A Case of Leadership Deficit Disorder

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  PMO  

How can this be? The reasons given for this waste included poor implementation, underestimation of time and effort needed to make technology work and CEOs authorizing investment without clear and measurable improvement goals.

In essence, CEOs had given a virtual blank check to IT over the past few years to implement technologies that subsequently failed to deliver the value promised (most likely because the value was never defined). Now the backlash is that CEOs have backed away from IT spending to the extreme; another blunder which is stifling the country's economic recovery.

In the early 1980s, such a story would not have surprised me in the least. But this is 2002. As I read the story I could no longer suspend my disbelief. I found myself asking, "When will CEOs become technology savvy?" When will they stop abdicating organizationally altering decisions to those who, by their own lament, don't understand the needs of the business? When will CEOs become and be held accountable for their inability to lead?

If …

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