The IT-Organization-Culture Palindrome

A palindrome is a sequence that reads the same forwards and backwards. That word appropriately captures the relationship between IT, the organization, and the organization’s culture. Many functions can influence organizations and their culture, e.g., HR policies, Legal terms and conditions, and so on. However, organizations operating in the 2020s are particularly influenced by IT and that influence changes the way IT evolves.

Consider the rapid adoption of AI (artificial intelligence) over the last few years. Pick your favorite AI flavor and consider the closest thing in 2022 was the voice assistant on your phone or autocomplete suggestion in your favorite writing app. Today, AI is. By that I mean AI is everywhere, it is a part of daily life, it does things for you that you may not know it is doing, and it is changing the culture in organizations.

Note, as I typed the first sentence in the prior paragraph, autocomplete suggested the word decades instead of years, which is a great reminder of the rapid influence IT has on organizations and culture. Entire new ways of working can emerge, gain adoption, and become yesterday’s new thing in months not years and certainly not decades.

While AI is the current example of the IT, organization, culture palindrome, we can step back just four years and recall the video conference service explosion driven by the pandemic i.e. That resulted in IT departments supporting organizations’ remote worker needs, and then the culture impact that drove promises of work from home forever. While IT stepped up to support organization needs, many organization cultures immediately changed and began driving more adoption of remote work technologies. Thus, the forward and backward influence.

Sticking with the current AI influence, organization strategies are also changing and adjusting to embrace the speed of AI-X, where X is anything you can put after the letters AI. This strategic change is not based on technology, IT, and it is not based on culture change. Rather, AI-X as an organization strategy adjustment has emerged based on both AI-IT and AI-Culture. In other words, in 2024 organizations are surrounded on both sides by AI, so they are adopting the role of a conduent and benefitting from the push and pull.

The influence of AI-X is also exposing organizations and cultures to new ways of thinking and possibilities that did not really exist in 2022, including production without employees. This AI-X reality check emerged in 2023 when the screenwriters went on strike to ban the use of AI content, AI characters, and other AI-X. In this case, culture limited IT and suppressed organization change.

Beyond AI-X, which is a difficult thought for some people, AI will soon be yesterday’s new thing. As AI gives way to the next IT innovation, evolution, or completely new thing, one of the outcomes that lingers after AI fades will be the increased influence between IT, the organization, and culture. AI-X is teaching us the limits of change across many organization cultures and causing organizations to think of better ways to apply IT. As AI lessons emerge, organizations will benefit from IT and culture partnerships to speed learning and understand the palindrome connections to both sides of the flow.

Embrace the IT-Organization-Culture Connection. Discover how iT1 can help your organization navigate the evolving transformation of technology and culture to stay ahead in a rapidly changing world. Contact us today.

AUTHOR BIO
Dr. Mike Lewis serves as Chief Information Officer, EVP of Informatics, Security & Technology for Trillium Health Resources, a managed-care organization serving more than 350,000 members in North Carolina. He earned his Doctor of Management degree from George Fox University and is a former MBA adjunct professor at Maryhurst University. Mike has worked in the IT field for more than 25 years with stints at IBM, Merisel, and Dell.