Chief Inaction Officer: I will do nothing until I am explicitly asked to

An audit finding raised the compliance flag which necessitated the CIO to take action; he acknowledged the limitation and was thus tasked to find a solution to be deployed before the next audit. The technical team was summoned and the task assigned between 2 of his deputies who controlled the applications and the infrastructure respectively. With healthy contempt for each other, they thrived in challenging each other, at times with detrimental effect to deliverables. Their professional strengths secured them in their positions.

The problem was not unsolved in the industry and there were standard offerings that collectively created the solution required. To the CIO thus the issue at hand appeared to be an easily resolvable one, the criticality defined by the compliance requirements within the stipulated time. The team went through the motions and presented the solution and budget to the CIO who was struck by a red herring; was it a decoy or reality ? It appeared to be a new player in the market, the solution quite elegant and better than the sum of parts that made other solutions.

So he probed further inviting the vendor to present their value proposition; his team willingly obliged sensing an opportunity to differentiate from the normal. Multiple meetings and presentations later the CIO requested a Proof of Concept which was diligently completed by the team and results submitted. In a normal scenario, vendors would push for closure post a successful PoC; the vendor did the same and was then updated on the decision making cycle; the CIO then proceeded to present the solution to the Board for approval.

Boards typically want a solution to a business problem or an opportunity; they are largely agnostic to the technology solution. True to form the board left the technology decision on the CIO’s best judgement citing that they were interested in compliance using the best possible technology at the lowest possible cost. Unwilling to take a risk with no clear technology mandate, the CIO did what he was good at; no decision while keeping the vendor at bay with meaningful and irrational questions and finally an unreasonable price.

The CIO sought to validate the solution with the Technology Advisory Committee who deferred the decision back to the CIO; referring to the Regulator, he asked for a guideline on the solution which was not forthcoming. The Regulator declined to specify the technology while impressing upon the Company to expedite the solution deployment within the timeline. The passing time had the CIO under pressure while his team stood divided on between the conventional and the innovative solutions giving no solace to the cornered CIO.

The vendor attempted to provide necessary documentation that was duly submitted to the Committee and the Regulator, both maintaining status quo. The vendor demonstration immense patience stayed engaged with the team through the imbroglio and parallel commercial negotiations as the deal appeared close but open through the elapsed time of over 6 months. The impatient CEO was counseled to provide a direction which he finally did in the interest of progress sensing that the CIO will continue to dither on the decision.

Technology teams under the CIO are expected to be the evaluators, evangelists, proponents and finally the educators of possible technology solutions to the business. Heightened awareness of possibilities from technology with business users does make them influencers and at times critics of technology, the decision finally rests with the technology teams and accountability with the CIO. The unwillingness or inability to take a decision does not reflect positively on the leadership of the CIO and adversely impacts the team’s credibility.

Observations from the industry do indicate a set of CIOs who are extremely risk averse and they rarely take decisions on new technologies satisfied with being followers. They are good operational managers and struggle in their ability to partner with the business to impact business performance indicators. In the changing business environment with technology agility a necessity and essential to stay meaningful with disruptive business models threatening the core and existence, it is imperative for CIOs to embrace the new and leave business as usual to their teams or outsourced partners.

A good decision now is worth a lot more than the best decision after delayed analysis paralysis !

The King is dead, long live the king

I cannot believe that it has been almost two decades of the CIO role in the making; not the EDP manager which precedes the title by around another two decades or so; a score of years of making enterprise adopt, adapt and leverage IT; twenty years of educating CXOs on why they need to invest in IT for their own benefit if not survival; definitely a decade if not more of fending off ROI models for every initiative; a little less than a decade of helping the CMO get digital savvy and finally riding the waves of disruptive technology innovation.

With every changing paradigm or rather hype in some cases, starting with Client-Server to the most recent Internet of Things and everything in between (Internet, ERP, CRM, e-commerce, m-commerce, mobility, BYOD, Cloud, Social media, Big data to name a few) there were predictions of demise of the CIO. It was predicated that the CIO will lose relevance with power shifting to other parts of the enterprise, democratized decision making and budgets no longer under CIO control. Many joined the chorus, the technology king is dead.

A decade back, the article IT doesn't matter made a splash; it had many proponents and a collection of CIOs defending their position citing the author had lost it. Many CIO bashers interpreted the report to suit their hypothesis of why the CIO will soon be dead; clarifications from the author were brushed aside brusquely. Lectures were delivered by all and sundry proposing remedial steps for the CIO for his/her survival. Suddenly as it came, the brouhaha withered away and everyone moved on to the next issue, whatever it was.

CIOs need business skills, soft skills, technology skills, people skills, vendor management skills, project management skills, change management skills, financial skills, legal knowledge, customer management skills, and should be politically savvy at the same time. Probably any CXO job description may fit the above profile but they rarely get discussed in the open akin to washing dirty linen in full visibility of the world. Or maybe the IT media is obsessed with the role’s gaining prominence and thus attempts to find avenues to diminish it.

