By Lee Congdon

There's a lot of demand these days for CIOs to break out of their technology-adviser shells so they can focus more on business strategy. CIOs shouldn’t be the only folks in IT who are thinking like business strategists though – your entire IT organization should. But for many IT professionals, thinking like a business strategist is new territory.



A recent Computerworld survey of 489 IT professionals found that 52 percent believe that a new business or soft skill, versus a new technology skill, will best advance their IT careers. The top three non-IT skills respondents said they thought would make them more valuable are leadership and strategic thinking (24%), connecting with customers (16%) and analytical thinking (15%).



At Red Hat, we certainly want our IT professionals to solve problems from a technical standpoint, but we also want them to be able to look at a problem and understand the business context to help ensure we're putting the right tools in place to solve it.



One way we've helped our IT folks get a better understanding of the business is through organizational alignment. For years we've been embedding them in the business teams so that they're involved in the day-to-day flow of work. This really helps them think about the problems in terms of the business. It also allows our IT folks to say, 'I understand the problem, I can go solve it, and I can take it off the table and deliver the results.'



But it takes more than just embedding your IT teams within different departments to transition from trusted technology partners to true business consultants. To that end, we're also training our folks to think like consultants. We're making the investment to bring in professional consultants to educate our IT staff, and we're sending a number of our IT folks off for training focused on advanced leadership development to expose them to the business view of IT.



Our teams know deeply the mechanics of technical tasks like operating servers and writing software, and we definitely value those skills, but we also want to empower our technology teams to use IT to solve business problems. This becomes increasingly important because we think that with the advent of cloud computing we can buy more of the basic technology services we need — technology that powerfully solves technical problems IT staff may be solving today. For our company to remain successful, though, it's going to be about solving business problems.



We fully expect our focus on business-driven IT will evolve, but an important starting point is knowledge of our business. What are some of the things your IT department is doing to ensure your IT professionals are taking charge of solving the business problem, rather than simply the technology problems? I'd love to hear about it and encourage you to share your experiences in the comments section so we can learn from one another.

Read part one of our second roundtable in which Lee was a panelist: "Is this the age of the CIO?"

Lee Congdon is responsible for Red Hat’s global information systems, including the technology strategy, enterprise architecture, information technology governance, solutions delivery, and systems operations supporting the company. His role includes enabling Red Hat’s business through services, such as knowledge management, technology innovation, technology-enabled collaboration, and process improvement. Congdon has more than 25 years of experience as an IT leader.