Dear CIO, Don’t just align, be the business !

More than two decades back starting my life as an IT leader, I had aspirations to be an industry first and transform the company and leverage the then technological innovation – the “Internet”. Consultants and vendors joined the rising crescendo – if you are not on the Internet, your survival is at stake ! FUD created by Y2K threat was a welcome diversion for Glasshouse dwelling IT. Neither the Internet nor Y2K lived up to the disruptive promise; the subsequent squeeze on budgets did challenge IT Heads to change the paradigm.

Driven by technology evolution, the IT function transformed itself into structures with centralized, federated and other models of governance. The CIO was advised to “Align to Business” and get out of the ivory tower; frameworks offered help to the challenged, smarter ones declared themselves aligned with self-assessments. IT created demand and supply organizations to address the needs articulated by business and IT projects shifted to being jointly owned by business. The harmony however did not last too long.

“Be a Partner” became the new mantra, necessitated cohabitation of Business and IT teams and clearly defined business accountability for IT enabled projects; Business Relationship Managers were implanted across. COTS, Self-service and Cloud created opportunities to dismantle legacy as business loved the new mobility solutions that created new opportunities to engage internally and externally. Internal structures and cultures did challenge many while breakaway groups became beacons of success much written about and to be emulated by others.

Martha Heller in her new book “Be the Business” has captured journeys of many Rock Star CIOs who lived their journeys – with or just ahead of the hype curve – validating some of the theories built around their modus operandi and success. Assimilating these into almost a step by step process, the book makes great reading for existing CIOs to benchmark and make adjustments as required. Aspiring CIOs would do well to use the text as a guide to shape their behaviors as they get ready for the seat on the table and not behind it.

Interspersed CIO experiences ensures that the book is not prescriptive in disseminating pointers and tips. Martha offers that CIOs should take the bold step and risk to fill in gaps in the ever evolving technology landscape which keeps throwing demand for new competencies and capabilities fueled by every new buzzword. She goes on to dismantle the fad the Chief Digital Officer became and how CIOs who seized the moment grew into larger business roles while retaining their technology foundation or passing the baton.

The “iceberg” of IT first acknowledged in the early part of the century makes welcome refresh for large IT budgets struggling to keep the lights on or business as usual. Dismantling icebergs is a complex process and requires continued support across the enterprise without which the CIO finds it difficult to create change. Real life examples validate the need for holistic and structured approach to change and becoming Change Agents. They echo my journey in a few organizations; I wish I had the benefit of the learning available now to readers.

From the famous “IT Doesn’t Matter” by Nicholas Carr, the CIO has come a long way with business gains from automation, disrupted a few business models, co-innovated to create new products and services. Traversing the milestones I find the book easy reading with insights that offer models for CIOs to improve their success rates as they lead from the front and work in sync with business teams. As a veteran CIO blogger, I find the content resonates with my experiences and complements the learning.

Being part of the CXO team is a privilege which comes with its own set of management complexities; managing peer groups, measuring business outcomes and cascading them to the IT organization requires deft handling and setting expectations. The CIO is expected to create interventions that cut across silos while helping each functional head win their battles while the war needs to be won by the enterprise. Being the business is an equal task for the CIO who needs to keep the technology roots strong while being an equal on the Management team/Board !

Get off from your comfort zones, take a cue from the leaders who made it, your own destination and journey could inspire your teams to excel. The book is worth the investment.

If you are a CIO, you better know your domain and industry, else …

For every industry regulatory compliance is a given with no exceptions; these are local to the enterprise home country or in the markets they operate in, and dependent on products and services. In such situations there is always a choice of vendors who offer solutions to solve the problem at hand. These vary from local providers who grow with the industry and tailor their offerings to evolving needs; and then there are global providers who offer deep and wide solutions for large enterprises.

The conversation started by stating the problem the industry was facing and how it was expected to impact revenue and profitability in the near term followed by the standard sales pitch on how they were better than competition and why the assembled companies should consider their solution. The audience comprising of potential customers represented by CIOs, IT teams and few business folks agreed with the problem statement in varying degrees based on their frame of reference and charted journey which was their reality.

We started working on the problem three years back with the Board endorsing the strategy and approving the investment. We have almost completed the project and are now auditing what we have done. We comply with current requirements and are ready for the upcoming regulations deadline. We welcome your team to review our current state of readiness and highlight lacunae if any so that we are sure of our status. Please ask your teams to get in touch with me so that we can work together on this initiative.

Our business operations are not very large in the markets that require compliance to upcoming regulation; they have scaled down a bit in the last year or so due to some issues. We did start a couple of years back and took a step by step approach to solving the problem; my colleague here leads the initiative. There are a few gaps in our current readiness and we would be happy to explore your offerings to evaluate the value proposition. Let’s connect back after a few weeks and take the discussion forward.

Local vendors have given us the solution that complies with current requirements; they have offered to continuously develop the product based on evolving needs and deploy when we want it. Our Management has taken a decision not to deploy any solution until absolutely necessary. My team leader would know the exact status, I am not aware of the details; I will speak with them and revert on where we are in the journey. Once I have the status, I will reconnect if there is a need; in the meanwhile send me some information.

Three different perspectives from seasoned CIOs, each had spent over a decade in the industry; their respective companies were market leaders and competed fiercely with each other. Their journey towards compliance were spread across the spectrum with varied strategies and solutions – local and global. What was surprising though is their level of involvement, understanding, preparedness and attitude to critical business process that could adversely impact revenue, market share, and profitability.

The conversations also depict domain expertise and connect within the enterprise to the business and its challenges and opportunities. The first company is clearly a leader in usage of technology which the industry also hails. The second has experienced some trials and tribulations which has left the company losing market share, profitability and reputation. Progressively you will surmise that the last would be in the most disadvantageous position ! At least not at the moment, though their current stance may result in such a position.

Gigabytes have been written about the evolving CIO, role, opportunity in the digital world, CIO 3.0 and what have you ! CIOs have also been threatened by disruptions and the opinionated passing judgement on their future. The role has survived, evolved and many have thrived; unfortunately with the multi-dimensional nature of rising expectations, the numbers are beginning to dwindle. It is not that CIOs have lost touch or ability to make IT work, it is just that they are not in a position of influence when it comes to business.

Leaders are expected to not just make a difference internally but also be seen as beacons of light for others to follow; they need to shape opinions and outcomes for the industry while leading from the front. CIOs who achieve this are the ones that get written about in magazines, have case studies, and are seen in seminars and conferences on the dais, while the rest make up the audience. I believe that the true CIOs will continue to forge new paths while the rest of the industry will wait for early adopters to follow.

Where are you in the journey ?

In the corporate world, the unfit also survive and at times thrive

In every enterprise and almost every domain, roles and responsibilities have been evolving, some driven by global expansion, industry dynamics, technology driven changes in business, and customer demands. The biggest change has been the emergence of the CXO roles and their rapid evolution from a departmental or functional manager to an enterprise leader. Youngest among these is the role of the CIO has transformed at a faster clip than most others though some traits have become basic expectations.

Like every other function IT has not had the luxury of time to polish the rough edges and create a persona that grows over generations and gains acceptance with the rest of the organization; the fast-track pace of change in technology led to big shifts in expectations which also led to a clear divide between the CIOs in their ability to execute. The lines separated them into three broad buckets: leaders, followers, and laggards; and then a small group emerged over a period of time, the inept or gas-baggers or politicos, they had different names.

