Last week when I
wrote about selling projects, there was a flurry of responses on what is wrong
with the overall approach proposed; according to many, I painted a picture of a
CIO who is subservient to business and not proactive in his/her approach to
creating change and transformation using IT. Some were of the view that if the
CIO does not sell, it will lead to CXOs creating a shadow IT organization which
will be available at beck and call to do their demand thereby side lining the
CIO.
I met with a
senior IT leader who postulated that the “order taking” CIO will not find
success as s/he is waiting for the business to define what they want. Most of
the time business does not know what they want and in such a situation there
will be little progress and lot of dialogue and frustration. According to him
the business friendly CIO will explore opportunities and propose the solution
to what business may desire and then deliver a solution. He summed up with “know
your customer and the industry and get deep into the business”.
I do not disagree
with him on knowing the business or proposing a solution; I disagree with the
statement that business does not know what they want. Often they presume that
lack of technology knowledge creates a gap in how they need to define the
business problem. They do need help in articulating the problem statement such
that it clearly states the market, the process and the outcomes. It is
imperative that the ownership stays with the business stakeholders lest it
become an IT project.
A friend and CEO
of a mid-sized company joined the discussion on what should be the terms of
reference and engagement between IT and business. He is known to be “IT
friendly” and good customer who uses IT effectively. He acknowledged his
inability to provide a well-defined problem statement that can be translated
into a system. So I probed further to give an example of what he implied. He
warmed up and started talking about his current situation and his information
needs.
The company was entering
a new market and with commencement of commercial operations needed systems to
enable the business. Local regulations being tough and demanding, the
competition fierce, the CEO needed end to end visibility across the supply
chain and customers while addressing the needs of the regulators. He defined
the need, the growth, and the ecosystem going on to say that he had no clue
what IT systems will solve the problem while throwing some available options
from experience.
To me the problem
definition was quite clear and so was his information needs. The point is that
the questions you ask will determine what you get. We did not discuss any
technology options; neither did we get into details of hosted, cloud, or
solution options. Clarifying some of the finer nuances it was clear that he was
at ease on my overall understanding of the need. I then turned to the CIO and
signalled that despite the starting point where the CEO stated he did not know
what he wanted, he actually did.
When you meet
business leaders, what is the approach ? Do you probe based on your knowledge
of the situation or do you expect the business to come up with a formal requirement
document ? Is it a discussion or is it a template given to the business to fill
and define what they want ? What kind of engagement model do you practice ? For
any discussion to be fruitful, involved stakeholders have to have a common
ground and assumptions to make sense. I don’t know what I don’t know, let’s
collaborate.
The answers you
get is a function of the questions you ask; if you start with “What reports you
want”, that’s what you will get without the background context. If you ask only
about the process, you will hear that; take a detached and a connected view
simultaneously to get the information required. You will be surprised at the
insights you can garner. I believe that CIOs and the IT teams need to be
trained on how to ask the right questions; and that is also a function of how
well you know the business.
