Five Nautical Lessons: 38 Captains of Technology, Three Days at Sea

Advice by John Bostick, dbaDirect

SEPTEMBER 12, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - It was a wonderful opportunity. Earlier this year, I met with 38 CIOs and chief technology officers in a series of one-on-one interviews aboard a ship in the Atlantic Ocean. The closely sequenced half-hour interview format enabled me to see patterns that may not have emerged during the course of a normal business day or week. But within a concentrated period, CIO after CTO kept alluding to three basic themes: the need to do more with less, the alarming growth of data volumes and the strategic management imperative to align technology closer to the business.

How does a captain of technology avoid being trapped by these converging fronts and provide safe passage for customers, employees and shareholders? I had a chance to reflect on my conversations and, as an avid history buff and reasonably experienced sailor, distill these five lessons for IT in the language of seamanship and the sea:

Row Less, Steer More: Business leaders are demanding that IT staffs focus their energy less on daily data issues and more on strategic initiatives to move technology forward and accelerate business growth. These demands require IT captains and crews to look for new and innovative ways to monitor, maintain and manage their infrastructure. The emerging IT strategy and course for career advancement is through using the power of ideas from internal sources and external vendors that provide momentum and direction to overcome the weight of infrastructure and the force of inertia.

You Can't Sail Directly Into the Wind: The headwind for IT departments is the imperative to do more with less. It takes a nimble captain, an agile crew and technically savvy vendors to tack and reach across this headwind to make strategic progress in aligning technology closer to the business. A captain with more cargo and a smaller crew has to sail smarter.

The Bigger the Ship, the Less You Use It: Larger data volumes, complex infrastructure and fragmenting legacy systems no longer mean bigger budgets, more clout or economies of scale. Often it means increased management time and maintenance, less flexibility and a delayed ability to respond to market conditions. Only captains and crews who effectively manage and retrofit their systems with advanced automated processes and knowledge-based service providers can deliver impressive and agile performance.

Columbus Was Wrong; Tom Friedman Is Right -- the World Is Flat: The convergence of hardware, software, telecommunications networks, and the global language and infrastructure of business now level the playing field. Captains who value creativity, welcome ideas and value knowledge-based service relationships will be able to shorten the space between the technology, the business and the customer -- the only competitive advantage.

Whistle to Summon the Wind: Many sailors believe that whistling summons the wind. In IT, all problems have a creative solution that might lie just beyond the horizon. Infrastructure management of data and business intelligence resources appears to be the new fresh breeze to help IT captains and crews navigate the stormy waters of doing more with less, growing fragmented data volumes and managing initiatives for change.

John Bostick is CEO of dbaDirect Inc., a pioneer in the field of data infrastructure as a managed service. He credits his liberal arts education for his success and entrepreneurial insights in the IT field.

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