After a lull for long, the company had invested significantly in IT to catch up with the industry; spread over a couple of years the action jumpstarted their journey. IT and business teams worked together enjoying the momentum and associated benefits. Then again they went into slumber as if IT did not matter beyond what had already been implemented. The industry continued to make good progress; observers and vendors wondered what triggered the pause which extended for long. Not getting any clear answers they shifted focus elsewhere.

Time passed by and nothing seemed to matter for a while; strides made by competition and altered expectations from customers began to pinch with slowly declining growth rates and pressure on profitability. Parts of the business began to rue the inaction on part of IT to address their needs; no new ideas were evaluated or contributed since the departure of the earlier CIO. The crescendo of voices soon reached a level that merited and received the attention of the Management who decided to deep dive and find the reasons.

It was an interesting discussion between a Board member with an appreciation of technology, the CIO and the IT leadership team. He sought details about existing systems deployed, their use and effectiveness, the roadmap, new technology landscape impacting the industry, evaluations done, and benchmarking data with the industry. All fair questions, par for course for any reasonable person and CIO to be able to answer with ease, especially if he has been in the role for more than a couple of years.

We have been busy stabilizing the ERP system and managing the change requests from the business; there is no discipline on master data which keeps troubling all of us with multiple requests for change; the connectivity issues have made deployment of new solutions difficult; two key resources left in the last one year which has impacted progress on a few initiatives; business is not willing to deploy the new solution we took for marketing after the new marketing head joined; the stream of excuses flowed gushingly.

Interestingly the discussion side-stepped questions asked by the BM which he pointed out at the end of the meeting to the visibly squirming team. The CIO was granted resources sought to complete the tasks at hand and create the strategy and plan before the next meeting which was mutually agreed to. To the BM the lack of depth and ability was evident but he wanted to give the team time to absolve themselves; he did not want to base his actions only on first impressions and thus extended the rope a bit.

We deployed a new solution which business loves and we are scaling up; the team lead has been chosen to speak at a global conference. I have been busy getting bugs resolved in the core system with the vendor; I have escalated to the headquarters and they are working on this new set of bugs we have discovered. We have changed vendors on one front while we are shutting down the project that business did not want anymore. HR has not been able to provide the resources we want for some of the new projects.

The team joined the chorus which was abruptly stopped by the BM realizing that he shall again be starved of the confidence he sought in the team. The organization will have to take some tough calls. The above is just one manifestation of ineffective leadership demonstrated by an experienced IT professional who gained the role by accident and patronage, not necessarily by merit. Lacking the skills required for the CIO role, he could not maintain the façade for long, the competency levels could not hold up the scrutiny.

Click for Gas-baggers and Politicos 

Graduating from a good Manager to a good Leader

There is always the excitement in moving up the ladder, moving to the corner office, getting a C role and title, professional and personal achievement of making the grade. In recent times there have been many first timers getting there with the earlier guard making way by virtue of retirement after a full term or decision to get off the treadmill and focusing on life. Both way the new bunch is full of excitement, charged up and raring to prove their mettle in the cutthroat corporate world of one-upmanship.

Newbies start with a lot of enthusiasm and desire to make a quick impact with low hanging fruits. They push hard at times exposing their naivety while go soft in situations where they could have gotten away. Balance comes to them over a period of getting tossed around while they understand the group dynamics and their impact on the team where they are a new entrant. Most of the older folks are happy to help, coach, mentor, be a buddy should the newbie approach them with due humility of inexperience.

For first-timers, survival in the management group comes relatively easily in comparison to own team especially if the person has come from outside and even more so if team members have had long tenures. Teams can be visibly hostile to the newcomer if internal candidature was ignored though deemed adequate. Such was the situation of the bewildered newbie CIO who approached me for help to get the team to start cooperating and listening to him; even after spending seven months, he was struggling.

He had a good track record as a Project Manager who had managed and successfully delivered complex cross-functional projects. Over a dozen years of work experience demonstrated growth path and ability as he had climbed the ladder to start knocking the door aspiring for the corner office. At his last workplace, he was part of the team that managed an outsourcing contract playing an important role. Overall his resume stacked up on the capabilities required and thus he was hired as the CIO.

Settling down within few weeks, he took some time to understand the business which was new to him; his team was a mix of old and new with a couple having long tenures. Not that any of them would have made the cut, they recognized their limitations for the role they did not get. They found the CIO unsure of himself but easy going and good to get along with. He had played roles similar to themselves until he came on board – excited and wanting to prove himself with all the knowledge he had gathered by association to his CIO.

So he talked big words, Governance Risk & Compliance, IT Maturity Model, Economic Value Add, a language that was alien to the team. His reporting manager took kindly to the young star who he had hired, indulging him in his use of jargon waiting for him to start creating change. Discussions with the new CIO were interestingly filled with possibilities which could have created better outcomes than what the business had experienced thus far. The team however did not know what is that they needed to do differently.

As time passed by, review meetings had better information on progress than observed before, the CIO was a good communicator and spoke with fair conviction. His team continued to toil as usual waiting for some of the new initiatives to take off. They wanted their situation to change, they wanted the respect of the business; they wanted to explore the technology landscape to create better solutions for the business. They did not see any path breaking ideas that they were expecting from their new leader.

With better reports creating visibility on IT activity and projects, he was seen as a good manager who was able to keep the team focused on the tasks at hand improving delivery timelines to some extent, while adding resources to increase the speed of delivery. His persona was efficient, articulate, but someone who had not been able to charge the team to leap forth beyond incremental efficiency. The business needed a different level of leadership that was invisible thus far, the team wanted a leader to lead the way, not a better manager.

With the team, building trust is the foremost task for a leader; the team needs to share the vision and believe in their leader to themselves leapfrog performance to the next level. For the leader it is important to approach the team with an open attitude, listening skills, and empathy. Teams are ready to follow the leader in adversity spurred by a dream and nothing else. The transition from Manager to Leader happens for few, the rest continue to partake a journey that keeps them wedded to acceptable performance.

None from the new generation want to be the CIO ? I wonder …

Someone forwarded me a link on the finding that no one in the current lot of fresh job seekers is excited about CIO as a career. The writer of fame and an opinion leader went on to predict that the role has been short lived in its amoebic existence getting pulled and pushed in all directions with every change in technological wave which threatens to change the technology landscape and value proposition for enterprises. Unable to resist a rejoinder, I decided to provide an alternative view to the sustainability of the CIO role

CIO’s role is complex, everyone agrees to this fact, even the antagonist acknowledged the fact. CIOs manage infrastructure, business applications, and communication from the enterprise to customers, suppliers, regulators, and interested stakeholders. They help run the business efficiently or what is now referred to as “Keeping the lights on” or “Business as usual”. They are also responsible for information security, business continuity, disaster recovery, governance, risk and compliance, and contribute to business success.

Barring the recent fad driven CXOs with X = Digital, Cloud, Social (media), Innovation, Mobility (?!), and many more to come, the CIO is the youngest of the C-suite. S/he has seen a lot more discussion and debate around the role, responsibilities, accountability, KPIs and importance. It is probably in focus because every other CXO is now dependent on the CIO and the IT team to provide them with basic standardized and secure infrastructure to conduct business and consume information to stay successful in their roles.

