Our IT team's slogan is: "business-focused customer partnership," there's nothing IT about it. It's really easy to hire technical professionals, but difficult to hire business people with a technical background, because if their focus is business, they won't study tech in the first place.

I think the staff sees its importance--the problem I have is building enough traction for them to do something about it. There's often resistance--IT people are busy, and I often hear them say: "I don't have time to spend hours learning about what that business does." My response is that being business-focused doesn't mean you have to spend hours sitting with the business understanding it. If you show you're interested in what they do, you become more valuable, and you don't spend as much time as you think.

For the same reason, I don't want to outsource our help-desk, because if done properly, our help-desk is a great place to be in touch with our business. Inherently, IT people are introverts--we're more reactive rather than going out and learning new things. I put a lot of effort to educate my staff on the importance of help-desk and the importance of these touchpoints.