ICT Leadership

Back in March, I wrote about strategic planning and last week about leadership as something that applies to all. Both of these items highlight that leadership is an attribute of how you work, while administration is part of the job. But administration without leadership is a recipe for disaster. And ICT adminisration without ICT leadership does not help you or the organization you're working for.

Not convinced?

You were most likely hired because you have the technical expertise to run the computer systems in your organization. Most likely, the chief executives do not have the technical knowledge you have, hence the most qualified person to make decisions related to the organization's ICT resources is you, not your superior.

Fine, you lead the way on the technology. You try to educate your superiors, so that they can make educated decisions. You might even start reading books about leadership and come across concepts like SWOT analysis and the 5 Cs of Core strategy, Consequence, Customer, Control and Culture, and you begin to wonder what this has to do with you. You're a technical assistance, not an executive.

But this all does matter even for you. You meet organizational culture every day, and you're part of defining it. You may try to control the direction of ICT development in the organization and educate your peers, or you might be running around to every person's bidding. Your peers are your customers, and their customers are the organization's customers. Everything you do have a consequence. To meet all of this, you must have a core strategy.

How about competition? You have to address competition on different levels: First, there's the competition of your organization. Then there's the competition of your ICT department. Even if you're a one man operation, you still have competition in the form of your job being outsourced to someone else or to a different organization to cut costs. At the same time, you still may have to outsource part of your operations in order to meet demands, in which case it is no longer competition, but a strategic partnership.

The difference between the two approaches to outsourcing lies in leadership.

Hopefully, you have bought into the concept that leadership is also about you, whether you officially have a hierarchy below you or not. The hierarchy is artificial, and leadership is not dependent on it. Leadership is about showing the way in the subjects that you have your compentency, yet you have to follow others in areas where they possess the compentency you lack.

Leadership is not something that you do only in your job, but it can also be applied to your life in general, from career development to personal life. After all, the one person who is most qualified to craft the life you want to live is you.


Because I'm moving to a new location, there will be no new article on Dihturnoaidi until May 19th. If you wish to contribute to Dihturnoaidi, get in touch at gard.abrahamsen at gmail