You nailed it, that certain industries (law, insurance, etc.) are notorious to blame IT for their own lack of desire to include It as a strategic partner in the business mission.

There seems to be a pervasive “cost center” mentality placed on IT from executives in certain organizations, and then a resulting passive animosity that seethes below the surface and emanates from the line managers and their teams or the user groups and communities within production sectors of the business.

The “8 things they hate about IT” are really the 8 things they hate about their culture. It is reflection of the approach to innovation within these businesses.

Typically there is a poor understanding of who and what it is and typically the complaints are coming from an entity that a a culture only notices IT when they “get in the way”.

However, there are companies that have not only embraced IT as a strategic partner to the business but have used IT as the chief enabler via components like BPO, Architecture, applications (CRM/Portals/ECM) etc.

Companies that have done this have created channels within IT and cross functional project managers to align IT tightly with business and the user communities and hence these are the companies that the HBR writes about frequently in it’s blog posts about innovation.

write on!