This situation elevates insecurities and spurs demand for breaking away from the shackles that IT has bound the business in; restricted End user compute devices with lower juice and freedom in comparison to their home devices; lock down mobile phones with containerized security or locked USB ports and unrestrained internet access (I am a responsible manager of this company !). Revolt thus stoked attempts to surface with errant behavior (as seen by the CIO) and deployment of islanded cloud solutions.

The resultant angst creates perceptions of IT rigidity and bureaucracy which business users hate and seek approvals for exceptions to the rule book. Enterprise IT needs to be simple that does not require training; I don’t need a training program or manual to use technology for personal consumption; then why is enterprise IT so complex ? They forget the fact that enterprise solutions are limited by budgets, require structured data that lends itself to analytics, correlations, and associations for transactions, payments, and other business processes.

Everyone would however agree that all the applications can do with a dose of simplicity which is not an unreasonable ask. Does this imply that UI/UX should be a separate portfolio with the creation of one more silo CUO or Chief User (Interface/Experience) Officer, a person who shall be tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that systems remain idiot proof ? Or the task can be done by a specialist in the IT or any other team ? Such has been the rationale for slicing away the role of the CIO to create new micro but super-sized heads.

History bears the fact that the fancy and irrational paranoia to rechristen or create parallel roles has borne no fruit and almost all of them have been relegated to oblivion. The Internet, Cloud, SMAC, Security, Digital, and what have you fancy, have all disappeared after the title ran out of vogue with realizations that they were too small a role or responsibility to sustain standalone. The willing or grudgingly magnanimous CIO has taken them in his/her stride, not just surviving, but thriving and growing from strength to strength.

So when I see proclamations and hypothesis put across by the learned and opinionated, I wonder why do we get anxiety pangs ? Does postulation of such theories make them the reality for the CIO ? I have seen discussion, debate, instigative behavior, challenge, and provocation from peers and outsiders but never felt threatened in my role or tremors in my foundation of trust build brick by brick with credible delivery and dialogue. I believe that CIOs have nothing to be afraid of except their own fears towards their longevity.

And talking about no one wanting to be a CIO ? Probably the institute in question is going to have a big miss in the digital world !

First generation CIOs are vacating their positions; bridging the leadership gap

At the age of 25, I aspired to retire after putting in another 25 with a view to enjoy the rest of my life the way I wanted to with my friends and family. I did not want the compulsion to get to a workplace which expected me to put in 40 hours a week, but ended up demanding 65-70; not to talk about the travel and homework (as my kids called it) that took my attention post dinner when I was not traveling. I wanted to be the master of my destiny, time, and fulfil my bucket list before age related ill-health incapacitated me from living my desires.

It took me a year post the landmark and mid last year decided to hang up my boots. There were a few who preceded me in the same quest – most of them having crossed the golden milestone a little earlier. In the last few months I met many CIOs who want to take the plunge and get out of the rat race to do various things that they are passionate about. Most of them wanted a view on how green the grass is on the other side, pros, cons, challenges and opportunities; it’s evident that the trickle will become a flood sooner than later.

The CIO role has evolved and changed from techie to business leader with many taking on dual/multiple responsibilities; some have made it to the corner office and a place on the Board. With every new technology disruption irrespective of whether it impacts the enterprise and its customers, noise levels challenge the existence of the role which subsides as quickly as the hype is created by consultants, vendors and others. The business criticality of the role is now beginning to be felt and many companies are making efforts to retain their CIOs.

But what has been the trigger point for the CIOs aspirational breakout into newer horizons ? Why are they in droves wanting to get off the corporate treadmill into different roles ? They have started consulting companies, some joined hands with startups; academics has been the calling for a few, while the rest search for meaning in their life. Whatever they decided to do, the number of active first generation corporate CIOs, most of who started their professional lives at the bottom of the technology pyramid, is slowly and steadily dwindling.

Their experience makes them valuable contributors to industry bodies and associations where they rally resources and support to solve common problems. They are also active participants in Angel networks investing time, effort, and money into nurturing startups helping them take off and realize their true potential. Those who started work on succession pipeline and coach their teams to be ready for the eventuality are able to move off with relative ease with the knowledge that their legacy shall be remembered positively.

Everyone however has not been able to create smooth transitions; their teams were not perceptibly ready to take on the role. Thus the vacuum that they left behind was filled by external hires similar to a situation where the CIO would have left for other corporate opportunities. The interesting trend that appears to be emerging is to hire from big consulting and IT companies – practice heads, technology experts, and at times even senior project managers – each of them vying the CIO position and wanting the corner office.

Early results appear to indicate that successful succession planning and transition delivers better results for an enterprise with continuity of the journey; getting a seasoned CIO from outside fares better than a first time CIO from other disciplines despite their technical or functional expertise clearly demonstrating the complexities and nuances of a CIO role now having moved beyond technology. Organizations would do well to take cognizance of how the role impacts their ability to continue using IT as an effective tool to differentiate.

The CIO role and IT leadership is not just about the number of years of experience, it is about relevant experience that marries together technology, industry expertise, domain knowledge, people skills, and the generally accepted managerial skills. Current economic ecosystem with new disruptive business models necessitates the need for strategic CIO skills that were not so critical in the past. It is contingent upon CIOs to develop such skills in their teams to create a multiplier effect and also help them move off whenever the bug bites them.

If you are a CIO, get started now so that you can follow your heart when you are ready to graduate to the next level.

The CIOs job is so easy !

They had a new CIO and the IT team was wondering how he would be; the earlier CIO was a self-professed workaholic. A bachelor staying few blocks away, he would land up at the office during his morning jog. He would stay on until the morning review meeting with the team running over every activity of the previous day which they had to record in a timesheet. His need to know everything and micromanage every activity obsessively; the team feared his scrutiny. So when the new CIO was announced, everyone was apprehensive, can it get worse ?

The new guy came on board with his reputation preceding him as a celebrated CIO with much published success. Many of the team members had heard him in a few events and seminars though did not know his personality or working style. His demeanor was friendly and approachable which portrayed a pleasant personality. IT vendors spoke highly of his professional expertise and no nonsense way of working; he was tough with them and yet appreciated their contribution. This confused the IT team especially his direct reports.

The team of seven who ran the IT organization were coincidentally all of the same experience levels though across domains and technologies. Some old and some new, they had a tolerable coexistence with occasional professional conflicts resulting from overlapping responsibilities and dependencies on their individual success. Respective teams ran an efficient shop which the organization was proud of, with early adoption of many technologies. Their only challenge was an unfriendly image of IT which was growing rapidly.

The CIO met with the team collectively and individually within the first week to note their challenges and opportunities, aspirations and setbacks, and to understand the organization and team culture. He looked at their modus operandi, reports they created for internal review, processes and practices they had imbibed; he was quite happy to see their diligence and dedication towards work. He also found that some negativity was attributable to the earlier leader’s high technology orientation and disconnect with the business which rubbed off onto the team.

Soon they settled down into a comfortable rhythm, back to the grind, except that they noticed a subtle shift in the way business interacted with them. It was as if suddenly the enterprise had discovered some of the good qualities of the team that got beaten up every so often for operational failures, some of which had nothing to do with IT. Enjoying their new found status, the team gave it back in kind with positive collaboration towards solving business problems or finding new opportunities to win in the cutthroat industry.