Recently when I read a few mainstream business publications headlining IT and the CIO, it revealed two things to me. The message that emerged is that IT effectiveness is diminishing with time and unable to keep pace with changing business expectations. Contrary to this is the fact that business pressures have led to risk averse attitude to investments in new technology; discussions on the management table however expect outcomes that can be achieved only when business works lockstep with IT rather than a customer-supplier relationship.

The world today is digital and connected in ways that were only imagined in the past; digital natives are consuming information very differently when compared to what makes enterprises run. Digital commerce has moved the power of choice to the consumer; however big enterprises are influencing choices using better tools and technologies to find patterns from unstructured data. Possibilities are opening up with large volumes of data being analyzed for patterns that can now predict events with higher probability breaking the choice mirage.

The future belongs to the enterprise which has mastered the art and science of consistently finding needles in the haystack of data. The individual who can make this happen shall be anointed the new high priest; only time will tell whether s/he will be the Chief Digital Officer or the Data Scientist or the CIO making a transition to becoming the orchestrator of such services. It is certain that sooner or later this will become commoditized and challenge the adopters to find new differentiators sooner than later.

I should also highlight the fact that there will continue to remain a need to manage the unseen parts of enterprise IT which are basic hygiene for business as usual, the network, the data center and cloud, the database and apps, information security, data warehouse, transactional manufacturing and supply chain systems or for a services organization the customer and related data. The CIO and the IT team have to keep this foundation strong for the digital enterprise to flourish and to that extent the role will not go away.

Individuals will make their choices on evolution; what is yours ?

For the CIO, IT is (not) enough ?

CIOs shed your technology garbs and start donning business clothing; variations of this message have been bombarding the CIO for some time now. It was a clarion call for some who started working upon it, some nodded their heads and said we have already been on this path, the balance found that they were unable to make the transition either due to their own limitations or their company not willing to accept the new avatar that the CIO wanted to transform self into. A decade later the crescendo has only increased.

What next after you have been a successful CIO ? Move laterally into a business role, take on additional responsibilities, don’t you aspire to be a CEO ? Is IT not a business role asked a few ? The CIOs up/cross-skilled themselves into understanding business as well or better than the business; this was the new peak to climb. So once again some raised the bar and took on new roles, added new functions, managed P&L for parts of the business, and few took plunge into entrepreneurship; a smattering made it to the corner office too.

SMACS or variations of this theme create the next scare; the Chief Digital Officer threatens to take away a chunk of the CIOs span of control. Social is willy-nilly intertwined into the enterprise fabric now and there are more mobile internet users in many markets. Big Data and Analytics threaten to disrupt existing business paradigms while Cloud has thrust BYOD and consumerization into another orbit. With all this comes the scare of individual privacy, leave aside the corporate security policy which has been struggling to keep pace.

CIOs should know legalese as well as number crunching in equal measure. After all they sign many contracts with service providers and vendors; they also manage and run the IT budget which is significant. Charge backs to business are being discussed actively which raises many challenges on the financial models. CIOs also need HR skills to hire and retain good talent within their teams. So the CIO is now a CLO, CFO and CHRO all rolled into one just to run the IT organization effectively. Not that other CXOs have it easy, but for the CIO these are more discussed than others.

While the CIO battles all of this, somewhere the CMO is expected to sidestep the CIO while sourcing services and solutions on the Cloud; the hypothesis, the CIO is too busy doing something else (what?) and is ignoring the CMO ! So the question that keeps raising its head is whether IT as a domain is not good enough for the CIO to succeed ? Is cross-functional knowledge essential to maintain the position or nice to have skills ? And if the CIO is indeed expected to be a Jack of all trades and Master of some, how does s/he keep hitting a moving target ?

Ask any consultant or for that matter any Tom, Dick and Harry about the future of the CIO; they will for sure have a view on why the CIO is going to die sooner than later. Everything as a service, outsourcing and savvier employees will challenge the role of the CIO as it exists today. CIOs have presumably resisted mobility, BYOD, and every new technology that actually made their lives easier. Are CIOs really so dumb and resistant to change ? And if they indeed are, why is it that when asked, no one can give names of a few specimens ?

A long time back someone had asked me the question: now that you have been a CIO across multiple companies and industries successfully creating transformation, what next ? At that time my answer was “What’s wrong with being a good and successful CIO ?” People don’t want to accept the fact that being a CIO can also be a fulfilling and satisfying career; you don’t get there so easily anyway and stay in that position. There will always be few who will continue their quest towards new shores, and there are ones who just enjoy the journey.

CIO is a verb, not a noun

I heard the buzz from a friend that this company was again looking for a CIO; my immediate response was “again, why”? It’s a large company with dominant market share in some segments and had implemented some good IT systems in the past. The then CIO had a hurried exit reasons for which were speculated by everyone. Then in the last 5 years they had as many CIOs. And they had hired a CIO less than a year back after a longish search who I thought had settled down into the role.

