Too Many Executives Today Just Don't Get It!


Copyright 1990 CAUSE From _CAUSE/EFFECT_ Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 
1990. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is 
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               TOO MANY EXECUTIVES TODAY JUST DON'T GET IT!
                            by Richard L. Nolan

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Richard L. Nolan is chairman and cofounder of Nolan, Norton & Co., a
leading international organization of counselors to management focusing
on the effective management of computer-based technologies. The author
of seven books and more than 100 published articles on data processing
management, he has consulted with dozens of organizations worldwide
including DuPont, IBM, and Digital, as well as several large
telecommunications providers. He is the originator of the Stages Theory
for analyzing data processing growth, a theory he researched and
developed while an associate professor at Harvard Business School.

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ABSTRACT: For more than fifteen years, Richard L. Nolan has been helping
organizations navigate the troubled waters of information technology
through his stages theory. As keynote speaker at the 1979 CAUSE National
Conference, he talked about what to expect in the 1980s. Last November,
once again he presented a keynote address at the CAUSE National
Conference, providing navigation markers for the 1990s. This article is
an abridged version of his CAUSE89 address in which he asserts that too
many executives, both in industry and in higher education, don't yet
understand the need to transform their organizations to survive in the
information economy.

Futurists and authors trying to determine where business and
organizations are going -- Alvin Toffler, John Naisbett, Peter Drucker, 
Tom Peters -- have used the term "transformation" to describe what is 
happening to organizations in our economy. At this point, nearly every 
senior executive and administrator has heard the word transformation. My
message to executives is this: "All of you have heard the word, but you
just don't get it." It's like some people we all know, people who go to
church every Sunday but just don't get it. That's what I think is
happening. Transformation is not a message that executives are receiving
well. Those of us in higher education, who pride ourselves on research
and "getting things," are not receiving it well, either.

What does "getting it" mean? "Getting it" means understanding what
transformation is, what is driving it, and what must be done to
transform your organization. Transformation is changing your
organization and the principles of managing it in a way that makes the
organization viable, productive, and competitive in the Information
Economy of the 1990s and beyond. The state of most organizations today
and the way they are being managed will not survive into the 1990s.

Why is transformation hard to "get"? Transformation of
organizations is being driven by an underlying economic transition from
the Industrial Economy to the Information Economy. It is hard to relate
to events and ideas beyond our experience. None of us has actually
experienced a previous economic transition. We all started our working
lives in the midst of the Industrial Economy, and have developed skills
and experiences for managing in that environment. As a result, relying
on our experiences can be misleading. But acting on concepts incongruent
with our past experience is difficult and disorienting.

Getting it: learning from the previous
economic transition

There are important lessons that we can learn from recorded
experiences of the previous economic transition that are helpful to
"getting it."

From 1865 to 1945, the U.S. economy transitioned from the Agrarian
Economy to the Industrial Economy. In 1865, 48 percent, or about one-
half of the U.S. workforce, worked in agriculture. By 1945, when the
fundamental transition/transformation from an agricultural to industrial
economy was complete, that 48 percent had decreased to 4 percent.

The transition was made possible by an incredible increase in
agricultural productivity. While the workforce shrunk to 4 percent,
overall output increased. What drove the transition was an underlying
technology that started out with the steam engine, which was refined to
the internal combustion engine, which was again refined to the turbo jet
engine. This continued refinement of energy technology led to a
fundamental change in the way that work was done. Farms were mechanized;
we moved from the family farm to the mechanized farm. Technology,
combined with the changes in the way we work, led to an incredible
increase in productivity.

If I surveyed CAUSE members and asked: "If we were in the center of
the Agrarian Economy in 1865 and the Industrial Economy in 1945, when do
you think we will be in the center of the Information Economy?" most
would guess beyond the year 2000. That's because of our experience base;
we see the world through lenses of the world as we have always seen it.
The correct answer is 1995. We're moving from about 40 percent of our
workforce being involved in manufacturing to about 5 percent by 1995.
Will there be any less output in that sector? The traditional executive
would say yes -- fewer workers means less output. But the traditional
executive just doesn't get it. Fewer workers does not necessarily mean
less output; it can mean more productive workers. The Information
Economy will not be "traditional"! What we're seeing already is more
output in a sector that has fewer workers. In fact, today in the U.S.
the largest component of the GNP is agriculture and the second is
manufacturing.