Few in the IT team who were hired by the earlier CIO missed the daily morning grilling and technology sessions; they craved the micromanagement, instructions on how to do, prioritization of their activities; for them the regimented way had comfort, it took away the pain of thinking. They associated the new hands-off approach and delegation with lack of technical prowess and acumen; they saw the CIO attend business meetings, seminars, events, and take lead as the spokesperson for the industry which was in conflict to their benchmark of what a CIO should be.

They seeded thoughts across the IT team on the frivolous nature of their new leader and his style of operation; grudgingly granting the fact that business had begun to love technology and investments had gone up, these were anyway expected. For them success was despite the CIOs interventions and not because of what he did. The majority disagreed though had stray thoughts on what is indeed the role of the CIO and the complexity of the job which seemed to change dramatically with the new person. He appeared to have so much of free time !

I recently met with one of the seven who had taken on the role of the CIO stepping into the shoes of his highly successful boss. He was one of the persons close to the earlier CIO though not critical of the new one; he acknowledged the complexity of the role and the balancing act that it demanded from internal stakeholders expectations, team dynamics and its management, vendor ecosystem that needed periodic attention and finally the orchestration of all the components to keep everyone together aligned to the vision of the company’s future.

Few months into the role, he was struggling with the balance tilting frequently, the bar raised high; he was enjoying the challenge. He had finally found the answer to the question, what is the role of the CIO !

CIO & IT Leader Mid-life crisis

Considering sensitivities and association with personal lives that many would have to this post, I would like to start with a disclaimer. This is an assimilation of experiences and sharing from many people over a period of time and not a reflection of any one person’s life, journey, past or current state. This is a culmination of discussions and advice, coaching sought, mentoring done and observations. I hope that it will be a reality check for some of you as you nurture thoughts on your next career move or becoming an entrepreneur.

It was an evening with select senior CIOs who were at their prime of careers; everyone with 20+ years of experience was visibly sitting pretty in their roles with ample success. They had built teams that delivered to promise made to business; vendors loved them for their business and success stories that they contributed. Everything appeared to be going well for this bunch of elite professionals. However the mood in the group was did not reflect the collective success; it was not gloomy but tentative in the discussions.

1.      I have been working for over 25 years running the rat race; my teams run IT operations efficiently leaving me free to pursue my calling. While everything is going well, I feel an internal unrest and at times insecurity about what next ? Technology disruptions come and go, we embraced some, passed others, and my role has continued to evolve. Internet, Cloud, Mobility, Analytics, BYOD, Big Data, IoT, and what have you, challenged momentarily and then the enterprise adapted, so did I. All of this is now on autopilot mode, I seem to be drifting, how to I stay relevant ?

2.      The organization is changing fast along with the industry; with global aspirations the company is pushing hard, at times really stretching the limits of business and people elasticity. My team is under pressure to do more within finite resources, vendors are seen as inept unable to keep up with new opportunities while we keep pressing the accelerator. I feel inadequate at occasions, a feeling I never had earlier ! My team has aspirations to grow which can be fulfilled only with growth of the enterprise; I think that I need to change tracks and become an entrepreneur.

3.      Not having got what I deserved and alienation with some of the new CXOs, I decided to take the plunge and start on my own. Working as a consultant has not been easy; all the people who flocked around me earlier in my corporate avatar now seem to be distancing themselves; they politely listen to my pitch, then nothing happens. It’s been almost 2 years now and I am reaching the limits of my financial stability which is increasing my anxiety and stress levels; wondering if I should go back to the corporate world with a steady income.

4.      I have had a good time over the last decade with multiple roles with increasing responsibility; IT had a great run with the business contributing to the change and market leadership. The industry is now being threatened with some of the new digital disruptions; my management ignored the early signs and my pleas to change our business model. As a result, our growth has slowed down significantly; costs are being cut to stay afloat. There have been discussions on forced attrition and I am worried that I may be a target as a high cost resource.

Call it circumstantial, self-determined or self-imposed, these are real situations faced by many CIOs in recent times. Losing relevance, hurt professional pride, sidelined due to changing political dynamics, inability to stay engaged with business, insecurity driven by financial goals, the end outcome of these and more is that the CIO in his mid-life and probably peak of career is finding that while s/he has made so many changes to his/per persona with changing technology and business expectations, there is no certainty on his/her continuity.

No magic wand or formula solves these puzzles; mid-life crisis can happen anytime to anyone irrespective of personal and professional credentials. My suggestion is to always build a strong professional network in which you stand for a cause, purpose, proficiency, expertise, thought leadership, or just someone who people can reach out to should they have a need. People always remember you for how you treat them and they do reciprocate. They will open doors for you, and those who won’t, probably you are better off without them.

Get started, it’s okay to be afraid.

Dear Boss, you are fired !

Call it providence or just plain bad luck or for that matter the CIOs inability to get along with his newly appointed boss, things had just gone down over the last year. Every day was a new battle ground for him to conquer, every discussion was steeped in frustration, and every proposal an uphill task. The CIO gave it all his energy, patience, learning on how to manage difficult situations, advice received from peers and industry veterans to no avail. It did not matter what he did or did not, the relationship failed to bloom.

The CIO had been with the company for some time; he had seen his reporting changed multiple times with increasing dependency on IT creating success. Almost all his managers had taken a hands off approach with deference to his professional expertise. After all he had delivered in difficult times building credibility for his team. Business appreciated the calculated risks taken that brought value to the company operations and efficiency improvements. He was high on professional competency which made people listen to him.

The new boss was intrinsically insecure which made him a loud person always wanting to speak in every meeting, interrupting the flow of thought while attempting to make a point or two; he loved the sound of his own voice and even when none existed, created opportunities to talk about how great he was. His garish attire complimented his personality making him completely malfeasant. Without any qualms about collateral damage, he attempted to demean everyone around him, peers, subordinates and others.

The CIO and his new boss had a great start with the IT team wondering if the CHRO made a mistake or the CEO inadvertently or otherwise overlooked some basic principles while taking a decision to hire. Both were known to be well grounded high professionals; it appeared disturbing that they and the Board disregarded some of the obvious personality flaws while hiring for a senior management role ? It was really too much of a coincidence to believe that everyone missed out something so obvious !

The CIO had multiple projects underway with large investments with the best of technologies and partners who were selected with active participation from all stakeholders. As the days progressed everything that was working well and going in the right direction suddenly became a cause for concern. The new boss made mountains out of molehills and at times fabricated problems that were the one in a million exception to process. The screeching grew in crescendo drowning not just IT but even protests of the business owners.

It would appear that he was there to transform the entire business singlehandedly and fix the malaise that ailed the company of which there was plenty as he saw and fabricated in all directions. With Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) sown in the minds, the boss proclaimed that the company needed urgent transfusion of high talent and professionals to rescue the sinking ship. As the FUD factor took root, there was a general agreement that if the situation is indeed as bad, the saviors need to be expeditiously on boarded.

They came in droves and spread across the enterprise into every function; past nonexistent or minor accomplishments embellished with superlatives made the new team superheroes. They were showered with disparagingly high benefits to the chagrin of the existing teams who had no recourse having been labeled incompetent and responsible for the current situation. Soon the place was infested across layers with people that coincidentally worked in the boss’s previous companies, many of whom had been laid off.

