Align goals for company success

As I was writing our article, “Navigating the Shadows: A Comprehensive Framework for Anticipating, Identifying, and Managing Shadow IT in Organizations,” I was reminded of the mystery behind why shadow IT exists in the first place.

Before moving into academia, I worked for many years in various corporate functions where my teams and I were responsible for achieving specific goals that impacted our performance reviews and bonuses, such as: B. selling a certain number of products in a quarter. Our incentives were very clear: if we failed to meet our goals, our bonuses and possibly even our jobs would be at risk. However, the IT teams that supported the organization and us were typically not tied to our incentives. Their goals were more about enabling the overall success of the company and less about the needs of a specific business unit. I never believed that they didn’t want to help us. Instead, they had to achieve their own goals in order to be successful. However, we had a goal and did whatever it took to achieve it, even if it meant engaging with shadow IT solutions.

This scenario plays out countless times every day. The business must achieve its goals and IT must ensure the security and governance of its solutions. This raises the question of how to solve this problem. Obviously if it were easy it would already be solved and not a problem. However, there are some steps organizations can take to mitigate and resolve the issues. The most effective thing companies can do to combat shadow IT is to ensure that business goals are aligned. IT departments must have goals that impact overall business success, but also must be tied to the goals of specific business units. In my example above, if IT were tied to meeting the company’s revenue goals, this would pave the way for rapid deployment of servers, websites, etc. to enable success.

Second, it would be helpful for companies if IT groups were deeply embedded and part of the core team for individual business units. This would enable an understanding of the business unit’s objectives and ensure adequate lead time for solution delivery. Additionally, integrating IT into the core team would make relationship building easier. Personal relationships with the teams you support make it much easier to get things done. After all, no one wants to let a friend down. It’s much easier to ignore requests from people and teams you don’t know well and don’t need to interact with regularly.

Finally, another solution could be for IT to get ahead of the shadow IT phenomenon and facilitate the use of these solutions with approved sources. For example, IT could proactively develop relationships with approved providers that the business could use. If the company needs to quickly activate and provision a server for a promotion, it could use the approved provider. This way the company can achieve its goals more easily. Additionally, IT can maintain security and a level of governance by having visibility into the data provided and allowing them to focus on more strategic tasks.

In summary, shadow IT is certainly a challenge for companies. But like most challenges, it also presents opportunities. Businesses can enable organization-wide success by aligning goals and incentives between the business and IT and engaging in creative solutions such as proactive vendor approval.