Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Yes, going to fellow CIOs is cheaper than hiring consultants. But they’re not just domain experts. They also know the organizational culture and politics. Better still, they have the best interests of the business as a whole in mind. They know that what’s good for another business unit is good for them. So comparing notes and trading expertise are in everyone’s interest.

And that marks another paradoxical shift in decentralizing IT. Business-unit CIOs can’t afford to become completely independent. They certainly don’t want to find themselves competing against business units in the same corporate family. They need to shift from being a herd to being a pack, replacing top-down direction with cooperation and coordination among themselves.

One more paradox is usually a part of IT decentralization, and it’s often a prelude to eventual re-centralization. It’s not just some natural swing of the pendulum, where every few years the cycle begins again. There’s always a reason for the shift.

Sometimes it’s a matter of how business leadership sees IT. When IT is viewed as a cost center, centralization is used to cut costs. If leadership changes and IT is viewed as a platform for success, decentralization is used to make IT more nimble and flexible to deliver results for the business. When leadership changes again, it’s back to centralized IT.

Other times, it’s the economy. Recession? Business is bad. Cut costs. That means centralization. Expansion? Business is improving. It’s time to chase new opportunities. That points to decentralization. Slowdown? Time to cut costs and centralize again.

Still other times, it’s about organizational philosophy. IT centralization does lead to bureaucracy. That makes it hard for new initiatives to get going. The result: Splinter groups, skunkworks projects and under-the-radar practices tend to spring up in business units. The ones that don’t work tend to die quickly (although it’s often next to impossible to kill off a project or practice under centralized IT processes). The ones that do work look fresh, aggressive and laser-focused on the business-unit’s needs.

Eventually, it comes to look like centralized IT is a huge drag on opportunity and decentralization is the right way to do nimble, effective IT. But with decentralization can come inefficiencies, unnecessary variation and duplicated effort–exactly the things that make centralization look like a much better choice. And the cycle begins again.

With that many potential reasons, a shift between centralized IT and decentralized IT is a lot less predictable than it might seem. It might be years away–or high on a new CEO’s to-do list.

Maybe that means it’s time for all CIOs to make sure the ability to manage transitions to both centralization and decentralization are in their skill sets. After all, if it’s going to happen to you again and again, it’s a good idea to know how to get it right every time around.