The company has had challenges with their IT systems which worked in a combination of the legacy and the new generation ERP type systems. Almost a decade back they hired a business CIO who helped them renew their systems and set the roadmap for them to gain benefit from IT. Under his leadership the various business units adapted the new technology solutions globally and set the path for the next wave. Suddenly the CIO exited leaving behind what appeared to be a dissatisfied business team.

They floated a need for a CIO with specific technology expertise to rescue their IT and hired such individuals who claimed to be experts in the said solutions. They came and did fix parts of what was deemed broken and when the situation did not improve for the company, they were replaced by others. Each time there was a solution sought based on what appeared to be internal diagnostic for the ailment and the cure was applied. Each time there was no significant change in the situation.

The last hire came with strong credentials having been on business and technology sides of the table and a clear and consistent record of deliverables. While he was no star, the companies he worked with had benefited from IT. He was a team player and a good deputy for some visible CIOs. Thus he was expected to be able to recoup the losses and forge ahead. He came onboard and reviewed the situation and did put in a governance process that satisfied the management of intended outcomes.

He held meetings with his team and the business leaders getting into the details of every initiative and action taken. The new governance expected every decision to be endorsed by him before any steps were taken. The team ran with it for a few months and then started getting restless when they had no freedom to do anything. The endless stream of meetings resulted in no outcomes or movement. Soon they started leaving, starting with the brightest and then the professionals who wanted action.

The exit of the teams’ star performer raised a few alarm bells with the management but they let the CIO determine how to run the function. Time passed away and management meetings started getting hot for the CIO who was expected to deliver. Soon other team members started departing out of frustration leaving behind a challenged operation even for business as usual. Vendors who had supported the new CIO for a while in anticipation of a change in mindset were equally disillusioned with status quo.

The CIO was worried and afraid to move ahead with his risk profile being quite low. He had thrived under the shadow of his earlier CIOs who took initiative while he and his team delivered the projects and executed them. Now with direct accountability he failed to get the team together and deliver what he could have. The confidence crisis was beginning to hurt him real bad and he was blind to this fact. That is when the company decided to find an alternative who would take them forward.

Inaction or the low risk profile created a situation from which the CIO found it difficult to extricate himself. He could have taken charge and changed the perceptions of the past short-term CIOs who had different problems in their stint. The IT team supported him, his individual demons and fears anchored him. For the CIO, the “I” does not stand for “inaction”; get started, you have everything to lose and everything to gain. 

The Newbie CIO

A newbie CIO was feeling very excited and thrilled to have made the grade and become a CIO, a dream he had cherished and worked towards for some time now. He had sought coaching from many senior CIOs and acted upon most of the advice received from various quarters. He was a good and consistent performer as IT manager having received accolades for emerging stars from various publications who track rising talent. I congratulated him on his new assignment along with others who celebrated his success.

Close to a year since the new assignment, he connected again wanting to meet; a request to which I agreed considering it had been some time since we had connected. I had not heard anything about his success or challenges from him or common industry friends. So we planned catch up over a meal in the near future. He mentioned the need to discuss a few issues which he was struggling with. That raised my curiosity and wondered how he had fared in his new assignment.

He had started well with understanding of business, industry, and company culture. He helped his team to a cohesive state dismantling silos and focusing on deliverables. Fixing IT came easily to him as he was responsible for the same portfolio earlier. He met functional leaders to understand their expectations from IT and how IT could contribute to their success. Based on this he created a plan which was accepted with a caveat that each project will require respective business owners to agree to and fund.

Undeterred, he started working on what he believed should be the first priority, customer service. The marketing head listened to the proposition and declined the project stating no need for disruption in an already growing market. My friend attempted to reason it out without success and in the face of push backs, approached the CEO for help only to be told to find a way to align the marketing team if the project were to succeed. After pushing for many weeks he realized that their low risk appetite would not get him what he wanted.

He targeted supply chain optimization which would reduce inventory levels and improve profitability. This time he created a financial model based on his understanding of the situation and presented to the functional head who dispassionately looked at the presentation and said he will revert back. Weeks became months with no revert despite gentle nudges and follow-up. So he confronted the issue and was asked to back off in no uncertain terms. He was disheartened and sought answers from his peers.

The organization was run by the close group of confidantes of the owner for many years. They had a monopolistic market and continued to grow at a fast track pace which was the envy of others in the same industry and outside. There was no growth or efficiency pressure with healthy margins and cash situation. As an unlisted company there was no market pressure to go beyond what they had achieved. The founder owner chairman benevolently asked the CIO to take it easy and not rush into things.

After his initial success, he was expecting a carte-blanche and what he got was a conditional approval where he had to sweat for each and every project and still remain challenged. He was struggling to break the shackles and do what he believed he was capable of. He had given up trying and was feeling a sense of purposelessness. He could have walked away to find a new opportunity but was worried lest the new one also leave him with no recourse. And the fact that as a first time CIO he had hardly spent any time and needed to show some results.

