Across the Divide: Why Technology Must Be Strategy, Not Just Support
In my twelve plus years of organizational technology, I’ve come to believe the most misunderstood part of digital transformation isn’t the technology at all.
It’s the story we tell ourselves about what technology is.
Across industries whether it is public and private, or global and local: there is always the same tensions. We talk about digital transformation like it’s a program, a platform, or a purchase of kind.
However, underneath every success and every failure, it always comes down to partnership, alignment, and trust.
This is where I want to begin the next chapter of our journey: Across the Divide: Transformation Without Borders.
Before we talk about manufacturing or government or healthcare, let’s talk about why technology matters everywhere and why it has to move from support to strategy.
The Shift From “Service” to “Strategy”
In too many organizations, IT is still treated like plumbing. Necessary but invisible. You fix it when it leaks; and you rarely invite it to the design meeting.
But those days are numbered.
BCG found that companies who treat technology as a strategic partner; embedding tech leaders into core decision-making are 2.5 times more likely to succeed in transformation (BCG, 2020).
That’s not a tech statistic. It’s a leadership one.
When technology leaders step into strategy conversations, they change the nature of what’s possible. They don’t wait for the business cases, but they help write them. They stop asking, “What do you need us to build?” and start asking, “What outcome are we trying to achieve?”
A Story We Need to Retire
The story that slows us down goes something like this:
“The business sets the vision, and IT executes it.”
That’s a story built for another era. An archaic era.
In today’s environment, strategy and execution are inseparable. You can’t plan in isolation and build in silos.
Before transformation of the business occurs, every department has its own system: marketing, sales, quality. When data didn’t line up, the teams blame the technology. But the real issue wasn’t the software; it was the structure.
They had strategy and execution running on parallel tracks that never met.
When those leaders finally invite technology into the planning process, everything changes.
The tech team didn’t just automate tasks; they redesigned workflows, clarified ownership, and surfaced inefficiencies no one had seen before.
That’s what partnership looks like.
The Anatomy of Partnership
Strategic partnership between technology and the business doesn’t mean endless alignment meetings. It means speaking a shared language.
It means curiosity on both sides.
To succeed in mutually beneficial partnership between business and technology, there are four non-negotiables:
Own A Shared Narrative
Business leaders speak in outcomes: revenue, cost, customer trust.
Technology leaders speak in capability: data models, integration, scalability.
Partnership happens when those two languages merge into one story — where the KPI and the API are connected.
Create Ownership Without Silos
Silos don’t disappear when you digitize; they harden.
True partnership makes ownership collective. Data, process, and accountability live with both business and IT.
Establish Guardrails, Not Bureaucracy
Governance gets a bad reputation because we associate it with red tape. But real governance is a speed enabler.
As O’Higgins (2023) notes, “Clarity of decision rights is the difference between digital acceleration and digital drift.”
Promote Continuous Learning over Perfect Planning
Transformation isn’t one launch; it’s a loop.
IT Revolution (2025) wrote, “High-performing teams measure outcomes, not outputs.”
When you measure learning instead of launch dates, you adapt faster — and your business stays closer to the customer.
Across Industries, the Principles Don’t Change
Every vertical likes to think it’s unique.
Manufacturing says, “Our processes are too complex.”
Public sector says, “Our governance is too rigid.”
Consumer goods says, “Our data moves too fast.”
Utilities say, “We can’t afford disruption.”
All true. All different. But the same truth hides underneath:
If your foundation, data, governance, and alignment isn’t ready, transformation will collapse under its own weight.
Research from the International Journal of Project Management found that strong performance-measurement practices improve transformation outcomes across every sector (Korhonen et al., 2023).
That’s not about dashboards; it’s about direction.
Similarly, Plekhanov et al. (2023) observed that digital transformation succeeds when technology and business share a “dynamic capability” — a cultural muscle to sense change, decide quickly, and act in unison.
Whether you run a factory, a school system, or a government agency, that muscle matters more than any specific platform you buy.
What Happens When Tech Is Downstream
When technology sits on the sidelines, three patterns appear almost every time.
- Business leaders stop trusting the numbers. Each report tells a different story, and every meeting begins with reconciliation, not decision-making.
- Priorities become fractured. Projects compete for attention instead of reinforcing one another. Integration gets replaced by improvisation.
- And most unfortunately teams burn out. People fix the same problems repeatedly because ownership is unclear.
That’s the invisible tax of treating IT as a service provider instead of a strategic partner.
As Harvard’s Tom Redman (2016) warned years ago, “Bad data costs U.S. businesses over $3 trillion a year — but the real loss is confidence.”
The fix isn’t better dashboards. It’s better partnership.
The Partnership Mindset
Partnership means seeing technology not as a another vendor, but as a co-architect.
It’s sitting together in the planning room, asking hard questions early:
- What problem am I trying to solve?
- What decision are we trying to enable?
- What data will that require?
- Who owns that data tomorrow, not just today?
