To: The CEO

From: The CTO

Subject: Annual report for technology

At last week’s executive committee meeting, you made the point that our company’s business units and technology organization need to be much more in tune with each other. In this memo, I’d like to explain how we could take a joint step toward making that happen.

No one doubts that our company’s success depends on solid technology support. But everyone also believes that we can do a lot more to make technology serve the business units—for example, by deepening our insights into what customers need, integrating channels, speeding the delivery of services, and accelerating new-product development. We struggle to realize this potential.

The basic problem is a lack of shared understanding. Our business unit leaders have only a vague sense of the value the technology organization delivers: they just see bits and pieces and don’t seem to grasp the interdependencies. It’s understandable that they get upset when things go wrong, but it’s less understandable that they hesitate to invest time and energy to sponsor solutions. Our technology leaders, for their part, often fail to address issues in ways that businesspeople find meaningful and therefore lack credibility when they try...