I did not have the context of the function heads, but I did know a bit about the CIO and his personality. Interrogation revealed that he was pushing his solution without listening or connecting; his enthusiasm blinded him from observing that he never connected with the business teams as he was so immersed in technology and solution design. Full of himself, in his eyes he had made the transition, in reality he was still some steps away. I left him with a mirror and hoped that he would start listening.

My offer for help stayed suspended in the air, I left feeling sad for him.

Taken for a ride !

By design, omission or inadvertently, all of us have faced the situation where the vendor has declared the product “end-of-life”. This puts at risk legacy applications, instrumentation, automation, or in many cases plain old processes that have survived all attempts to change them. CIOs and IT realize that upgrades are expensive and in some case not as good as the earlier working versions in terms of stability and/or functionality. But then they have to do it lest there be no support when the software fails.

Many CIOs succumb to the pressure quickly, only to realize that the deadlines have shifted and they could have avoided the nasty dialogue with respective functions (normally finance). They could have saved the unbudgeted expense in the upgrade which wiped out buffers that were provided for some innovation. Sometimes this leaves a feeling that this was a ploy to move everyone along reducing the support costs for the vendor, maybe some incremental licences (new versions typically may have different breakup).

A CIO friend bought a software package that fit business requirements so well that it appeared to have been developed using the requirement specifications of the company. She loved it as it implied very little customization and a deployment timeline better than what the business wanted. Everything went like a dream, the solution went live with celebrations and everyone was happy. The vendor was acquired by one of the big IT product and services companies; the new CEO promised to keep old customers happy.

As it was time to scale up, the CIO approached the new entity for new licences. The offer for upgrade had her fall off her chair; it was twice of what she paid earlier. Reaching out to the old team she found no help forthcoming with them citing new policies of the acquirer. The big guy sales team explained the new investments into the solution justifying the increase. Left with no choice in the face of the earlier business success, the CIO felt cornered and frustrated though had to accept the new terms.

In another scenario recounted to me some time back, a packaged vendor gave a demonstration of a specialized solution to the business team who loved what they saw. They approached the CEO and the CIO with a claim of higher productivity and ROI. The CEO endorsed the purchase and the IT team got down to creating the project charter, implementation plan and timeline. Quickly they realized that the solution required significant customization to work in their environment.

The CIO got together with the Business Head to provide the reality which was quite different from the short trailer and demo. Since they shared trust, it was evident that the solution provider had only revealed the surface; they had pressed the right buttons and given the messages that created empathy. The resultant in high expectations created a feeling of being short changed; while there was no false information, limited revelations created desire and expectations that were unrealistic.

I could go on and on with many examples on how every day we face situations which leave us with a negative gut feeling and a sense of having been taken for a ride. Some of these are a result of our own naivety, inexperience, or overenthusiasm; also in many cases due to intentional concealment of facts and/or our interpretation of what is said. There are rare cases when mal intent has been the driver too; it is largely taking advantage of the gullibility of the buyer. And every time I hear of an incident, I feel restless.

I do not believe for a moment that this situation is unique to the CIO; at times all CXOs face situations that leave a feeling that we are being taken for a ride, sometimes during the journey, sometimes after we have been gypped. Is there a solution to this ? I do not have a silver bullet to resolve such situations; I believe that tactically the CIO has to work on each case to address the issue at hand. Due diligence and contracts go some distance, the rest falls into risk zone and have no easy answer. 

Chief Interrogation Officer

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.

The IT Orphanage

It had been a long search, far and wide, across the oceans; many able men and women working as teams traversed the globe in her quest. A few options were shortlisted but discarded very quickly when some deficiency was uncovered with deeper analysis. The rigour redoubled, the pursuit unwavering, the promise of reward for the long-term kept them going. Their leader encouraged the team though the journey especially when they appeared to falter and give-up.

Almost a year into the expedition, the quest finally came to an end with what appeared to be a perfect and made to order ending. The leadership team got together to discuss the outflow; she was expensive and required high maintenance. No one had the courage thus far to take such a risk. However the promise of the future convinced everyone that it would be worth the investment. So they all agreed to part with the precious gold coins and get her on board. High risk, high return said the treasurer.

She was welcomed with a lot of fanfare, the headman chose a name from the many suggested and the message spread across on the new unique acquisition. Everyone contributed to setting the expectations that rose in unison as if in a crescendo; everyone watched the future with euphoric anticipation. Smiths and specialists from all over the world got together to define outcomes that she would enable. Progress was slow and soon people started paying lesser attention focusing on their daily chores.

Life continued as usual with occasional reviews that highlighted challenges to understand and adapt to her whims. The workmen toiled day and night for many moons encouraged by their leader who did not give up belief. Two winters later the team broke off into a joyous dance; everything worked as designed, all the links delivered, the input validated, the outcome was as expected. Rushing to the leadership team they demonstrated the end result, chests puffed with obvious pride.

Celebration was called, everyone wanted to be associated with success; anecdotes of arduous journey spread with friendly banter.  After almost 18 months since the start day, the project had gone live and was churning out results that were unfamiliar territory but delivered business outcomes the leader had believed possible. The competitive advantage gained using the new technology was evident and accolades poured in locally and globally for the unique pioneering solution.

