Toyota Case

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managers.

IS and the business are now standing shoulder-to-shoulder when planning and implementing IT projects. 

Technology customized to local business needs

The decentralized organization was able to keep their business on a local level and address their needs in the way they seemed most fit. The DIO’s have their own responsibility and accountable for each business unit as well as IS strategy. The technology is customised to each business unit.

Cons

Unwillingness to adoption/change

Cooper changed the jobs of 50 percent of her staffers within six months, yet no one left or was let go. She changed IS employees’ jobs, exposed all of IS’s shortcomings and forced her staff into the business offices.

Some took on new responsibilities; others took on expanded or completely new roles. The mid- and upper-level staffers were initially uncomfortable with their new roles, but she says she spent a lot of time fostering a new attitude about the change.

Uncertainty of roles among the employees

Another challenge for Cooper was dealing with the uncertainty in her IS department after such a massive change. Employees’ fears centered around changes in their responsibilities and reporting relationships. He says that middle managers were pretty stretched out during and after the restructuring, but follow-up training has helped him and other midlevel managers make the stretch.

It might cause new project managers to go from executive to executive until someone backs their project.

One key element was rotating IS people into other parts of the company and bringing businesspeople into IS.

But just over a year into the new plan, IS and the business are now standing shoulder-to-shoulder when planning and implementing IT projects. And Cooper is CIO for over 15 years.

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