The way of doing work in the Agrarian Economy was with small,
entrepreneurial, five-to-ten acre farms. In the transition to the
Industrial Economy, these small farms gave way to mechanized farms that
boggle the mind. Dry farmers in Idaho, as an example, farm with
Caterpillar tractors that pull 100 feet of cultivators over mountains
day and night. Farms are irrigated by farmers with tremendous knowledge
of hydraulics. What could be in the experience base of family farmers to
prepare them for a mechanized farm? Very little.

So, how did General Motors respond to the Information/Service
Economy? They said, "Oh, we get it. We're in the Information Economy and
that means investing in technology." So they bought EDS and a lot of
technology which they moved into existing factories. It was like buying
a huge reaper and dropping it into the family farm and steaming around
in this huge reaper in five acres and wondering why there was no
incredible jump in productivity.

What is wrong with this picture? Using 20/20 hindsight, we can see
that GM executives, like so many others, did not understand that the way
of doing work has to fundamentally change; it must be revolutionized.
Think about a modern "clean" room where they're producing chips. Does it
look anything like a General Motors factory? Can you tell who is the
engineer and who is the assembly line worker? Can you see inventories?
No. There are very few similarities between the clean-room process and
the traditional factory process. We will gain the incredible increases
in productivity when we learn how to fundamentally change the way we do
work. That's what transformation is all about.

Getting it: applying the lesson
that technology drives transformation

Let's consider the relationship between transformation and the
generic technologies that drive it. If you look at the energy
technologies that drove our economy for about 100 years, you'll find a
railroad infrastructure based upon an energy technology, the steam
engine. The steam engine as a technology was around for twenty to thirty
years in its basic state, while we built infrastructures (railroad
tracks). Once these infrastructures were in place, they drove economic
growth -- freeways, automobiles, planes, airports.

Now the energy technologies are at a point of diminishing return
and we are moving to a new technology, which is causing the new economic
transition. The new technology is the modern computer. This technology
has also been around for about twenty to thirty years, in a gestation
period, and now the question is: "What infrastructure will fuel economic
growth, and how will it impact the economy?" As near as we can tell, the
communications component of information technology is the infrastructure
that will cause this technology to drive global economic growth for the
next ten to fifty years.

To further consider and focus on information technology, I would
like to introduce my Stages Theory (Figure 1). Starting with the
research that I did at the Harvard Business School in the 1970s and have
continued at Nolan, Norton & Co. (NNC), I have identified three S-shaped
curves corresponding with the three information technology eras: the
Data Processing (DP) Era, the Information Technology (IT) Era, and the
Network Era.

The DP Era (from 1960 to 1980) corresponds to the gestation period
for computer technology. During this era, we brought in new technology
to make the existing organization structures more efficient. We also
built three key infrastructures: (1) IT departments, (2) college and
university computer science programs, and (3) an industry of diverse
computer service firms.

When I accepted my first job at Boeing in the 1960s, DP departments
were just emerging. While there were titles like systems analyst and
programmer, there were not established positions and titles for
database, telecommunications, and the more advanced technologies. Nor
could Boeing and other companies go directly to the colleges and
universities to fulfill their labor requirements. Instead, Boeing hired
from existing campus departments such as mathematics, engineering,
accounting, and music. These new hires were then trained in extensive
in-house programs to learn the skills and tools of the trade. Further,
there was no infrastructure of computer service firms to draw upon such
as EDS, Apple, MSA, Arthur Andersen, Peat Marwick, and the like. Systems
had to be built from scratch and from the ground up.

By 1980, these three fundamental infrastructures had been built
within companies and within the economy. The established infrastructures
provided the foundation for the IT Era. In the IT Era (which we are
half-way through), we brought the computer out of the back room and into
the front office. The advent of the PC and user computing goes beyond
using computers to just make the existing organization more efficient -- 
it provides the basis for actually changing the way the work is 
performed.

