Transform your IT culture for business success

In the past, IT culture was all about wellbeing. Future employees are drawn to modern open spaces with gaming tables and fully equipped kitchens, as well as a range of services that may include an on-site gym, coffee bar, or even chef-inspired cafeteria food.

The changing role of IT, coupled with new working models in the pandemic era, has moved cultural conversations out of office configurations. To be clear, everyone still loves high-end benefits, but IT culture is now more closely intertwined with creating a unique identity that encapsulates the corporate vision and unites IT employees around a common cause.

With more and more employees working remotely or only partially in the office, the usual on-site fanfare has become less important, making it more difficult to incorporate a stylish and aesthetic vibe into a real community and connection. More than in the past, IT professionals value the intangibles, such as better work/life balance, opportunities to residing and upskilling, and more rewarding and rewarding work, which changes what makes up a winning IT culture.

Its constant evolution from an order taker to a strategic business partner has also had an impact. As IT increasingly drives new initiatives with key business partners, technology leaders have the opportunity to nurture an enterprise identity that keeps everyone focused on achieving business through digital transformation in pursuit of strategic goals.

Tim Wenhold, Chief Innovation Officer and Partner at Power Home Remodeling, said: "Giving people free pizza or dry cleaning isn't about creating culture, it's about keeping people in the building for a long time and doing a chore. Culture should be mission-driven, and for us, it's all about moving the business forward with the tools we're creating. ”

Foster a maker culture

Power Home Remodeling's business model centers around reinventing the look of homes, while its IT organization – known as the Business Technology (BT) Group – is the creative force behind a build-it-your-own software platform for businesses. Instead of integrating and customizing off-the-shelf enterprise applications like Salesforce or SAP, Power Home Remodeling has built its own proprietary Nitro platform for running and optimizing every aspect of the business and customer experience.

The commitment to building and scaling your own mission-critical software platform requires a very specific work culture and IT talent bench. From the beginning, Wenhold has fostered an IT identity and a culture of support to nourish a community of creators, many of whom are rooted in traditional technical skills, as well as others with strong business backgrounds and an interest or inclination in IT.

"Traditional IT starts with how we integrate this technological solution and make it secure, and we start with the degree of autonomy of what you can create," he explains. Here, you can do whatever you want to serve the business, which is a liberation compared to having to follow a specific set of rules. ”

Wenhold has developed a series of strategies to enhance Power's creator culture, which starts with finding the right people – a practice driven by a heavy reliance on referrals, a highly elaborated interview process, and the establishment of new sources of talent. One such branch is Power Code Academy, a six-month bootcamp that offers non-traditional, business-oriented employees the opportunity to learn programming and technical skills and gain a pathway into BT groups.

To strengthen the creator culture, Wenhold's team regularly hosts events such as hackathons and Nitro Create, a development conference around a specific topic designed to encourage people to think outside the box. The "Creator Verse" work environment fosters creativity and collaboration by combining virtual work with a state-of-the-art physical workspace, Wenhold said. He added: "All of this keeps our culture alive and makes the business technology sector a target sector. ”

Brian Abrahamson, associate lab director and chief digital officer for computing and IT at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), said the obsessive focus on simplicity underpins the beliefs and value systems of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's (PNNL) IT culture. For years, the lab struggled under the weight of fragmented IT and government standards and regulations that complicated procedures and stimulated too many overly complex systems to talk to each other. Under Abrahamson's direction, the IT organization has spent the last decade embracing human-centered design principles, providing mobile accessibility, and creating personalized and effortless, consumer-grade experiences designed to connect scientists and give them readily accessible workbenches ready for scientific discovery.

