For the last 2 months this newsletter has really taken off 🚀. Hundreds of new readers and an incredible amount of engagement. For those of you who have been with me for a while, my promise remains the same.

As a writer it is tempting to see a big audience and write for everyone, however, my focus is writing to one person. Every week I think about the individual owner / executive and I write for them as if I was speaking with them in person. This is for you - the individual. Thanks for helping me grow and being with me every week. 💪

I’ve spent a lot of time working with IT departments, and I’ve noticed something interesting about the ones that struggle.

It’s not always a lack of talent, technology, or even money. In fact, I’ve seen organizations with capable people and significant technology investments still struggle to deliver the results the business expects.

When I encounter a department like this, there’s a question I like to ask that changes the conversation.

What if your IT department had to turn a profit?

Now, before you start explaining why IT is a cost center, hear me out.

I’m not suggesting we start charging employees for password resets or expect cybersecurity investments to generate revenue. I’m asking you to imagine what would happen if your IT department had to operate like an independent business.

What if every service you provided had a cost? What if every department you supported was a customer? And most importantly, what if those customers could choose to take their business somewhere else?

Would you operate differently?

I’ve spent much of my career building and running businesses. One thing I’ve learned is that having to earn someone’s business changes how you approach almost everything.

You pay attention to what customers value, what they’re willing to pay for, and whether you’re delivering enough value to keep them coming back.

Most internal IT departments don’t operate under those same conditions.

Their customers are essentially guaranteed. Employees have to use the systems IT provides, follow the processes IT establishes, and work with the support team they’re assigned.

That doesn’t mean IT teams don’t care. Most care deeply, but it does mean there’s less pressure to regularly question whether the services being delivered are the services the business actually needs. 🤔

Consider an accounting department that spends six hours every week manually reconciling data between two systems.

Your IT department might be meeting every SLA, maintaining excellent uptime, and resolving tickets quickly. From an operational standpoint, everything looks great.

But if you were a business owner trying to earn that accounting department’s business, wouldn’t you be interested in eliminating those six hours?

That’s the difference between delivering technology services and creating business value.

Here’s where this question becomes useful.

Imagine your IT department is a company with a portfolio of products and services.

Some are incredibly valuable. Others are expensive to maintain, rarely used, or no longer solve a meaningful problem.

If you were responsible for the profitability of that company, you’d want to understand which was which.

You might discover that your team spends 20% of its time supporting an application that only a handful of employees use. Or that a complicated approval process consumes more employee time than the risk it’s designed to prevent.

These are hypothetical examples, but they’re the kinds of questions worth investigating.

Business owners regularly evaluate what they offer, what it costs to deliver, and whether customers still find it valuable.

IT leaders should be doing the same thing.

And sometimes the most valuable decision is what to stop doing.

I think this is where the exercise gets particularly interesting.

An IT department doesn’t need to generate revenue to create economic value.

Think about what happens when you automate a process that saves 10 employees two hours each week. That’s 20 hours of capacity returned to the business.

Or when you eliminate redundant software, reduce downtime, or prevent a security incident.

Those outcomes have financial value, even if they never appear as revenue on an income statement.

The challenge is that many IT departments measure the activity required to deliver those outcomes rather than the outcomes themselves.

Tickets closed. Systems patched. Projects completed.

All important, but they don’t tell the entire story.

If your department had to turn a profit, you’d become much more interested in what all that activity was actually producing.

At your next leadership meeting, pick one service your IT department provides and pretend it’s a standalone business.

Then work through five questions:

You don’t need perfect financial data to start. Reasonable estimates and a conversation with the people you support will tell you plenty.

And don’t be surprised if the discussion reveals services you’ve been delivering for years that nobody has stopped to question.

I’ve found that sometimes the best way to improve an outcome is to learn how to ask better questions.

So, what if your IT department had to turn a profit?

You might be surprised how quickly that question changes what your team considers important. It remains the single best question that has allowed me to transform businesses and IT departments. And positive transformation can create massive value.

I’ve created frameworks for this concept and have consulted dozens of organizations. To get better, you have to be ready for improvement, some folks aren’t. But, if you want to be world-class and are looking for a team to help you get there, I can get most organizations a fully detailed plan within 90 days, and then help you execute.

If you want support, just text me below or reply to this email.

Until next week,

—Jared

Text Me: 314.806.3912

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