Getting it: new technology enables
new ways to do work

Transformation is the result of economic transition driven by
information technology. Take IT away, and it's business as usual; put IT
in and you get economic transition. Is IT important? You better believe
it! Information technology is the most important variable that an
executive has to master in the 1990s.

But does this mean that people and money aren't important? Not at
all. We are experiencing a paradigm shift in management requiring that
IT be added to the strategic equation. And when you add IT, it changes
everything. It requires a paradigm shift in the way we think about
management. For example, take organization. Organization refers to the
structure that we use to specify relationships between people to carry
out work. In the Agrarian Economy, the family farm resembled the
entrepreneurial structure -- an effective structure for small work 
groups.

During the transition to the Industrial Economy, entrepreneurial
structures were inadequate. The Industrial Economy required structures
to carry out mass production and mass distribution, which could mobilize
large groups of workers toward shared objectives over sustained periods
of time.

A highly effective structure emerged through adaptation of
bureaucratic structures borrowed from the Catholic Church and the
military. Over time, the adaptation evolved into the functional
hierarchy along with a set of well established management principles.
These management principles are institutionalized in one form or another
in all of our formal educations:

  *  Line and staff functions -- core activities of producing / 
distributing and support activities

  *  Chain of command -- every worker has one boss

  *  Span of control -- sub work units directly supervised by one person
should not be larger than ten to fourteen workers

  *  Budgets -- expenditure plans for current year

  *  Capital budgeting -- expenditure plans for multiple years

  *  Centralization/decentralization -- specification of central or
corporate activities separate from line business activities

  *  Et cetera

These management principles are well established and ingrained in
our ideas about effective organizations and management.

However, what makes us think that that particular structure will
work any better in an economic transition than the entrepreneurial
structure worked to move us into the Industrial Economy? What makes us
think that it is the structure that will take us into the Information
Economy? Absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, it is woefully
obsolete. I can go further. Anything that you do that perpetuates
functional hierarchy in your institutions is hurting your institutions.
It is dead wrong.

How can I make such a strong statement? I believe that I can make
this strong statement because the rigid, functional hierarchy of most
organizations has been silently and unrelentingly dismantled over the
last fifteen years.

In Figure 2, I show the results of some comparative analyses that I
did on the distribution of workers in a sample of organizations in 1960
and 1980. In 1960 (before extensive computerization) these firms
reflected symmetrical pyramid structures: 5 percent top management, 35
percent middle management, and 60 percent operational workers. Twenty
years of computerization at the operational level and the cost pressures
of global competition have resulted in the leveraging of that
technology: operational worker productivity has been continually
leveraged with automated systems.

[FIGURE NOT AVAILABLE IN ASCII TEXT VERSION]

During the last ten years, the middle of the organization has been
impacted by computerization in a similar way. With this broad
penetration of computerization, novel organization structures are
cropping up, as well as a new set of management principles. For example,
more and more organizations are seeing the fallacy of using new
technology to computerize what is already there.

       New Technology + Old Organizations = Disappointing Results

                              whereas:

New Technology + New Organizations = Viability and Competitive Advantage


These new approaches are leading to a new set of management principles,
such as "lights out" manufacturing or "peopleless" back office
operations, and to designing for manufacturability resulting in
heretofore unattainable levels of quality.

While some industry executives are "getting it," others never did.
For example, the U.S. steel industry was world class in the period of
the Industrial Economy, but most of those executives just didn't get it.
Consequently, many of the great U.S. steel companies have disappeared,
or are only a shadow of their original selves.

Getting it: the functional hierarchy is
obsolete and the network organization is 
evolving as the new form

Most organizations that are successful are operating a shadow
"network" organization that floats over the functional hierarchy. The
network organization is proving to be much more effective for operating
at the level of sophistication that we now have to deal with. The 1990s
are going to formalize such network organization structures.

Apple Computer offers a good example of the importance of shadow
networks. As a new organization, Apple doesn't have all the "baggage"
that some other organizations have. Nevertheless, it has embraced the
idea of the network as a preferred structure, and has put into operation
a number of related ideas, such as: modular groups instead of
traditional marketing and manufacturing functions, task-driven
operations, management by dissent, organic rather than fixed 
organizations, a global network, a global Apple knowledge base, and a 
global executive information system. It has embraced this philosophy 
formally and has begun a strategy to get there.

