Listening to end users describe how they do their jobs and then watching them at work has led to some eye-opening moments for Franz Fruehwald, CIO for the Catholic Human Services unit within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Instead of just making untargeted, wholesale changes to systems, Fruehwald and his staff have learned lessons from archdiocese employees and worked with them to determine how to best meet their business needs.

“In the past, innovation has been heavily technology-driven, with IT being the primary driver,” Fruehwald said last week. But that approach “had mixed results, with some users feeling that IT has forced certain projects and technologies on them,” he added. “Today, we are more collaborative.”

That mind-set was largely echoed by several other IT managers who, like Frueh-wald, plan to attend Computerworld’s seventh annual Premier 100 IT Leaders Conference, which starts today in Palm Desert, Calif. Beyond Flashy Hardware

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