What should IT leaders do if their team is perceived as a bottleneck in their organization?

Depends on the organization size, type of operation and the responsibilities/expectations from the team.

Generally, I would introduce strict regulations to the department and team, define clear policies, guidelines, service levels, response times and make sure processes are in-place to support/measure these regulations and adjust to the situation as needed.

Regulations set expectations, helps measure performance and helps identifying bottlenecks and potentially resolve the root causes of these issues.

In my opinion, it's about expectations. Every upgrade in any area requires an investment of time, money, and effort. For example, if the current warehouse infrastructure can't manage the actual operation needs, it will require time, money, and effort to solve the issue. The same happens in IT. An IT Leader must assess the situation and provide possible solutions to the current issue. To make this assessment it is necessary to take into consideration important factors, such as demand on time, available budget, long-term vision, and available resources.

Anyone can be the bottleneck at any given moment; engineering is the bottleneck to the product management team. Whether or not being the bottleneck becomes a contentious challenge versus a healthy tension challenge has to do with how you lead your department and the people you send on your behalf to engage with them. Do those people understand what their objectives are? Are they empathetic? Are they perceived as really trying to help the business versus just getting their job done as they see it? Sometimes it's hard to find those people who can both really help you with the technology side and have all of those other qualities.

It’s about how you set those expectations. We're in so many projects and so many parts of the business that you can't really do anything without IT, so we're always going to be a blocker or a dependency for somebody. Good transformative leaders have enough hubris to say, "Yes, I am a blocker," but also understand that we keep pushing stuff forward, as opposed to being in analysis paralysis and only able to stay in your lane.