As a CIO or other high-level technology executive, how could you not? "How to Tap IT's Hidden Potential" right there in the Wall Street Journal! Half a dozen very successful companies mentioned in the lede, the implication that your company could be among them if only you had the brilliance, insight, and gobs of cash available.

The premise of the article (authored by Amit Basu and Chip Jarnagin) is that many top executives fail to recognize the "value of IT," instead categorizing it with other basic services such as plumbing and electricity. If you have been even halfway awake at any point in the last couple of years, you will know that is exactly what Nick Carr and some of the other young turks commenting on the industry are encouraging executives to do. It's odd, in the wake of such controversy, that the authors fail to mention the debate at all and instead start off their lecture as if this is still 1998 or so.

Their's is one way of looking at the situation, a way common to fans of high technology, but from my perspective it's a trope that calls itself into question.

When they say, "Analysts estimate that hundreds of billions of dollars are blown every year on IT projects that fail to achieve the desired goals" they don't seem to realize that those projects are efforts to do exactly what they are calling for. No one starts those projects saying, "Let's upgrade our plumbing!' They start out with every intention of leveraging IT to the company's competitive advantage. Those CEOs that "fail to recognize the value of IT" often see exactly what the "value" is... it's a negative number, created by the failure of all that supposed innovation. And that is, unfortunately, kind of like plumbing; it's a place where the company can more easily lose money than make it. The only difference is you don't have plumbers in and out of the CEO's office constantly promising new gigabit sewage lines that will revolutionize the business.

Despite our differing perspectives on whether or not IT is more often a revolutionary force or a risk to be managed, I find the remainder of their article absolutely spot on. Even coming from a different angle, their advice and recommendations for how to manage the IT department fills all my criteria for the right way to manage IT, and it reads more like risk-management than innovative revolution: recognize the traditional wall between IT and corporate management, break it down, educate decision makers, integrate IT at ever level in the strategic process. Doing so may well realize some advantageous innovations in some companies; the same steps, however, in any company will help reduce the prodigious failure and cost of misguided technology projects.