😰 As the CEO, have you ever questioned why is it that marketing present outcomes but IT present itemized lists for budget approval? 😰

The reason you might not know how your ICT systems might be exposing your organisation to imminent reputational damage as well as total shutdown is likely because your CIO does not use easy to understand visuals to accompany their presentations making it difficult for the non-techie to understand the challenges.

At times this is because they are as clueless as the rest of you on the ExCo teams including those on the board as when you cut their budget what they did to meet the numbers was to omit features that would have provided them with the ability to monitor what is going on across the technology stack right from the passive components such as UPSs, ACs, PDUs and airflow to the compute layer extending to even the apps on your clients phones.

What we have identified as the reason for this is that IT experts do not like to bargain and would rather have a root canal without anaesthesia than have to defend the technology features that constitute the budget numbers they shared opting instead to omit functionality and replacing it with prayer.

This situation has likely been going on for decades and to begin undoing it the first step would be to get a scorecard of how your IT infrastructure is currently setup and performing, the reason you begin at the bottom is because without it the rest is useless.

Here is a link to a tool that will assist you and your CIO to get a baseline of where the organisation's systems stand today, complete the check list together to get a scorecard which will allow you to begin the journey to recovery.PS.  Please make sure you do it together otherwise they will not be sincere with themselves, they just cannot avoid it, its their nature.