Charles Moss has posted "5 Steps for Agility in a Volatile Economy" and I think it worth pointing out to the IT crowd that reads this blog. You're probably sick of hearing about "agile" by now (maybe "agile" will be part of the "new normal" and then bloggers and pundits such as myself will stop beating you about the head with the term) and Moss acknowledges this in his opening paragraph... perhaps tacitly admitting that it's in the headline more to grab attention than through any relevance to the substance of the article, since his five steps don't seem to really be about agility, but simply management best practices. Anyway, it did the job; I read the piece.

Although the article is up on CIO Insight, I thought it was written more for the non-technical business leader. If you are a CIO, it might be worth printing out and sticking under someone's nose. The five points are more about alignment than agility, but while alignment has popularly been cast as a problem that is primarily IT's to solve, Moss comes at it from a strategic business-level orientation. Integrated performance management systems, broadening organizational values to cover IT, and identifying supporting goals for the IT organization are all efforts that have to come from corporate leadership if they are to be successful (I suppose this is arguable; a talented CIO might be able to tag along on his or her own, but it's a lot of extra effort and ultimately does not represent a systematic improvement to the business).

CIOs are having enough trouble these days just maintaining their own relevance and may not feel like going out on a limb to point out that at least part of the historic troubles between IT and business units are down to the attitude and organization of those business units. Moss points this out in a positive and respectful way with realistic and helpful solutions, something that will help any CIO come across as insightful and forward-thinking at the next board meeting or CEO one-on-one.