novelty with respect to creating threats and opportunities, there are emerging technologies right now for you to bring to your company’s attention, assuming you have the insights and initiative to do so.

Whether you like SWOT or TOWS better, this is what technology leadership looks like. It starts with staying informed of technology trends that might drive marketplace shifts to which a business might have to respond … or, even better, that might allow an innovative business to drive a marketplace shift.

It goes beyond being informed to being influential. Anyone can be smart, and it isn’t all that hard to be right, either. What’s tough is making sure the organization is right enough.

Don’t leave that to the in-flight magazines.

This story, “IT versus the in-flight magazine,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis’ Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.