Too good to last, some of the naysayers found reason to challenge and doubt the results; conventional wisdom did not support the new solution; thus they were able to sow seeds of doubt which spread quickly through the enterprise. The initial success was passed off as stroke of luck and not sustainable. With no supporters, almost everyone went back to their old way and deserted the solution as a bad dream and mistake. The solution thus joined the IT orphanage.

Applications and solutions that the IT team developed bur no one really used; solutions that were bought by users only to be discarded with no one to support them; applications and reports that are always urgent for development but rarely complete UAT; and if they do, hardly anyone wants to use them, they all finally find their place in the IT orphanage. These have no owner, no user, and no parent to support them. Once relegated they rarely if ever find a benefactor who is willing to support them.

Every organization has a (un)labelled orphanage that sometimes gets very crowded especially if the CIO and the IT team is unable to assert themselves or if they collectively work to create solutions that are disconnected from business reality. The CIO needs to highlight such instances transparently and openly to either change team behaviour or improve chances of success; and/or change business engagement and ownership that rarely if at all any need to be assigned to the orphanage.

P.S. Within a year the project was revived by the CIO and has stayed a success now for over 2 years; that is a story for another time.

I(T) to We(T), and I am not crazy

Last week I was at a panel discussion organized by one of the large global IT conference producers, the subject of the debate, “Creating Leaders”; the panellists some CIOs and some aspiring ones. It was a great interaction between the panellists and the audience; everyone had questions and everyone also had answers based on their experiences. The best parts of the session were the stories as illustrations and examples of what works; stories are always memorable (see The Story TellerCIO).

Everyone has their definition and opinion on what constitutes leadership and its development; the CIOs talked about the skills they look for in their teams to pick high potential performers. The key tenets were collaboration, empathy, articulation, communication, relationship building, partnering, business savvy, domain expertise, and attitude. No one talked about technology, educational qualifications or certifications; no longer critical once you are in the reckoning for the top job, these are a given.

On the other hand the aspirers wanted feedback, coaching, freedom to take decisions, allowing them to fail, engage with business independently. They wanted to work with the CIO and on represent the CIO in business meetings. In essence they wanted to get to the chair quicker than the CIOs believed they can. A healthy competitive spirit with young blood that makes you feel good off course with practiced restraint where required; failing fast is not equal to failing frequently said one wise CIO.

The surprise came from the audience when one of the CIOs who had evolved from the business made a point to the speakers on the dais and the audience. He talked about the professional expertise that came in the way of good going to great. The dialogue between the young turks and the business folks takes shades of impatience and arrogance; “you don’t understand, let me tell you how, here’s the solution and it’s so obvious …” it creates polarization separating IT, business and vendors.

He berated the I-factor driven by T with the IT teams and stated that the when IT teams talk about them versus the rest, it creates an invisible rift between the stakeholders. He mooted the idea that IT should stop working with the “I” (me and myself) and start thinking in “we” terms which improves the possibility of success with shared goals and objectives. Each person on the table represents different skills and dimensions of the problem and solution; it is not possible to work without any and achieve the same success.

Everyone was numbed into silence for a moment and then spontaneously the room burst into applause; I do not do justice to his eloquence or story telling here, it touched a part of everyone in the room. Reciting from ancient scriptures and connecting to the current IT context, he implored the collective to shed ego and success will follow. Having created magic in minutes he took his seat and the conversation continued from where it had left off strongly influenced by the sentiment suspended in the air.

The power of success weaved into a story always creates positive energy; the message clear and crisp, the actions unambiguous, the leadership lesson complete, the panel concluded. As I left the stage only to be surrounded by some to seek personal advice, the thought at the back of the mind lingered on; what can I do to transform my team to We(T). We Team is better than I Team or IT; I need to tell this story to my team on what we will do differently. Quick, you too do that before the moment is lost !

OMG, I saw a Data Center

Last week one of the global IT biggies invited a bunch of CIOs to their R&D Centre with the defined agenda being a discussion on future trends and movements in their technologies; the idea was to get some early traction with old and potential customers and field testing that helps fine tune a product. Apart from all this were the good old peer networking and some high spirits if you know what I mean. So I was enticed enough to join the group to give away a weekend in the name of learning and networking.

Like all such gatherings it was a good start with key leaders and guys oozing tech from their ears talking about new disruptive technologies are coming our way in the next 2-4 years. They held sway in the graveyard sessions post lunch with sleep overpowering only the infirm or the bored indifferent which did not matter. Most cynical CIOs on the wrong side of forty acknowledged the prowess and the future opportunity.  Good things don’t last and this one too didn’t.

After the first two sessions started the mundane, the irrelevant and the hard sell; data centre density, cooling, and power consumption. Virtualization and private cloud are good, a higher virtualization ratio even better, but 20K VMs in a rack ? Why do I need 20K virtual servers ? The nail in the wall was when someone decided it’s a good idea to teach CIOs how to configure a VM and then move it across racks with no downtime. I am not sure if CIOs want to be doing that or enterprises want high cost CIOs to do that !

