The more successful IT is, the more it should disappear within the enterprise?

At 1 a.m., CIO Lao Wang dropped a blunt truth in the group chat, laying bare the grievances of all the colleagues in the Information Center — after full enablement was delivered, the boss started to question the value of IT instead.

💬 The exact words Lao Wang posted in the group chat at 1 a.m.

「Never use AI to empower business departments casually. Once the empowerment is fully in place, the boss will definitely question the value of IT 😂」

At 1 a.m., Lao Yang's phone vibrated beside his pillow. When he unlocked it, he saw the line posted by CIO Lao Wang in the group chat, followed by a face with tears of joy emoji.

Lao Yang lost all sleepiness the moment he saw the message.

Lao Wang was not being overly sensitive. Just last month, at the company's monthly meeting, the boss called him out in front of a full room of people: "Lao Wang, I notice your Information Department seems to have a lot of free time lately. Are you not assigned enough work?" But just two months ago, it was Lao Wang who led the team to build that AI sales assistant from scratch. The business departments now can't even make quotes to clients without it.

This was no joke. It was a hard-won, blood-and-tear truth earned by countless colleagues in the Information Center, through taking the blame for mistakes over and over, going through year-end reviews time and again, and even getting several resignation letters in the end. In many companies, the value of the IT department is not only out of proportion to the business value it creates, but sometimes even inversely proportional. The more successful you are, the more you should become invisible.

I. You Succeeded, So You Are Supposed to Disappear

IT finishes training the AI model, sets up the reports, and connects all the interfaces. The business departments take them for use, and over time, they treat all these capabilities as their "own".

The system runs as smoothly as water and electricity, and no one pays special attention to it. What the boss sees is that the business team solves the problems on their own and improves the efficiency. A question pops up in his mind: Since they can handle it all by themselves, why do I need to keep this expensive IT team? They don't look very busy anyway.

The most brutal part is this: The highest achievement of IT work is to make people unaware of its existence. But in the eyes of the boss, "unnoticeable" equals "non-existent".

Lao Yang gave an analogy. A top-tier bodyguard makes the employer feel no threat at all from start to finish. After a long time, the employer starts to wonder: The world is already quite safe, didn't I waste a huge amount of money hiring this bodyguard? The more competent the bodyguard is, the more the employer feels he has overpaid. IT is exactly this bodyguard. The more thoroughly you clear all the risks, the more the boss feels everything is perfectly safe and you are no longer needed.

To put it bluntly, the value paradox of IT can be summed up in one sentence: The better you do your job, the more "invisible" you are supposed to be; but in the eyes of the boss, being invisible means being useless.

II. Three Common Flaws of Bosses

Lao Wang's line went viral because it hit the nail on the head of three flaws of many bosses.

① Treat dynamic enablement as static achievements

The boss sees a running report, an AI model that the business team can use, but he cannot see the sunk cost IT invested in data governance, architecture and interfaces. He takes it for granted that these things "already existed" for free just like air. But reports do not fall from the sky. Behind them are IT's hard work to clean up messy data bit by bit, connect interfaces, and sort out permissions. The business departments never notice all these tedious efforts.

② Treat "no incidents" as "no work to do"

When the system does not crash, no data is lost, and no security problems occur, the boss takes all these for granted. He has no idea that this "taken-for-granted" state is achieved by IT keeping high alert all the time, patching nonstop, and repeatedly optimizing performance. For a ship sailing smoothly, the captain may never notice the pair of hands covered in engine oil in the engine room. But once the ship capsizes, the first person he blames is still the engine room crew.

③ Misattribute value ownership

AI helps the business boost sales by 20%. The business director speaks passionately during the report, attributing the good results to his own excellent leadership and the team's hard work, and only mentions at most a passing note of "with the cooperation of the IT team". Naturally, the boss only recognizes the value of the business team. The contribution of IT is just like the prop master whose name flashes past in the end credits of a movie — no one actually remembers that name.

III. From Trusted Partner to Utility Worker

This statement is harsh, but it reveals the real situation of IT departments in many companies: they are firmly fixed in the position of "tool provider". Once the tool is delivered and the business team is proficient in using it, the provider of the tool depreciates and is demoted to a repairman.

Here is a real case: In a manufacturing company, the IT team spent a whole year integrating all the data of production, supply and sales. At the year-end summary, the vice president of business said literally: "Our biggest achievement this year is that the business team has got the digital system running smoothly on our own." He did not mention the IT team even once.

When the boss asks "what on earth is the value of IT", he is subconsciously comparing: Can you develop another new thing as sensational as AI? If you can't, your value is only to maintain the old systems, and the maintenance cost of course needs to be as low as possible.

This pushes IT into a vicious circle: You get questioned when nothing goes wrong, and you get scolded for being incompetent once an incident happens (system crash, hacking attack, etc.). Trapped in this loop, IT can never earn due respect.

IV. Four Practical Ways to Break the Deadlock

Lao Yang does not just complain. Work still needs to be done, and the path has to be blazed by yourself. To get out of this vicious circle, the head of the IT department must take the initiative to upgrade the dimension of work and re-anchor the value at a higher level.

First move: Shift from "delivering functions" to "managing risks"

Stop telling the boss how many minutes AI saves for efficiency improvement. Instead, talk repeatedly and loudly about how much fines, data leakage losses, and decision-making errors the company has avoided thanks to our data governance and security architecture. You are not only his spear, but also his shield. Sense of security also deserves payment, on the premise that you make him feel the threat first.

Second move: Make "invisible" work "visible"

Build a set of IT value metrics that the boss can easily understand. Not the cold uptime of servers, but translate them into plain language: Our guarantee of 99.99% availability of core business helps the company avoid XX million potential losses every day; We cut the data preparation time for management meetings from 5 days to 5 hours, saving XX hours for executives every year, which can be used for strategic thinking — that's far more valuable than putting out fires, isn't it?

Third move: Always keep a "next stop" ticket in hand

Every time you report, don't just say "what we have finished". Focus on "with the current enablement system, what are the next growth opportunities and efficiency gaps we have spotted". Keep the boss's attention drawn to the possibilities in the future, and make him realize that IT is not a cost center, but a telescope for him to look far ahead. You must always hold a ticket that interests him.

Fourth move: Embed yourself in the strategy, not just serve the business

This is the fundamental solution. The ultimate goal of IT is not to make the business team comfortable (that's the job of their own leaders), but to become the central nervous system for the boss to make decisions and control risks. When IT directly understands the strategic intention from the boss, and uses technology to decode, monitor and promote the implementation, your value is anchored in the boss's top core concerns, rather than the daily experience of the business team.

Final Summary:

This seemingly joking line actually tells a harsh truth: Don't just be an excellent enabler, because you will starve to death for that. You need to be the indispensable navigator, boundary guardian, and value translator.

When the boss no longer asks "what on earth has IT done", but turns around and asks you "where should we go next", you are the one who is truly safe.

The value of IT can never be measured by "how many functions you have delivered", but determined by "how much the boss can do without you". The more transparent your work is, the more you need to make yourself irreplaceable.

Have you ever been questioned by your boss about the value of IT? What was the most aggrieving time for you? Feel free to share in the comment section.

This article is from WeChat Official Account "Xiangshu Digital Review" (ID: benpaoshuzi), written by Lao Yang, published with authorization from 36Kr.