By way of comparison, there are two other well managed companies
playing in a different environment -- DEC and IBM. Compare the number of
employees required to achieve respective sales. This comparison is not
unlike the ratio for mechanizing the farm. DEC realizes about $100,000
in sales per employee, IBM a little over $150,000, and Apple $500,000.
Some say, "Wait a minute. Apple does outsourcing so it's an unfair
comparison." I've heard these arguments but I say, "That's what
transformation is all about; that's what we're trying to do. And if
there is a more effective way to achieve productivity then vertical
integration, you'd better be aware of it. We're establishing a different
paradigm."

Let's look at the attributes of a transformed and a non-transformed
organization (see Figure 3). In terms of staffing, a transformed
organization can have the same activity with half the number of people
if it uses a networked corporate structure rather than a functional
hierarchy. Transformed organizations have evolved from large scale to
flexible scale, from production driven to market driven, from competing
on the basis of tangibles to competing on intangibles, from reward for
loyalty and seniority to reward for performance, from a multi-national
perspective to a global perspective, from a tactical use of IT to a
strategic architecture.

Transformation involves changing most of our assumptions and
principles of management. Across the board, the attributes are changing
to a higher level of sophistication. At the core are key assumptions
about work and workers. Physical and clerical routine work is being
automated and is disappearing as a human endeavor.

The distinction between blue-collar and white-collar work is
obsolete as more and more the human endeavor of work is shifting to
knowledge work. Defining and understanding knowledge work is a national
priority. It is incumbent on our campus leaders to transform their
institutions to supply the critical demand in organizations for newly
skilled knowledge workers.

Conclusion

American institutions of higher education are still the best in the
world. But "best in the world" isn't a franchise that an organization
owns in perpetuity, as our U.S. steel firms learned. To remain the best,
our colleges and universities must transform. They need to add
information technology to their strategic equations to formulate viable
1990s strategies. Then they need to internalize and incorporate the
Information Economy management paradigm to achieve a higher level of
performance and sophistication in educating the future knowledge worker
labor supply.

What this means personally to senior executives (both in business
and higher education) is that information technology shifts from a
spectator sport to a participatory sport. As spectators, senior
executives had IT proposals brought to them in a form that they could
choose from. Now the senior executive must engage in the process of
creating opportunities to strategically apply information technology.
New ideas, vocabularies, and skills must be learned.

It is extremely difficult and frustrating to learn to play a new
sport. Likewise, it is difficult and frustrating to learn to play IT for
strategic advantage. But executives have a mandate to learn to play IT
strategically to successfully lead their organizations in the 1990s and
beyond. Strategies without information technology are hollow. Get it?

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           WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO "GET IT" IN HIGHER EDUCATION?

CAUSE/EFFECT shared Richard Nolan's remarks with five leaders in
information technology management on CAUSE member campuses, and asked
them what they think it will take to "get it" in higher education. Their
responses follow.


David L. Smallen
Director of Information Technology Services and Institutional Research
Hamilton College, New York

What are the implications of Dr. Nolan's article for higher education?
What, if any, transformation is necessary in the academy if we are to
produce the workers with the skills necessary for businesses to compete
successfully in a world economy? Is the "information economy management
paradigm" an appropriate one for all, or even some, colleges and
universities? Two fundamental changes will have to take place in the
perspective of our leaders for these issues to be seriously considered.

As decentralized as many of our institutions are, "transformation"
is nevertheless a top-down responsibility. That is, unless the leaders
of our institutions -- our presidents, vice-presidents, provosts, and
deans -- understand the need for the change, and initiate actions based 
on that belief, it will not happen. As Nolan says, "this means 
personally to senior executives ... that information technology shifts 
from a spectator sport to a participatory sport." Absent of this 
understanding, any bottom-up approach, especially from the information 
technology community, is just "tilting at windmills." Much needs to be 
done to capture the hearts, minds, and time of our institutional 
leaders. We haven't "gotten them" yet!