I mean does a CIO teach the technology architect the finer nuances of VM management ? To rub salt into the wounds, they extended the session over the coffee break to cover private cloud extension to the public cloud. Now I am sure that my server admin would be kicked by this demo, none of the CIOs in the room were. They expressed their displeasure in no uncertain terms, some decided to leave the premises as soon as the break was declared closed. I asked the presenter if their CIO knew how to ! Patience too has its limits…

The climax was waiting for the following day; a visit to the R&D facility ! We all got into a bus, arrived at the big building, signed in with sobriety and were taken to the show. We entered a room with biometric authentication to be faced with rows and rows of racks with cables dangling from some. Proudly the scientist pointed to one of the racks and started talking about why it was different and the innovation that went into making the hardware inside and why we should immediately order it.

I could not remember the last time I had visited a data centre (even my own); digging deep into memory it dawned that it was more than a decade back. I whispered to the CIO next to me and he too reminisced a long time back. A few others had been to their outsourced or co-located data centres when they had signed the deal. I wished my infrastructure head was present; maybe he would have appreciated the significance. To us the CIOs it was a lost experience, we did not share the enthusiasm.

Does or should the data centre matter to the CIO ? The vehement answer would be yes from many. Then what about the cloud ? Have you visited the Google or Amazon or Salesforce.com data centre ? Do you know when you buy SaaS where it is delivered from ? I believe that we need to come out of this obsession; the vendors need to start defocusing the data centre and start engaging on business outcomes. Yes the data centre makes the IT run, but to pick a line from Nicholas Carr, the data centre does not matter anymore !

IT, BT, whatever, does it matter ?

Almost a decade back I remember a company that after spending a large amount of money with consultants going through the whole nine yards and then some more recommended rechristening the IT department Business Technology. It was a move driven out of the aspiration to stay ahead of the crowd and differentiate. The BT group was different from Corporate IT and a few other IT groups within the enterprise; they were the elite. This was in the era when IT was just beginning to gain acceptance.

This large and diversified company was written about; the bold move spawned research papers and everyone acknowledged that the future belonged to Business Technology. Slowly over a period of time the internal customers of this group started asking the question, old wine in a new bottle still tastes the same; where is the change in attitude, delivery, partnership, innovation, all the good stuff that was promised and expected. Whatever happened to the Vision and Mission ? Interestingly the leader retained the title of CIO and not CBTO. Maybe she did not want to tell a story.

Then I met another IT leader of a successful company who gave me a twist in the story. He had named his function STT. With me lost trying to decipher the TLA, he proudly unveiled the mystery with the logic: we create solutions; they are a lot more than hardware, software and networks. However whatever we do has a common underlying Technology framework. Solutions are holistic and do not constrain the thinking process. So our team is aptly known as Solutions & Technology Team. Ahem ! Many years later the poor chap is lost in wilderness; he stressed more on the middle T than the first S.

In recent times there have been many discussions and debates on the changing role of the IT leader; some of them concluded with recommendations that the title CIO is no longer relevant and the role as it stands today will no longer exist in the next XX years (fill in whatever number you like). So, the name should be changed to reflect the new reality. Suggestions cover the entire alphabet soup with rationale based on not the CIO but the proposer’s frame of reference.

Does it matter what the function is called ? Do semantics make a difference ? Will the reality be different for the involved stakeholders depending on the nomenclature ? How much does the name contribute to reality and success ? Can an IT department transform itself with a new name ? Is a change required with every changing technology trend and business evolution (would you like to be called Chief Cloud Officer) ? I am not proposing going back to the historical EDP, but IT today represents to a large extent the sum of the parts that make us.

Success is a result of great attitude and not the other way around; I believe that individuals and leaders portray themselves based on past track record and the engagement that they are able to create. The IT team collectively mimics the behaviour of the leader. This paradigm is true for all functions and no different for IT. CIOs should stop getting distracted by these irrational and irrelevant thoughts and focus on what matters to them, their teams, their customers (internal), and their customer’s customers (external).  

After all the best measure of success is success itself.

The Story Teller CIO

Last week I was at a CIO conference with 80 odd CIOs representing junior and senior CIOs across verticals. Amongst other sessions, fun and networking, some vendor sales pitches, the big draw was a small contest run by the organizers titled “My success story”. It was more than elevator pitch but less than a full presentation with each CIO allotted six minutes to talk about their learning on value creation, innovation, strategy, transformation, BITA, leadership lessons or anything else.

The breadth of options provided enough latitude to the participants to choose anything they would like to talk about, the idea being that success has no one formula but everyone achieves success in their own way. The participants had to send in their briefs in advance with a panel shortlisting six CIOs. Given the average work experience being over 20 years, the audience anticipation level was quite high. Selection of winners was based on an audience vote.