Partnership is also humility. It’s knowing when to challenge and when to translate. It’s helping business leaders articulate needs they can feel but not yet define.
Verhoef et al. (2021) call this multidisciplinary reflection: “Transformation is not technological; it is organizational. The technology is only the visible part of the iceberg.”
When you understand that, you stop chasing tools and start designing environments where tools can thrive.
Connection Is the New Currency
Every sector today is being rewritten by connection: between systems, between people, between ideas.
In the past, we built technology to serve departments. Finance had one system, operations another. But transformation happens when those systems start talking, when data becomes a shared language instead of a private dialect.
That’s where IT steps into its real power as the connector. The bridge between what’s possible and what’s real.
In my own work, I’ve seen connection drive momentum more than any "strategic priority" or automation roadmap. A single integrated view of truth across departments can unlock faster decisions, less friction, and more trust than a dozen new tools.
Connection creates confidence. And confidence accelerates outcomes.
How Leaders Make It Real
Making this partnership tangible isn’t complicated, but it does require intention.
Here are practical moves I’ve seen work across industries:
Start with Alignment, not Architecture.
Audit your priorities, not your tech stack.
Find out where business goals and data realities diverge.
Shadow your Business
Spend a day in operations, in customer service, in finance. Listen before suggesting solutions.
You owe it to them to understand where the pains lie.
As Agile Business Consortium (2024) reminds us, “Focusing on outcomes keeps teams grounded in value, not vanity.”
Build a Charter for Co-Creation
A simple one-page charter that clarifies who owns what, how you escalate decisions, and how success is measured can prevent months of confusion later.
Invest in Data Health Early
Take the time to assess your data, it's your greatest asset.
A small, well-defined data-quality initiative does more for trust than a dozen slide decks on transformation.
Celebrate the Small, Real Wins
Show progress that matters; reduced reconciliation time, unified metrics, a process that now flows end-to-end.
Momentum is contagious.
These steps aren’t glamorous, but they compound. Each one turns friction into forward motion.
Why This Moment Matters
We’re at an inflection point.
Generative AI, automation, and analytics have never been more accessible. Yet many organizations are still struggling with alignment that should have been solved a decade ago.
This isn’t a technology gap anymore. It’s a leadership gap.
Leaders who understand that technology is strategy are the ones bridging divides: - between business units,
- between data silos,
- and between people who once spoke different languages.
McKinsey (2024) said it plainly: “Organizations that integrate technology into the heart of strategy achieve double the revenue growth of peers who treat IT as a cost center.”
Across industries, that’s the line we must cross.
Because transformation that stays confined to a department never becomes culture.
Looking Ahead
In the weeks ahead, we’ll explore how this plays out across industries:
- How manufacturing uses data to anticipate rather than react.
- How public sector leaders balance innovation with accountability.
- How consumer-goods companies align insight with execution.
- And how utilities modernize without losing reliability.
But before we dive into those specifics, remember this:
Transformation always begins with partnership.
It begins when technology stops asking for permission and starts showing what’s possible.
It begins when leaders stop asking, “What tool do we need?” and start asking, “What outcome do we want?”
That’s how we move across the divide together.
References
Agile Business Consortium. (2024, October 17). The importance of focusing on outcomes in project management.https://www.agilebusiness.org/resource/blog-the-importance-of-focusing-on-outcomes-in-project-management.html
BCG. (2020, October 29). Flipping the odds of digital transformation success. Boston Consulting Group. https://www.bcg.com/publications/2020/increasing-odds-of-success-in-digital-transformation
IT Revolution. (2025, January 27). Measuring what matters: Using outcome-focused metrics to build high-performing teams in 2025. https://itrevolution.com/articles/measuring-what-matters-using-outcome-focused-metrics-to-build-high-performing-teams-in-2025/
Korhonen, T., Jääskeläinen, A., Laine, T., & Saukkonen, N. (2023). How performance measurement can support achieving success in project-based operations. International Journal of Project Management.https://research.tudelft.nl/files/159825700/1_s2.0_S0263786323000820_main.pdf
McKinsey & Company. (2024). The State of Organizations 2024: Ten shifts transforming organizations.https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/the-state-of-organizations-2024
O’Higgins, D. (2023). Impacts of business architecture in the context of digital transformation: An empirical study using PLS-SEM approach. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2307.11895.pdf
Plekhanov, D., Franke, H., & Netland, T. H. (2023). Digital transformation: A review and research agenda. European Management Journal, 41(6), 821–844. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2022.09.007
Redman, T. C. (2016, September 23). Bad data costs the U.S. $3 trillion per year. Harvard Business Review.https://hbr.org/2016/09/bad-data-costs-the-u-s-3-trillion-per-year
Verhoef, P. C., Broekhuizen, T., Bart, Y., Bhattacharya, A., Dong, J. Q., Fabian, N., & Haenlein, M. (2021). Digital transformation: A multidisciplinary reflection and research agenda. Journal of Business Research.https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v122y2021icp889-901.html