ITEXPO Leading Change Panel Offers Tips on How IT Teams Can Stay Relevant

There’s an interesting dichotomy in business today. Information and communications technology have become engrained in the workings of most organizations, so it might seem that IT types would be sitting pretty. Yet, at the same time, things are moving so quickly in tech that it’s important for IT leaders to be proactive to ensure they remain relevant.

The ITEXPO (News - Alert) panel today titled “Leading Change: Taking Your Business and Technology to the Next Generation” addressed these two factors, offering advice on what tech leaders at businesses can do to respond to and drive change. Panelists Louis Richardson of IBM (News - Alert) and Sam Liu of Soonr encouraged audience members to be proactive in setting the course for IT – and, especially, positive business results – at their companies.

Richardson (News - Alert) recommended that technology leaders within organizations leverage technology not for technology’s sake, but rather to address specific pain points, which everybody has. Setting out on that path should begin with talking to a line of business people, said Richardson, who explained that’s how he spends a lot of his time.

“You’ve got to become relevant,” he said. If you get in the mode of IT and say: “This is what we do, we do this one thing,” you become irrelevant, he added.

If IT doesn’t provide solutions, users will go out there and find them themselves, added Liu of Soonr, a secure file sharing services company.

“Users are out there adopting cloud services just to avoid SharePoint,” he added.

Executive buy-in on new solutions is also key, added Liu.

To get executives on board with new products or applications, Liu suggests that staff members provide them with those solutions for their own use, so they can try them out for themselves and experience their goodness first hand.