The second (I will come back to the first) one got off the ground talking about leadership and teamwork stressing on the qualities the CIO needs to imbibe. He acknowledged team contribution but stressed that the CIO makes the difference. The key message a good team with a bad leader will fail where a bad team with a good leader has a better chance of success. Ahem. A credible start with a weak finish sans examples did not get him many votes.

The next set of CIOs took a different approach. They struggled to create the magic moment and talk about their winning formula; everyone knew that all the speakers had achieved reasonable success in their long and illustrious careers. So where was the disconnect ? These CIO leaders presented specific project success stories, a point technology solution in the recent or distant past that they were proud of.

Few were almost like a vendor sponsored case studies. Slide after slide talked about technology and benefits accrued from the projects. Can the implementation of unified communication or video surveillance or for that matter business process management even if they contributed to savings or productivity enhancements, be classified as great success ? The stories faltered to bring out leadership aspects of the individuals and portrayed them as good IT CIOs falling short of the benchmark business CIO. They failed to capitalize the opportunity.

So let me come back to the first speaker with no slides or presentation; the CIO spoke with a conviction that had the audience in attention. He spoke about a journey through the years graduating from IT Manager a long time back to the title of the CIO. He discussed many milestones crafted with the help of the teams, not just IT teams, but business and vendors too. He provoked the audience with questions. The extract below based on my notes from his speech is given below.

Over the years I decided to let go, the team was given responsibilities that helped them grow; in their initial years they needed handholding, or feedback, or just a bouncing board to help them understand how they are doing. Not all initiatives succeeded, the team took the learning and shared across to fail faster. This approach has seeded many leaders who are today successful CIOs in many companies across the globe. I can count more than a dozen such team mates who worked with me who have been able to also pass this learning within their own teams thereby multiplying the talent pool.

Success is always a result of teamwork; the leader needs to give the team freedom to take decisions. When they succeed credit goes to them, when they do not, the leader takes the responsibility for lack of success. Such teams rarely need to be reminded of what matters, they rarely let the leader down. My legacy today lives with most of such team members who are shining bright.

No guesses for who won the contest. Maybe everyone is doing this; however, we need to be better story tellers.

The Technology Treadmill

In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing." – Theodore Roosevelt

There have been predictions on hot technologies and trends to watch for across the board; from vendors, IT consulting companies, media companies (not just IT), academic circles, groups of various kinds and individuals, CIOs or otherwise. The lists short and long, good and bad have caught the imagination of many CIOs as well as others within the company who are asking how will it impact us within the company, and our customers.

It is certain that a few will create enough hype and threaten disruption. Be it personal devices or back end technologies or even consumer facing applications, every new tool or technology promises to change the way business is conducted or we engage with customers. Some are improvements over existing tools with the novelty factor fading away quickly with the response of the existing leaders; the rest fail to follow up on the initial promises.

We occasionally find some actually providing benefit to the enterprise, some measurable, the rest is largely a race against competition to deploy and look savvy. Our employees and customers expect the adoption of almost every new announcement the following day. Thoughts about security or reworking or plain simple ROI are for the CIO to figure out. Vendors and consultants definitely benefit from this running behind the technology.

From the time of the mainframes to the promise of the Internet, social media, and consumerized devices of today with apps and everything in between, technology has created opportunities and challenges for the IT organization. The pace of change is increased with ubiquitous technology; the accelerator is now on auto with everyone running to stay in place. Can we afford to stay where we are and be observers or slow adopters with a hope to survive the mad rush to nowhere ? Is there likely respite from the ever increasing pace of changing expectations ?

The technology treadmill will continue to move irrespective of whether we hop on board or not. It is extremely unlikely that we will be allowed to stay on the sidelines and admire the speed at which the treadmill and its players are going. CIOs will have to stay connected to the pulse and inspect every change from multiple angles. Some team members will have to keep jumping on and off the treadmill to ensure that the ramifications are understood and communicated effectively to set realistic expectations.

In most cases, the call on which ones to stay with or discard will remain with the IT organization. Success or lack of it will however be decided by our internal and external customers and stakeholders. Can the CIO get off the technology treadmill and stay relevant ? I believe that pragmatically the CIO and now even the other CXOs have no choice. They did not enroll into this madness but have been made party to simply by being there; exclusion is not even an option any more.

I am going back to the treadmill with a quote that I leave behind after listening to some retired CIOs. “Strangely enough this is the past that someone in the future is longing to go back to” – Ashleigh Brilliant.

Surviving layoffs

We live in uncertain times with global economies tumbling randomly impacting everyone within as well as across borders. Citizens and corporates alike are living with FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) as the world watches the unfolding of one crisis after another. With survival at stake, individuals as well as enterprises are taking steps to tide over the current quagmire. In our connected world, the impact is felt even in otherwise stable or developing economies.

Are there learning from past economic events that have left many economies struggling. Recession and slowdown driven new normal had everyone focusing on cost and then incremental growth. Successive events have taken away much of the impact once again driving enterprises and individuals up the wall. Once again there is talk of deep cost cutting which now chips at the bones with no flesh remaining.

