The IT organization took a careful look at the quality and potential of its executive leadership, and made several tough choices that allowed it to bring in new leaders with experience in running IT and consulting businesses for profit.

"We got dead serious about the need for a change in culture back in 1996/97. I felt at that time that we needed to substantially upgrade our leadership within the group," said Darlington. "When people talk about changing leadership, they seem to talk about the lower levels. But I felt that we had to make some significant changes at the senior level."

In addition to putting in a top-tier leadership, drivers of the cultural change have been the balanced scorecard and rewarding and recognizing the talented people that accomplish the objectives of the organization.

"You cannot expect to move from where you are to where you want to be, from a cultural perspective, if you don't at the same time ensure that your reward and recognition processes are top tier and very effective," said Darlington. "Compensation, scorecards, quality of leadership, quality of performance evaluation and feedback -these are all the kinds of things that collectively have allowed us to effectively execute the other points of the strategy."

Finally, one of the most impressive aspects of BMO's five-step initiative is the fact that T&S has been able to make these improvements while holding costs flat or reducing them. That in itself is a pretty good indicator that the company is on the right track to delivering IT value.