At the same time significant efforts must be made to broaden the
institutional perspective of information technology leaders and
managers. At most institutions of higher education, leaders of
information technology organizations are not part of the formal, or
informal, planning process for the institution. They are viewed as
specialists, in a world where a premium is placed on having an
institutional perspective -- seeing the "big picture." They spend too 
much time talking about technology and not enough about education. As a 
result, they are most often not part of the tradeoff process.

Those who see the big picture, the generalists, will be
particularly important in the next decade because these will be years of
tradeoffs, rather than expansion, for most of higher education. The
current downturn in the economy, coupled with the continued decline in
high school graduates and increased competition for faculty
replacements, augurs a situation in which institutions will reexamine
some of their fundamental tenets. Information technology can be a great
tradeoff enhancer, but only if those who are making and informing the
decisions are generalists. In addition, they must clearly understand
their institutional missions and the role technology can play in
achieving them.

Higher education is not a homogeneous collection of institutions.
Nolan suggests that higher education executives haven't "gotten" the
message. I'd suggest that the message will likely depend upon the
mission. Whatever the message, it should be clear, concise, and relevant
(i.e., it should demonstrate an understanding of the fundamental
purposes of higher education). Delivery of that message can be
facilitated by information technology professionals, but only if they
develop an institutional perspective. Otherwise, they will likely suffer
the same fate as the messengers of bad news in ancient Greece.


Carole Barone
Vice President
Information Systems and Computing
Syracuse University, New York

Wow! Nolan does a wonderful job of delivering this important message. I
believe that many administrators, staff members, and faculty who work
with information technology, either in managing the information
technology environment or incorporating it into instruction and
research, fully agree with Nolan's thesis and have indeed begun to work
in new ways. Unfortunately, few chief executives in higher education or
their cabinet officers, who generally are the heads of the traditional
functional divisions -- for example, academic affairs, facilities
administration, financial administration, human resources, development 
--have "gotten it." These administrators continue to operate as a
functional hierarchy. The result increasingly is a clash of managerial
styles and organizational cultures within the institution.

Perhaps even more discouraging is the realization that some who
read Nolan's piece and do in fact "get it" will not know how to act on
it. Think about the administrative backgrounds of top executives in
higher education. How many of them have the time or the inclination to
think about how organizations work?

On the other hand, much is already happening to indicate that
change is occurring, perhaps faster and more penetratingly than we
realized, and the recent impact of external forces may be the catalyst
that causes the evolution to become a revolution. In the past five
years, IT organizations have become increasingly more service- oriented.
To deliver services effectively these organizations must learn how to
network; they must also become comfortable with the practice of forming
project-oriented teams or work groups. This is a manifestation of what
Nolan refers to as a network organization. The network grows as the IT
group pulls members of other functional units into project groups. These
people gradually discard the behavioral traits associated with success
in a command-and-control relationship and adopt the skills required to
function successfully in a negotiated environment. The pace of the
consequent acculturation varies, as does its persistence beyond the
duration of the project.

Managers at all levels within IT organizations are learning how to
play collaborative and diplomatic roles; they serve as boundary-spanners
and liaisons across organizational lines as they form the lateral
relationships required to facilitate the flow of information throughout
the larger organization and to those to whom they provide service. A
member of my staff says that she thinks of each of us as being members
of a virtual information center. Our role is to make all of the
unlimited connections required to fulfill our responsibilities to our
clients. Like virtual memory, the limits of our responsibilities to our
clients are not bounded. It is not reaching very far, then, to
conceptualize the virtual or Nolan's network organization evolving from
this already existing, very agile organizational form.

What does IT mean for the transformation of the scholarly mission
of our institutions? We tend to do a fairly good job of articulating a
vision of a different kind of student, e.g., the lifelong learner; of
new delivery systems enabled by technology, e.g., distance education; of
the effects of high-speed communication networks on research, e.g.,
worldwide collaboration on research projects; and we have even begun to
produce excellent examples of how IT really does transform a discipline,
e.g., new ways of conceptualizing statistical analysis and written
communication. As Nolan indicates, we have not, however, made much
progress at changing our organizational structures (not to mention our
organizational charts) to focus on these new initiatives, nor have we
altered our resource allocation practices to recognize the importance of
such activities to the future viability of the institution. There has
been a palpable reluctance to take the risks and the flack associated
with the kind of systemic change required to accomplish this fundamental
reorientation of the institution.