"Creating a great workplace experience that allows IT employees to thrive is a bet on the table," Abrahamson said. We're talking about issues that matter to the world and how scientists can experience it better, a culture of more outward-looking thinking and focus, rather than an introverted journey. ”

Every time they launch a new experience for the organization, Abrahamson's team promotes the product through a comprehensive marketing campaign, including digital signage and storytelling, to reinforce the mission, culture, and IT brand. Abrahamson has also changed some of the hiring criteria, bringing in people with experience in product management and human-centered design. He has also invested in training designed to help employees deconstruct and solve complex problems, and has created avenues for people to share their Creed stories about how a simplified and personalized "apple-like" experience can improve the workflow of scientists and lab staff. "It creates a sense of pride in the technology they trade and the products they make," he explained. ”

Tyler Troutman, Solutions Architect at PNNL, said the lab's IT culture was one of the main reasons he stayed here for more than seven years. The freedom to develop new skills, use state-of-the-art tools and projects, and, most importantly, feel part of something bigger, keeps him loyal and engaged. "We're not just building a new gadget or something that affects the bottom line — we're building something so researchers can change the world, and I believe we're doing what we're doing," Troutman said. ”

When Phil Dundas, CTO of Prudential Global Investment Management (PGIM) Fixed Income, began working at the global asset manager, he was tasked with orchestrating an ambitious IT growth plan that included tripling headcount in just four years. Dundas believes it's important to build the DNA and culture that is unique to the IT organization before the hiring surge.

To do this, the team identified key rockstar recruiters, exploring the shared values and behavioral traits that set them apart so they could find like-minded people when hiring new talent. Dundas explains, "We have established our core values and core DNA, which is not only a reflection of who we think we are, but also who we will be in the future. This became part of the interview process because we hired dozens of people. We've built a culture based on those themes and characteristics that we want to see in our team. ”

Culture not only defines who you are and how you interact with others, it also influences your team's performance and productivity. "A bad culture affects a team's delivery – having a really good culture means delivering what the business needs. Dundas said.

Let the culture be unwavering

One of the most important rules that keeps the culture steadfast is to break down silos and create a more holistic IT community. First Citizens Bank has grown from $17 billion to $210 billion in assets over the past decade, driven by a series of mergers and acquisitions. Over the years, First Citizens Bank has made a concerted effort to build "team DNA" rather than separate domains.

Dede Ramoneda, executive vice president and CIO of JPMorgan Chase, explains: "If the network team, the DBA team, or the applications team fails to do their job, it should affect all of us who work in IT, not just the performance of individual teams. We broke down silos and redefined our identity to provide the entire IT solution, rather than providing a specific part. Sometimes, you have to break down individual pieces to optimize the whole, which changes the way you work with your colleagues and the way you challenge each other. ”

It's also important to be intentional and explicit in emphasizing key values so that everyone can get on board. Ramoneda's leadership team often connects the dots between the impact of the services provided by IT on the lives of our customers, especially when things go wrong. For example, IT leaders shared stories of customers not being able to get cash to buy an engagement ring when the ATM network went down, or another customer missed a cruise departure because of an ATM failure. "We use these types of storytelling to emphasize that we don't just support systems, we support technology that impacts people's lives. Ramoneda said.

At Brown & Brown Insurance, IT culture is all about building a close partnership with the business to drive positive outcomes – a partnership that is strengthened by listening, immersing IT leaders in the business, and changing the interview and hiring process to focus on those who focus on collaboration and business, not just technical knowledge.

Patience and grace must be part of this process, as people may initially not understand what you are asking them to do and why they may need to change their behavior.

"You have to be willing to give people feedback and examples on a regular basis to drive different outcomes," Nestor said. The really hard part starts with change – you have to be willing to spend time dealing with the business, spending time dealing with leadership, and willing to prioritize progress over perfection. ”

What are the key metrics for a well-formed IT culture and delivering results? For Deepa Soni, CIO of Hartford, it's about validating that the IT organization is seen as a strategic partner to the business – something that becomes so sharp when organizational leaders, including the CEO, use technology transformation as a key lever for the insurance giant's competitive advantage.

"When business leaders talk about how enhanced capabilities and digital tools can help them capture market share, or are satisfied with how they are competing in the market, that's success in our eyes. Soni said.

Perhaps, the most important piece of advice from Soni and other CIOs focused on IT culture is: don't take your foot off the gas.

"You quickly realise that culture can quickly erode without principles that are constantly reinforced," says PNNI's Abrahamson. Strategic patience and staying power are really key. ”