It was evident that there was no reversal likely unless something broke colossally and even then it appeared that the team would get away with massacre. No one was sure of the source of protection they enjoyed, to brazenly get away with non-performance and break the culture that made the company successful. Wild rumors founded or otherwise floated the corridors crushing the already broken will of the people. The CIO after a huge internal struggle decided to let go and find peace of mind outside the jungle of hypocrites.

On another planet in a similar setting the end outcome was quite different; with sliding deliverables the Board woke up and realized that they had let the boss break some of the conventional rules and ethics that govern any company, like mass hiring from past employers. They challenged the boss and set a timeline to deliver to promise with obvious consequences for non-performance. Blaming the past did not hold any more water; he had adequate time and bandwidth to create the change which he had failed to.

Much damage later the inevitable happened: "Dear Boss, you are fired !" 

Don’t just survive, thrive in the changing world !

Last week when I wrote “CIO will survive …” I received lots of thank you notes and endorsements from CIOs and others, some with vested interests; I believe that this is the best time to be a CIO; technology has become pervasive, understanding of impact universal, democratization of information a gaining trend, and the economy finally looking up. The CIO will have to really do something dramatically stupid or put his/her head under the ground refusing to take any risk or decisions to fail disastrously. And then some had doubts too.

Enterprise dynamics have changed with upsurge in technology awareness that has had every CXO wanting a piece of the pie. It all started with the CFO wanting reports/analytics, then marketing attempting to push ahead in the social media and digital space, to supply chain, operations, sales, and even human resources wanting some attachment and visibility to the new world full of disruptive opportunities where success is not the only measure. Fail fast and fail often echoed in many discussions and meeting rooms.

Pressure also comes from within for few who want to keep their teams under their watch with clipped wings should they want to fly higher than their own flight. There is the aspiring and ready next in line: CISO, Head Applications, Head Infrastructure, Head Analytics, Head Innovation, and Head Customer Service, all wanting to displace the CIO from the mantle. What should the CIO do to stay ahead of this pack of technology professionals while running the race with peer CXOs without falling down and getting trampled ?

Lot has been said and written about behaviors, skills, expertise, knowledge, and temperament of the ideal CIO; in a perfect world s/he can balance business and technology while knowing as much about the domain as Sales & Marketing, Supply Chain, Finance & Accounts, Human Resources, and Customers as each function heads. At the same time s/he is expected to know about every new trend or technology that will disrupt the world today, tomorrow and a year down the line. Off course s/he should be a fluent communicator to explain all this in simple language.

How does the CIO thrive in such extreme conditions ? There is no magic potion, formula or wand, no Holy Grail or acquirable super power; no short cuts or fast track formulas. It is not a destination but a journey with milestones to achieve as you keep moving; a step by step process for most with concerted effort to stay relevant and ahead in the game. Many would want to create New Year resolutions; my recommendation after falling and getting up many times over in the last two decades is to get started and not link it to the calendar.

Here’s my view of the needs for not just survival but to thrive in an uncertain world:

1.      Hire your direct reports or for that matter others who are better than you and who will challenge you; given them enough freedom to move faster than you and help them find success internally. Coach them and learn from them; they will make up for skills that you don’t have and help you win.

2.      Seek feedback from your peers (internal CXO customers and externally other CIOs) who can amplify your success or make it look like a stupid expedition to nowhere. Don’t just have a transactional relationship with them; have coffee or drinks with them to understand their strengths and fears.

3.      Communicate success as well as qualified opinions about technology enabled disruptions which may impact your industry or company; communicate often and don’t wait for downtime, virus outbreaks, or plain simple bad news. Good news creates a favorable perception and energy

4.      Network across layers internally and externally; the more you network the better you are likely to get at connecting with people and that will help you create visibility for yourselves. Always respond to requests for meeting, information or business even if the answer is no.

5.      Build a brand, stand for something in the industry; don’t get lost in the crowd where no one knows you or wants to connect with you beyond the immediate business. Respect has to be earned for it to be sustainable; what comes with the position or title goes away with the position.

I could add a few more and I am sure so can you based on your frame of reference. This is just a beginning to a better tomorrow.

CIO will survive ! New Year Prediction or Resolution

With unnerving certainty as the year comes towards its end, everyone puts on their futurist hats and make profound pronouncements on what will happen. These predictions span an extremely wide range of topics which they run through; some are brave enough to review what they said at the end of every year to set a score for themselves which gives them bragging rights in social events or with the press. Every year people are also expected to also create New Year resolutions on how they want to change their lives.

The technology industry has its share of predictions from all kinds of industry bodies, research entities, observers, leaders, optimists and pessimists. Some of them are based on data while others are either based on experience or pulled out of thin air; the probability of getting it right is even. Trends on future technologies are always fraught with danger but catch the maximum attention and are thus popular. The rest and sundry are then divided into camps that prophesize about the rise or waning of the role of the CIO (http://cio-inverted.blogspot.in/2009/12/role-of-cio.html).

I will not delve into tech trends or predictions, they are kind of getting monotonous with many repeating over the years. Having been in the most criticized role of the industry – yes I am referring to the role of the CIO – for more than two decades, I love to read the forecasts about the future of the CIO ! It gave me immense pleasure to debate these and provide an alternate view of a practitioner especially to ones that gave negative connotations or implied diminishing importance or in the worst case the demise of the role !

The last few years predicted subservience to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) or the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) who were expected to take away significant chunks of the IT budget. The news spread like wildfire and had expert opinions and advice for the imminently vanishing tribe of the CIO. This is not foreign to the CIO who has been told in no uncertain terms for almost the last decade starting with IT not mattering, to every technology trend like Cloud Computing or Big Data & Analytics reducing the role to one of BAU or plain execution.

Almost all the CIOs read, discussed and then discarded the doomsday predictions and moved on with life. The moot point here is that I refer to peers, friends, acquaintances and professionals who are indeed CIOs in the true sense with a balance of business, technology and leadership skills, and not grown up or immature IT Managers masquerading as CIOs. Maybe in some distant part of the world the occurrence of such a phenomena threatened the immature or wannabe CIO; I know with reasonable certainty that globally there was no impact !

This year too I am certain that there will be perceived or real threats to the CIO; finding the needle in the Big Data haystack, or rain disrupting the hybrid cloud, or maybe outsourcing gone awry; I don’t know, my imagination isn’t able to postulate a probable yet unimaginable situation that will shake the foundation on which the CIO has built his/her career. There will be a big brouhaha with tons of advice by well-wishers on what to do and how to create a survival strategy; to the chagrin of few and surprise of many, this will pass.

CIOs on the other hand will be asked to create resolutions to stay aligned to business, get off their seats and spend time in the trenches, save the planet by adopting the cloud, buy the next best processor or flash disk which will transform the business, and follow the next buzzword, device or technology that will change the way the world functions. CIOs will be admonished and threatened by consultants, vendors, academicians, Tom, Dick … to pay attention to their verbalization to survive and stay relevant for the future.

I believe that this is the best time to be a CIO; technology has become pervasive, understanding of impact universal, democratization of information a gaining trend, and the economy finally looking up. The CIO will have to really do something dramatically stupid or put his/her head under the ground refusing to take any risk or decisions to fail disastrously. So go ahead and shun the convention, be yourself and take on the world; you don’t have to prove it to the world, only to yourself that you are a worthy CIO !

