Chapter 2.The Importance of Digital Plumbing

IF THERE IS ONLY ONE THING YOU TAKE AWAY FROM this book, I hope it is the concept that as a leader you are responsible for improving the digital plumbing of your organization. That means that at the end of the day you—not the IT department, nor the VP of IT, nor the chief information officer (CIO)—must understand, drive, and be accountable for how technology is structured in order to reach the strategic goals of the operation. As you will hear me say a few times, technology enables velocity—the speed of getting products to market, the speed of delivery, the speed of analytics, and the list goes on. Speed is our friend in almost every case. An organization’s digital plumbing is what facilitates this speed, and it has become the single most important variable for success in many organizations. If you are the leader, you must take ownership of the digital plumbing—you must hold it, love it, and know it. You can outsource the construction and maintenance, but not the strategy.

So what is digital plumbing? It is the technology system that allows information to flow through your organization. If you don’t know when your toilet is stopped up, your house is going to flood. In the same way, if you don’t know when your digital plumbing is clogged, your organization is going to be damaged.