Financial exigencies may serve as the catalyst that causes the
change in paradigm to happen. Many of us must cope with budget cuts that
will affect our ability to deliver quality service in the traditional
manner. It may be that through the work of Nolan and others, along with
the pockets of enlightenment that exist on most campuses, top executives
will realize that, unless they change the paradigm fast, their
institutions face a long period of gradual decline. Nolan's paradigm
offers the means to flourish in spite of declining resources. Do we have
the leadership with the creativity and the guts to make it happen?


Dorothy Hopkin
Vice President
Information and Telecommunications Systems
Oakland Community College, Michigan

Do we believe in the need for transformation in higher education as
described by Nolan and others? How can we not?
If institutional goals reflect commitment to educate and train
students to face the emerging world of work, then we're compelled to
teach in an environment and in a manner that reflects what the world
does. That teaching element and its transformation may be more important
to higher education than organizational transformation. Therefore, let
me examine this transformation in both areas -- the teaching and 
learning environment and the management of the organization.

Teaching and learning activities in higher education must change.
We must not only teach the use of technology, but we must use the
technology to teach. This may be the cornerstone of the problem facing
higher education and the transformation. Can we direct our faculty to
change? I suspect that we cannot. Can we make them learning managers
rather than learning lecturers? Do our faculty "get it"? Some do, some
don't, some won't.

Traditional methods must go; traditional schedules must go.
Technology will be the great enabler. These changes will not happen by
edict but by persuasion, by show-and-tell, and by pressure from
students. Faculty attrition is also on our side. Transformation will
only occur through a commitment by institutions to the investment in
technology and human resources. It will be work.

Educational leaders must make a pledge to their faculty to help
them make this change. Slowly, buy-in will occur. Will it be a
transformation or a gradual change? I submit that the end result will
look like transformation because we will have undone generations of
values, but the process will be slow and painful.

Transformation in the management of the institution will be easier
since leaders accept and incorporate the very tenets of this
transformation in the strategic planning process. Somewhat in contrast
to faculty, administrative and support groups will be transformed from
the top, through management structures. Do our leaders "get it"? Some
do, some don't.

I am cautiously optimistic because I see many positive signs --
statements like "we will not automate old processes," "the application
of technology will permit us to serve students better," "our network
will permit us to examine new ways of information delivery."

Now, what does a campus information technology leader do to
accelerate this process? As part of the administrative infrastructure,
our role is to continually point out the value of the knowledge worker
to the institution. As we engage in the strategic planning process, we
can ensure that the principle of the application of technology to our
goals and mission is reinforced.

To our faculty, we must be cheerleaders and mentors in all
attempts, however small, that promote the application of technology to
the teaching and learning process. We must point to the outcomes or
added value of employing technology in the organization and lead our
institutions to new thought processes for a new age. We can and will
make these contributions, but we must also practice what we preach!

Will higher education "get it"? I think so.


James I. Penrod
Vice President
Information Resources Management
California State University/Los Angeles

There are many aspects of Dr. Nolan's keynote speech and subsequent
article that merit serious thought and discussion. However, this short
"reaction" will focus upon "getting it" for a relatively small number,
but very important group, of senior administrators in higher education,
i.e., Chief Information Officers (CIOs).

It would seem that CIOs should "get it" long before other senior
administrators and, indeed, would be leaders in helping other executives
come to understand the importance of transformation. Hopefully, this is
generally true, but I believe an examination of the tenets emphasized by
Nolan indicates that there are CIOs who "just don't get it!"

Learning from the previous economic transition. The example of
General Motors buying EDS to fix their problems seems all too familiar.
As we point out in our recently published CAUSE Professional Paper, The
Chief Information Officer in Higher Education, three types of CIO appear
to have evolved. One type primarily interacts with executive officers
only during difficulties or at budget time, may be regarded as a "hired
gun" responsible for fixing problems with information technology so that
the executive officer does not have to worry about them, and is likely
to be given total responsibility for deriving an IT plan[1]

Applying the lesson that technology drives transformation. During
the DP Era, too many "computing" people gained a reputation for
promising more than automation ever delivered. Consequently, the concept
that computing is just another "tool" to help students, faculty, or
administrators do what they have always done faster and more efficiently
has come to be regarded as an axiom. Perhaps as a continuing reaction to
overstatement, some CIOs hold fast to the "computing as another tool"
perspective, even including it as a foundation statement in information
technology strategic plans.