Last year I tried something different; took my predictions of a decade back and analyzed them. What I found (http://cio-inverted.blogspot.in/2013/12/predictions-from-2004-where-are-we-today.html) ?

Transformation or Business As Usual CIO

“This is crazy but I am loving it”, so said a CIO who had taken on the mantle to transform the way his company uses IT. He had been in the role for a while and his company was one of the market leaders in their chosen industry; they needed a strong dose of really good medicine to shape up the information foundation. Business welcomed him with open arms, he showed them what was possible, he brought all of them together to the common cause; the company began the journey with multiple projects starting in parallel.

The roadmap drawn and agreed upon, the company created a healthy pipeline of initiatives that would leapfrog the reputation of the company and the CIO. His team rallied around him as they saw a future with promise of good days to come. They believed in the vision and toiled sweat and tears to shed the inertia that was the hallmark of the company. Projects rolled and went live building credibility and adding fuel to the fire of desire; the going was good and everyone loved the orchestration that created music they had not heard before.

Another CIO on the table retaliated with her wisdom of focusing on one project at a time and doing it very well with no window for error. She was a veteran herself though not the visible types but staying in the shadows of quiet achievement. Her journey was of incremental innovation staying close to business and efficiently focusing on getting it right eventually made her slow and dependable. Growing with time in familiar territory her rise was a story of “I will do what the business wants even if it is irrational and requires maintaining status quo”.

Working with a monopolistic market leader, there was no real pressure for majority of her career, the global enterprise driving strategy and direction while controlling local innovation in areas that mattered. The rest was about creating solutions that worked to digitize existing manual processes. She had toiled diligently and grew through the ranks doing a fair job of maintaining status quo. By virtue of the years in the company her understanding of the business was good and she had built empathy which helped her.

The two were a study in contrast in their approach to partnering with business and how they created value for their respective enterprises. It was a function of market dynamics as well as individual desire and capability to be a transformational leader. One demonstrated passion and a sense of urgency while the other was happy to be an order taker and wait for something to happen. The group of CIOs present took sides with many inclined towards aggression though most professed that a middle path is the best approach to staying relevant to the business.

A few years later many of us happened to meet again; reminiscences of the last discussion offered an opportunity to check how both had done. The transformation aspirant had slowed down a bit though he was still miles ahead of the conventional pace of implementing technology solutions. He had more or less delivered to promise with the organization struggling to keep pace with the fast track path they had chosen. He was satisfied with the change he had architected and the fact that his company was a much sought after customer by many IT companies.

The lady was struggling for survival, her company having been acquired, new set of expectations, new pace of change, new set of deliverables, all of which were alien to her. Her incremental approach was seen an unaligned to new business speed and the urgency to expand market share and dominance leveraging technology. She was unable to step up having lived a life of a passive though reasonably effective partner to the business. Having worked for one company all her life, she was clutching straws to save herself.

Our collective wisdom could only recommend that she seek alternative pastures before she becomes irrelevant to the company. Her shallow experience did not give her too many choices which she realized. Someone suggested to the aggressive CIO that he hire her to run the operations and business as usual which she was good at. Today most CIOs do take on multiple projects which is the need of the hour to stay relevant; it is a rare luxury to not do so and fraught with danger for the long-term. BAU does not require expensive resources.

Where are you in the continuum ?

Action, Reaction, or Discussion ?

Discussion

The order was released to the vendor after multiple demonstrations and discussions with the business teams. Everyone agreed that any step is a step forward from their current reality; the vendor, IT team, and the users were excited with the new capability that was being attempted for the first time which would create a new way of working in the industry. The teams believed that all who mattered had been aligned with thorough groundwork done by the business and IT teams.

And then the CEO raised a few fundamental questions that setback the project to square one. Have you considered the buy-in across the layers ? Why will it create a better future for us when our competitors using the same solution have not benefited ? What are other industries doing and is there a learning that we can imbibe ? Who are on the team and who is not, are they the best we have ? Do you really know the reality on the ground ? The team intuitively knew the setback and irrelevance of the discussion at this stage. They had updated the CEO through the process, but no one raised the head to be shot !

Reaction

The marketing team proudly presented to the Executive Committee their success from a cloud based solution that brought them kudos. They had won the Social Media Innovator award; everyone applauded the success. The CEO turned to the CIO and offered his compliments to the IT team too. The CIO was going from pink to crimson and blurted out that he was not even aware of the existence of the solution. The CMO undeterred mentioned that the solution was so simple that it did not need IT help.

Recovering the CIO ranted on the collapse of governance and shadow IT compromising the information assets of the company; customer data risk and reputation were at stake should anything fail at the un-assessed IT solution and vendor. The CIO gave instances from the past and the industry that highlighted the business risk in such situations.  He then skilfully turned the situation around with an agreement to review, recover and secure the customer data while also offering to extend the solution to enable better analytics.

Action

Opening up of the market was an eventuality that everyone agreed to; everyone was discussing and debating the impact it would have on the industry at large and different segments of the market. Some companies made elaborate plans to leverage the new reality as and when it happens. The CIO benchmarked his company well locally and discovered an opportunity looking at upcoming trends in the mature markets. He presented the use case to the CEO and stakeholders who agreed with some caveat.

He pushed ahead with the business, the IT team and the vendor to deploy the solution seizing the early mover advantage and consolidated the market position with additional 5% market share over and above the already dominant position. The initiative was acknowledged by the CEO, the industry at large and strengthened the credibility of the CIO as a business leader rather than a technology innovator.

Where are you ?

Three narrations, each disjointed from each other, each happened to different people at different times, each created different impact to the business and for the CIO, each has learning for the business and the CIO. The stringing together of these portray how people behave to stimulus influencing the outcome and thereby the impact to the company at large. We all have gone through similar experiences and been in similar situations.  What would you do differently in situations given above ?

I hope that many will associate with the last one and a few with the first two situations. I believe that each situation challenges us and also gives us an opportunity to break the mould and do something differently. Next time take a step back and determine what step you would like to take. We all face adversity in our life; and so many times how we react to it will determine our destiny and outcome. Go ahead, exercise your choice.

Upward delegation

I had heard this term a long time back and then forgot about it; in those days my team was small and activity largely technical. I wore professional pride on my sleeve proclaiming that I could solve any technical problem, well almost any problem within the many technology domains that I specialized in. So whenever the team threw a crooked one at me, I would get my hands dirty and triumphantly bring out the solution. Many CIOs would refer to that era as the good old days, in reflection I wonder.

As teams got bigger and the focus shifted towards learning the business ropes across functions, the technology prowess diminished and I started farming the problems to either my team mates who were passionate about technology or vendors who were always happy to help; however partaking in their success still gave me highs. Time pressures ensured that these moments became far and fewer until I realized how easily I was goaded into taking on a challenge to find a solution, faster, cheaper, better !

I became wary of opening conversation lines, “we have a problem …” We ? But you just walked into my cubicle/cabin and we still have not exchanged pleasantries, so where did I fit into the equation ? You have a problem and you want my help in solving it would probably describe the situation aptly. You believe that my superior knowledge or problem solving ability or network of contacts could help resolve the sticky situation in which you find yourself. Such conversations were not always pleasant; my ego however needed the massaging.

