While doing research for my book The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics I asked the chieftains of the various corporate tribes roaming the value forest [e.g., finance, HR, marketing, operations, IT, and legal] two framing questions:

1. What/how did they feel about themselves and the future trajectory of their discipline.
2. How did they feel about the other major players/disciplines in the organization.

 The answers were illuminating.

 The lack of precision regarding the first question [who are you and where are you going professionally]and the misunderstanding associated with the second [empathy for what was really going on inside the minds of other functional disciplines]form the backdrop for modern value creation/destruction.

The contemporary CIO is consumed trying to patch an unsustainably brittle in-place technology infrastructure while simultaneously crafting practicable strategies for a rapidly evolving mobility-rich, cloud computing-impacted and social networking-disrupted digital ecosystem.

The systems of record [i.e., the systems which record the transactions of the enterprise] have been installed. The next frontier of IT value creation involves designing and deploying systems of engagement [i.e., analytic systems] that enable knowledge workers to profitably engage customers in an intensified environment where they are competing with everyone from everywhere for everything.

The good news is that the tools available for exploiting the rich and rapidly expanding treasure trove of data have never been more powerful. The bad news is that IT and the analytic communities – in most organizations – have not yet formed a trusted partnership.

I look forward to discussing these issues with you during the Webcast: Information Technology - An Inside Perspective.