New technology enables new ways to do work. Few organizational
units in colleges or universities are faced with more pressure to
provide stability and reliability in service than are computing and
communication departments. Given that pressure, and the constant change
mandated to maintain some degree of state of the art, it is easy for a
CIO to advocate the Bert Lance axiom, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"
This seems to be particularly true when applied to administrative
systems.

The functional hierarchy is obsolete and the network organization
is evolving as the new form. Many CIO positions were created to head
Information Resources Management (IRM) organizations. IRM divisions
typically bring together several IT units under one managerial umbrella.
It is still unusual to see campus IRM organization charts that reflect
anything beyond the standard functional hierarchy, and few have attained
the real potential that exists for organization synergy.

If the CIO function is to fulfill its promise, then surely the
executives in such positions should be at the forefront in
understanding, advocating, and explaining the concept of transformation.
A good CIO may indeed enable other senior administrators to sleep at
night without worrying about IT problems, but he/she cannot permit them
to forget about IT! A significant part of the role is to see that
executive officers spend an appropriate amount of time focusing upon
strategic IT issues.

Information technology is not just another tool; it is an enabling
force in the world in which we now live. We often speak of "end users,"
normally referring to people using computing resources. If we expand the
concept of an "end user" to also encompass the idea of people using
information in a position of responsibility, the difference between an
enabling force and a tool begins to be recognized[2]

New technology can lead to new ways to do work as we focus upon and
organize around outcomes, not tasks. Rather than seeking to find
opportunities to improve current processes, we need to identify how to
add value and search for new ways to achieve results. We should often
ask "why?" and "what if?" All basic assumptions should be carefully
examined and replaced if they do not fit in an information society[3]

Quality, innovation, and service are now more important than cost,
growth, and control.[4] We need organizations that are designed to 
support quality, innovation, and service. Is there a better place to 
begin than with IRM units?

Almost all CIOs are expected to play a key role in forming an
institutional vision with respect to information technology. Now is the
time to realize that being a visionary is more than just foreseeing the
future, it is also creating that future. The process of transformation,
of which Dick Nolan writes, is perhaps the best way to bring about a new
vision of higher education. Have we "got it" now?


Kenneth Blythe
Director
Management Services
Pennsylvania State University

It is inevitable that higher education will undergo a transformation
just as surely as business has. It has not happened yet, but the
indicators are compelling.

The infrastructure of many of our campuses is deteriorating more
rapidly than it can be maintained. To replace declining government
funds, higher education is resorting to a bag of tricks of alternate
forms of revenue production -- auxiliary enterprise, land sales, non-
credit instruction, research, and fund-raising. Meanwhile, students feel 
they are not getting their money's worth; there is tuition resistance.
Classes are slowly growing to sizes beyond that recommended for quality,
personal instruction. Teacher assistants, with English as their second
language, are providing more hours of instruction than qualified
faculty. In the 1990s, we are told, there will be a shortage of faculty
as many of the stalwarts of the past decades retire. Teachers are
rewarded not as much for the quality of their instruction as the
quantity of their research.

These are the indicators, the unmistakable signs that the
traditional higher education model, which has served us well for
hundreds of years, is overstressed.

The paradox is that America needs more educated workers than ever
before. We are entering an information/service economy in which
knowledge workers are essential. To stay current, workers will engage in
lifelong learning. Businesses expect higher education to respond to the
demand or they will find alternatives. Thus, we must deal with the
paradox. America needs a more highly educated workforce and electorate,
and higher education must respond. Economic realities and a changing
marketplace will compel this response; there is no choice.

What does this mean to us as campus information technology
managers? We have a responsibility to be the bellwethers of change to
alert our institutions that it is coming. We also have a responsibility
to utilize the tools of our profession, information technology, in
appropriate ways to support the necessary changes. Who knows better than
we, after all, who have been agents of change in the past, how to
support our institutions with the process of change in the future? If we
don't "get it," who will?

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