And then about a decade back or so it hit me that I was the perfect dummy being subject to upward delegation. My entertaining the protagonists gave them an opportunity with a few words to transfer the responsibility squarely onto my shoulders. With me telling them that I will get back to them, they did not have to work upon it. If deadlines were missed, it was my problem; if the problem was escalated, it was back to my table where the buck lay and I had no way of passing it back to the originator.

Reading through Ken Blanchard’s “One minute manager meets the monkey” had my life run before my eyes. That and learning from another management guru gave me the mantra that finally extracted me out of the self-created abyss. I tried practicing the techniques I had learnt from these wonderful texts and guess what ? They worked very well indeed. They have now become a part of my working style and I guess that will continue to keep monkeys at bay.

It would appear simplistic if I said that the dialogue now starts with “You have a problem … and what do you propose as a solution ? If you are at a dead end, here are the resources that should help you find solutions. Come back within the agreed timeline and we can discuss your recommendations on how to solve the problem”. I am not oversimplifying the issue, this works almost all the time; yes there are exceptions or tricky ones which need a different and more direct approach.

“It does not require two (or more if the issue is brought by a team) of us to solve a problem or get something done. Either you (find a way to) do it or give up the task and let me find someone more qualified to get the work done. I have not had anyone take up the latter offer as yet. They typically do find a way to solve the problem. It is not necessarily incompetence that gets them to this situation, occasionally it is laziness and many times their risk-averse nature (fear of failure or ridicule).

Upward delegation is easy for everyone when their manager/function head lives in professional pride and arrogance. The true CIO leaders would do well to abstain and learn the art of monkey management. Be aware and careful in your retaining the problem with you, lest it consume you and a large portion of your time. Even if it gave you a kick or a high, it would be a very expensive way to solve something trivial for the company.

Reskilling for future

Every so often I read about the CIO role becoming redundant or the exigent need to adapt to the changing world. These thoughts and hypothesis are triggered by some disruptive trend in enterprise IT or some research house or professor based on their data arriving at conclusions. A lot of discussion and debate ensues with many CIO rebuttals and an equal number running scared to save their positions. Is the CIO placed in such a fragile footing that can be dislodged with such ease ?

So I started some research of my own reaching out to many peers to find out if they know anyone within their circles extending all the way to the famed six degrees of separation who was ousted due to any such tech or social trend which creates the hoopla. Spanning the globe and attempting to create correlations between technology lead trends and CIO movements, over the last year I have not yet found even one occurrence.  My conclusion was that there could be two hypothesis based on the data.

First, the CIOs took the challenges in their stride and integrated the disruptions in their own ways into their ecosystem. Depending on the industry, geography, size, market standing, profitability to name a few attributes, the CIOs adapted to the change and created equilibrium. Not too many CIOs of today are from the COBOL/Mainframe era, but many have traversed from Client-Server and 14.4 kbps modems to the current multi-screen hyper-connected mobile world.

The second hypothesis is that all the propaganda is created by attention seeking paranoid people who either want to make some money out of selling prescriptions to cure the nemesis or just hate the CIO. Umpteen attempts are made to sell their version of snake oil; and unfortunately a few end up succumbing to the FUD factor. This adds fuel to the noise until a new black swan is found and the cycle repeats itself.

Every role evolves with times; the triggers differ depending on the role. In the same period in which the CIO role evolved, the CFO role too changed from pure accounting to treasury management, compliance, and investor relations. No one discussed ad infinitum expectations or created models for change. In fact some CFOs also transitioned to becoming CEOs and so have a few CIOs in recent times. The factor by which pages have been filled with advice for the CIO to the CFO would surprise even the most outrageous guesstimate.

Darwin’s theory of evolution applies to every species; the same applies to a role or function too in the corporate world. Everyone has to adapt to change; for survival the species has to learn to embrace the new environment. Like the CFO did, the CIO has learnt to thrive in the chaos, sometimes revelling in it. Recent economic upheavals endowed the role of change agent on many CIOs. A few exceptional ones who did not live up to the challenge withered away into obscurity.

I believe that irrespective of the theme of the month, season or year, the perennial skill that will always stand good with every CXO is dexterity with business. Whether it is the internet, mobile, social media or commerce, micro to nano blogs, fads will come and go. Enterprises and business will acclimatize to some, sidestep a few, and struggle with the rest. The adaptive CIO will endure the onslaught, the unyielding will fade away into ignominy. The choice is there to make.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

Recent times have been interesting to say the least; according to industry news angel investors, venture capital and seed funding has been relatively easy to get by. Every business magazine and newspaper is talking about the young generation choosing the path less trodden. New business ideas appear out of nowhere and once executed makes one wonder, it was so obvious, why did I not think about it ? These are however the ones that succeed which I am sure are statistically very small compared to the ones that died prematurely.

The spirit of entrepreneurship seems to be in the air. Faced with mid-life crisis on unmet aspirations or growth, many are pursuing their dreams of being their own boss. So I decided to track down a few CIOs who ventured to find out what triggered their steps towards being an entrepreneur. Some ventured in related industries to where they were employed, while a few were totally unrelated to their past employers domain or for that matter IT. What came out was an interesting set of revelations.

A CIO with many years in the pharmaceutical industry decided to venture into healthcare, and so did another who was in the banking industry. For the former it was leveraging his business knowledge of the lacunae in the marketplace while the latter saw an unmet need to address based on his personal experience.

Both were driven by different stimulus, the common theme was however to get off the rat race. Both were good IT professionals and one would have assumed a journey from mid-sized company to larger enterprises was logical progression. So when a CIO approached me for advice on when to get started on an entrepreneurial journey, it was an interesting discussion.

We started with his current position, industry and economic impact, personal growth; all appeared positively stacked in his favor. Then we reviewed his quandary. His role had grown as a CIO, he was respected within his company, and everyone acknowledged his expertise. He knew it would be a difficult task to rise beyond IT even though he knew the business well. He dreamed of being a CEO and starting up on his own seemed to be an easy way to get there.

Risks were the economic uncertainty, funding required, and the financial safety that the family needed. Key requirements of an entrepreneur namely the vision, management skills, financial acumen, and marketing abilities were all present. The doubt was about timing, now or later. My advice to him was to take the plunge. There is never a good time like now, analysis will lead to paralysis.

Even in a job, every new venture has a risk element to it. Sometimes we embrace it and sometimes we dither. We call it change management. So why is change difficult ? Because we are the cause and the effect; we are responsible for the journey and the outcome. We compete with ourselves and have no other benchmark.

I guess it requires thinking in a different mindset to get off the ground. The chains of comfort will always hold back. The debate about when is the need for internal self-reflection and the answer is now. Do you want to be an entrepreneur ? As Charles Kettering the famous inventor said “I have never heard of anyone stumbling over anything while he was sitting down”.

Resetting Expectations

I met a CIO who was wondering what’s going wrong after having spent many successful years in his current position, working with the management team, implementing various award winning solutions, helping the IT team come out of the technology mindset to thinking business, and last but not the least making IT a business partner. He sought to unravel the mystery and find clues on what could be done to overcome the situation.

As the drinks continued to flow, I quizzed him on if he had made any behavioral changes ? Negative, he replied; everything was going smooth until recently and he had not made any changes to his modus operandi. So I dug deeper; where there any changes in the business scenario, industry, market position, anything that could have triggered the change ? He stayed silent for a while and then mentioned yes, the company had appointed a new CEO and thereby he had a new boss.