Not too long ago interacting with such a CIO who was asked to find alternative opportunities, I learnt about the trials and tribulations of such a situation, especially when there is a gap between two jobs. The person was a great performer and excelled in creating new technology solutions. In recessionary times discretionary spending was cut, no new projects and thus the pink slip.

In good times every enterprise leader will cite the often repeated cliché “people are our best assets”. In difficult times after everything else has been tried, companies lay off assets that can no longer be deemed useful. Normalization has a way of sometimes impacting productive assets too with resultant attrition hitting operating efficiencies. Layoffs are reality and so is the adverse impact it creates.

The ecosystem of friends, peers and close family can help overcome the negative sentiment. Seek a coach or mentor who can keep the sanity levels normalized. Even if you are lucky it takes time to find what works for you and the new company wanting to hire your services. A non-CIO friend took almost 2 years to get his rightful position while his kids and family supported him emotionally. The CIO was lucky to find a fresh beginning within 6 months.

What could I have done to prevent this from happening ? The mind tries to justify and find causes related to personal behavior, performance or shortfall that created the situation. It refuses to recognize external forces instead attempting to rationalize self-existence. It takes a while for reality to sink in and start afresh. The self-denial phase can last from a few hours to years. This self-pity mode becomes the most unproductive time. It is important to leave behind the baggage and move on with a fresh start.

What does this mean ? Be prepared as Black Swans are becoming more prevalent than NNT (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) postulated. Do not feel disheartened when someone close gets impacted. Support the person any way that you can. When I faced this situation a long time back, my friends and the IT industry leaders provided adequate cushioning to sustain self-pride. I was fortunate to maintain continuity in my transition and thankfully overcame emotional distress quickly. That’s when I realized the importance of networking and reputation.

We live in uncertain times.

How to become a CIO - Part 2

Every time I meet a set of people aspiring to become a CIO, they are interested in the 101 of how to become a CIO. So a long time back, I gave my viewpoint (this link takes you to the old post) on how can one become a CIO. That was driven out of a discussion with aspirants who wanted a checklist. In recent times, the discussion has come back with renewed vigor, which includes various themes including succession planning, on which I commented last month. However, the moot point is about how one can indeed become a CIO in the new normal—when everyone is now discussing about whether the CIO role as it exists today will disappear in the next five years.

Almost all the CIOs I know understand business (process, results, metrics, and influencers) as well as other CXOs. They are no longer enamored by technology, but are always asking the business benefit and ROI questions to vendors as well as partners. Most of them are able to hold a conversation on broad business subjects with management, and challenge the CEOs on why they should be engaging the Board. Their soft skills are well honed, and the CIOs are taking on additional responsibilities within their enterprises. A few CIOs (based on their interests) are seeking lateral movement or even nudging the CEO chair.

Now, that’s indeed a reflection of how the CIO’s role has evolved, and continues to break new barriers. So what should aspirant CIOs be working on? Should they adopt a role model from amongst CIOs, or look up checklists that many paper and web publications offer? If only transformation to a CXO role was as easy as ticking off an objective question list!

There are no training programs for someone to become a CIO, nor any specific qualifications that are inherent to a CIO. Like any CXO, the CIO is an integral part of the decision makers who influence the business’ direction. However, technology enablement of the business (process, results and metrics) is one of the key contributions expected from the CIO. To successfully execute this, I reiterate that the CIO’s focus is on par with others; evidently, the key ingredient for an aspiring CIO is the understanding that the business of IT is business, and not technology. This is the key tenet on which the CIO role is evolving, and success will largely depend on the (aspirant) CIO’s ability to further the business with, or without help from technology. The remaining traits can be developed with training, coaching and/or mentoring. Look around, and you will observe that the successful CIOs are indeed business leaders—not technologists.

So no 101s on how to become a CIO, or a checklist that you can use; did I not meet your expectations? I would rather do that, than give anyone a false sense of hope!

How to become a CIO

Someone asked me a seemingly innocuous question "How do I become a CIO ?"

It set into motion a thought process and I began to wonder. So here is the result of the wondering in a step by step how to. There could be many more questions in the list, but I restricted myself to the ones that matter the most.

1. You have to want to become one
2. Some one should be willing to hire you as one
3. Ask yourself the questions below:

• Do you understand business activities well specific to your industry as well as generically ?
• Are you good at numbers, budgets, reconciliations, metrics ?
• Can you confidently present in a management group meeting without being tongue-tied ?
• Do people within your team and your users trust you ?
• Can you negotiate well with a vendor or a user ?
• Are you able to resolve conflict ?
• Are you able to hold your head high and have a disagreement with your boss without getting beaten up ?
• Can you talk in a language that non-IT folks can understand ?
• Are you able to deliver results as promised ?

If the answer to any of the questions above is NO, then work upon making it a yes. If you get more than 2 NO, then you are not yet ready.

If you got all YES and are not yet a CIO, then go to point 1 and 2. The only other reason can be you are a consultant.

Update: After being asked the question umpteen times by readers, I wrote the sequel to this piece, How to become a CIO - Part 2