It's time to quiz your company's IT manager

WGP 13May15 - WGP 20May15 -

Are you an IT-savvy chief executive?

Here are some basic questions you can ask your information technology manager to gauge how effective your IT roadmap really is.

As a chief executive, how do you know you can trust your IT manager? How do you know the systems and investments being made are in the right areas? Can you trust your IT manager not to drive your investment into a blind alley?

In short, is your IT manager wasting money?

Here are five key questions to tackle your IT manager with:

-How are you going to address bring your own device?

-How are you addressing our security requirements?

-How are you going to address the fact that we're employing more contractors - we want them to access our information but we don't want to expose it?

-How are you doing that quickly?

-How are you shortening your time to market so that when a business unit says we need this, you can deliver in a reasonable time frame " and that reasonable time frame is shortening all the time?

If your IT manager cannot answer these questions easily and with confidence, you may not have the right expertise in-house to get your company to a place it needs to be.

Chief executives are constantly making strategic decisions, and they need to be aware of the benefits IT can bring to their organisation. Chief executives also have to manage their leadership team. A team that is averse to change, regardless of what that change is, should be a red flag.

IT staff are very much change agents, and barriers at leadership team level can stymie an entire organisation's growth and development.

-Wanganui District Council information technology manager Jason Simons has worked around the world delivering IT solutions, including providing encrypted systems for governments, banks and corporates. Follow his blog at jasonsimons.nz