Every organization is dynamic and so is the team that makes the enterprise. Attrition is accepted as normal which brings fresh talent and leadership; in most cases new ideas and styles of management bring forward the strategic agenda of the company. When the new inductee is the CEO, there are always a lot of expectations by the stakeholders. The internal team(s) specifically the management team downwards has to make adjustments to new style, expectations and way forward. Few in discord decide to move on to greener pastures elsewhere.

However, there have been some exceptions where the company under new leadership has suddenly finds the management team not agreeing to the new direction. Most give the new agenda a try and work towards alignment. It is also possible that the CXOs may decide to move on citing working or cultural differences with the new leader. Rare instances also exist where the company floundered until the Board of Directors made corrections (we recently saw that for a large IT company).

As these thoughts ran through my mind, I realized that my friends’ company had seen good results in the last few quarters, which would imply that the new CEO was continuing the growth agenda. So I prodded the issue further; had his relationship with his peers changed since the new CEO took over reins ? Not really he quipped, they continued to work with him like before; his new boss seemed to have some strong relationships with some of his peers and transactional with others.

Opening up, he stated that he was being challenged on some of his decisions more rigorously than before; had to present a lot more justifications on any project, and was asked to review the IT strategy and its applicability going forward. The strategy was discussed and approved only a year back, so why the review again ? The CIO wanted to start polishing his resume again.

So I had to hit him hard with reality. If the new manager wanted additional details on initiatives, it would indicate that he wanted to update himself and validate assumptions. If he has to justify every project, why is he worried if due diligence has been done fairly and equitably with business participation. Every strategy including business strategy requires periodic review, so where was the problem ?

I believe that a dialogue is the means to build the relationship rather than see it as threatening credibility. No two people think alike; so to assume that past way of working will continue to yield dividends is foolhardy. It does not matter where you are in the corporate hierarchy, change is inevitable, and we have to learn to live in the rain.

(Why) Should CIOs be interested in LAN cabling or UPS batteries

I attended a CIO gathering which had an UPS battery manufacturer as one of the key sponsors. The presentation discussed the merits of one battery technology over the other; they offered a promise of higher reliability that matters to any CIO. So I started asking the half a dozen CIOs on my table if they knew which batteries their UPS in the data center or office premises used. Only one knew the answer.

A few days back a senior editor of a respected publication that also conducts small gatherings of CIOs asked me if I would be interested in attending a dinner sponsored by a structured cable vendor. He spoke in jest and wondered if he would be able to gather an audience numbering double digits. I kind of concurred with him as cabling was the last thing on my mind. I don’t remember when was the last time I reviewed cabling standards or attended a meeting with a cabling vendor.

I must have written many times on the new age CIO and the transformation over the last decade. I think that petabytes of information exists on this subject which any search engine will throw up. No event is complete without a discussion on what are or should be the CIO role or priorities. Everyone agrees that the IT leader is a business leader first and technology expert later. As a leader, s/he is expected to demonstrate behaviors no different from the CEO, CFO or any other CXO.

The CIO through his/her team gathers expertise on various technologies and related domains. These teams typically along with principal vendors, external service providers, and system integrators form an ecosystem that provides the basic and advanced solutions that enable and empower any enterprise. In every enterprise the deputies who form the IT Management and Operations team ensure that every day billing happens, manufacturing plants hum, goods leave the warehouse, call centers receive customers, sales people sell, finance teams collate figures, external partners get information due; in a nutshell, the world continues to move on despite random failures that occur at all levels.

In today’s world where most technology components (be it hardware, software, or connectivity) find it difficult to differentiate approaching commoditization, choices are influenced by existing long-term relationships between enterprises or people, or a significant price difference. Quality of Service is the only other determinant factor. New disruptive paradigms in the last few decades have kept every CIO on his/her toes to keep the enterprise competitive and current. But then there are some who haven’t.

So coming back to our battery vendor and the cable manufacturer, are these critical and high on the list of priorities of the CIO to demand his/her attention ? Should s/he undertake strategic meetings with the Management or Board on kind of cabling is being laid or the merits of one battery technology over the other ? What would happen if the battery bank failed and servers went down or storage disconnected due to a loose patch cord ?

I believe that the IT Infrastructure Head and his/her team under the CIO are tasked and are or should be empowered to deal with this. The ball however always stops with the CIO being answerable. But then every CXO depends on their teams to deliver and does not necessarily get down to micro-management. On an analogous note, is the CMO in trouble if lights on an outdoor hoarding go off ?

Preaching to the CIO

The other day I attended a congregation of CIOs with a dozen odd vendors sponsoring the event. It was a gathering of 100 odd CIOs who took time off on a Saturday to amongst other things patiently listen to the spiel. With representation across industries and a mix of senior and evolving leaders, the learning and networking potential was expected to be high. The investment of time from these leaders carving out a portion from their personal time was expected to yield reasonable value.

Now every sponsor vendor always seeks to disseminate information on their offerings and pitch their wares to every target segment. Traditionally this has taken the form of slide presentations that no one wants to hear; at times even the presenter is struggling to do justice to the content as s/he is not the creator of the slides which have in many cases lost relevance. Futile attempts to change this model of engagement have left the participants numb as they grace such time with their physical presence but rarely with the mind.

Before embarking on the merits of doing business with their company, setting the context with the audience has always been seen as a good idea; and this is what they started off with. The first one off the ground started with data from respected research companies.

What is the business reality today ? Not necessarily in order of priority, they are: expectations of growth, exploring new markets or products, driving operational efficiency, cost containment, IT lead innovation, and customer centricity. How do these impact the CIO ? The CIO is expected to be a business leader shedding off the technologist skin; s/he should transform and work with other CXOs, overturn the iceberg of IT expense by reducing the operational expenses and allocating higher amounts to new initiatives. Slides titled “Changing Role of the CIO” advised the need to wake up and get going. However, the best part was how their old offerings now enable this shift.

Storage solutions, Security service providers, system integrators offering RIMS, data centre solutions, virtualization solutions, and even network solution providers found a way to connect the dots and make the CIOs appear like cretins and kids in school who needed to be reminded of how their performance will be measured. Best part was the repetition of content with the context lifted from the same reports.

We all know that CIOs are a patient lot and do not ruffle feathers easily. But when speaker after speaker repeated the cliché, the unrest in the room began to take the shape of a mutiny. Half way through the program, sparsely occupied seats greeted the incoming speakers; those present had no interest and thus engaged each other on the table in discussions detached from the proceedings in voices loud enough to send a clear message across. Over coffee the vendors were chastised for their immature behaviour with a clear message:

We know our reality better than you ever would; we transitioned to being business leaders a long time back; however you are still trying to sell to IT Managers believing that the past is frozen. We did impact the expense line and it was not about IT expenses only which is why you believe that we are not connected to the reality. Our CEOs and other CXOs do not look at us the same way they did a decade back; they partner with us, seek our advice and work together towards the common business objectives. We are not enamoured by hardware, software, new technology, we seek to solve real life business problems, sometimes with help from technology. So, stop debating the changing role, it happened while you were busy trying to figure out why there is no traction any longer with the CIO. It is you who need to change to align to the new age CIO.