Companies take inordinately long to take a decision and then set unreasonable timelines for execution

There was a sense of urgency towards getting the system up and running and rightly so considering that competition had already launched; the industry had seen cutthroat tactics to stay ahead of the game as the gap between similar offerings had reduced to barely a few months. It was thus critical for companies to shed their legacy way of working and embrace agility; this was well acknowledged in however some parts of the organization were unable to rise to the occasion thus slowing down the company, putting pressure on IT to deliver to an unreasonable schedule.

Scenarios like this play out across domains and geographies with disruption not just within the incumbent players but also from digital startups who are turning business models upside down. The universality immerses itself until someone breaks out and creates a scurry of activity by others to eliminate the difference and then again uneasy calm prevails with the cycle repeating itself many times over. In a hypercompetitive world that is a way of life, but unpardonable for business as usual decisions.

The CIO was asked to evaluate technologies for a business problem that faced the industry with regulators breathing down their necks. Cost of non-compliance was high and so was the budget for implementing the solution; however it had a clear ROI of less than two years. Since the project was important, rather than handing over responsibility to one of the team members, the CIO decided to work with one of this trusted team members. They got started with vigor and enthusiasm that pleased the business teams.

Global and local vendors reached out to strut their wares, wanting to impress their differentiators and suitability to the proposed opportunity. The specification document was well laid out on intent and requirement leaving little doubt or ambiguity. The evaluation process started with extensive demonstrations, transparency and rigor, with formal and informal customer reference calls. No one could have faulted the process; vendors, business users, most applauded the professional approach to doing business.

Three months later the CIO and his protégé with the business head presented their evaluation to the Management Committee. They were given a timeslot towards the end of the meeting since there were other important matters to discuss (like the next offsite for the senior leadership, the first item on the agenda apart from the usual monthly sales performance). Delay in the proceedings finally gave them 10 minutes which they accepted as the next meeting would mean a delay which they could ill afford.

As they unraveled the solution the CFO caught a number and decided it was too expensive irrespective of the payback period and asked the team to come up with alternatives. The fact that competition had already deployed from among the suggested solutions did not matter. Resigned to the fact that they will have to come back another day, they thanked the audience and left much to the relief of some of the members who wanted to go home; the CFO’s parting shot to the CIO: find open source options.

Time passed quickly, the following month was the offsite and subsequent month was half yearly results meeting. The CIO and business head decided to approach the CEO for assistance and seek approval by meeting individual members of the Committee. The CEO listened and asked them to get approval from the CFO before taking it to others; few weeks later they were in discussion. The CFO reviewed the proposal, understood the rationale and asked them to refine the numbers and put it up in the next meeting.

D-day arrived, the presentation received the usual slot and were welcomed into the Boardroom with tired smiles. They went through the pitch, the proposal given in-principle approval, the financials to be validated by Finance who were also tasked with negotiations. Vendor Account Manager having moved on, the proposal past its due date, the vendor was unwilling to offer the same price leaving the CIO, Business and Finance teams at a roadblock. So they went back to the Committee to plead for additional funds.

Six months later and a year from the time the project was conceptualized, they concluded the deal. Year-end pushed the start of the project by another month. By this time everyone’s patience had stretched to a break point; so the project plan was trashed with a view that it should be done faster than the original estimate of 8 months. The business wanted 5, the CIO was willing to push for 7, the vendor knew it will take 8 months realistically, but no one wanted to accept reality putting the project to risk.

This predicament presents itself in almost every project across companies !

What happened in the end ? Come back next week !

Setting expectations is as necessary as manage them for everyone !

He was technically sound and had a proven track record creating and managing IT infrastructure in his chosen industry across multiple entities; recently he had moved into a position of power and influence in his new assignment and was enjoying flexing his muscles. Reaching out to vendors and others in the industry he announced his intentions engaging them in discussions that had most of them wanting to be part of future plans. After spending more than two decades in the industry he had aspirations of making it to the corner office.

The new company needed the fresh look he brought to the table; his hands-on approach is what was required to move them to the next level of efficiency. The company had consistently approached IT as a necessary evil to spend only when absolutely necessary resulting in decade old servers, geriatric laptops and desktops, and teenage neglected applications. The management took a penny pinching view of IT budgets always wanting to defer, delay or procrastinate on decisions after squeezing the proverbial last drop from vendors.

His demeanor driven by professional knowledge bordered on loud and brash, at times tended towards arrogance. To his credit he built relationships and trust quickly with the management getting their ear and then toeing the party line; with his ability to manage relationships and not being disruptive to the culture, he became part of the inner circle getting a view to the workings of the company though unable to change the decision making inertia. So he decided to enrol external help which he hoped would trigger positive change.

The hired external consultant provided a reality check and direction to take which he reviewed with his internal peers. Collectively they had a limited view which stalled progress; they knew what needed to be done but did not know how to get started with internal buy-in. Sliding timelines favored no one and the report finally elicited a view from the management chastising him for not delivering what was required. The absence of an articulated and documented expectation, it was like hitting a moving target in the dark !

He attempted to calm ruffled feathers on both sides though finally bowing to the management view with his subservient survival instinct prevailing over his professional pride. Capability and self-belief is a function of experience endorsed by past success. Professionals take a stand with conviction driven by confidence that is built on a foundation of deep expertise in a specific area; shallowness of bravado is quite evident when challenged. He backed off and tentatively offered to build a bridge which would save the situation.

Status quo dragged on for a while with silence and no action leaving the organization in suspension and users becoming restless after having seen a ray of hope. The company used to suboptimal process and technology solution continued to labour with obsolete and incomplete solutions while the industry was fast pacing ahead into a new world of digitally enabled customer engagements. For the newbie, it was a struggle for meaningful existence while wanting to change the outcomes he knew were possible with some of the recommendations.

Any strategy or plan with no resources, will, and buy-in to execute, is waste of time, effort, storage space and paper ! Contextually the difficulty was the management’s unwillingness to define what is required while expecting not just the necessary but the best of outcomes. There are many avenues to explore and break the deadlock, advice that coaches and consultants can offer to overcome the situation. Conventional wisdom will preach that the service provider to take a step backward and find a way to resolve the stalemate.

If you were the protagonist, what would you do ? Would you take a stand and risk losing your job ? If you were the management, would you give up your high chair and create a tripartite agreement on expected outcomes ? And if you were the consultant, how would you resolve the impasse with no access to the management and dependence on IT to find a solution ? If we analyse the situation, every stakeholder erred in the beginning by not defining the baseline or setting detailed explicit expectations. It’s a lose-lose scenario now !

Was the ending happy and satisfactory for everyone ? Coming soon …

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 !

Does BI require Business to be Intelligent ?

“This is awesome, I love it ! Let’s make this live next week; and don’t tell me that it cannot be done in that timeframe ! After that we will work upon models for the other parts of the business and zap them with data that they have never seen before”. So said the CXO who had just been given a demonstration of the Proof of Concept that the vendor and the IT team had developed to highlight the capabilities of the tool. The Business Intelligence lead tried to get in a few words sideways and was brushed aside brusquely with a wave of the hand.

The company had history of failed projects and challenged BI implementations with business users running berserk. A new CIO had brought some semblance of order to the chaos with an IT governance framework. With some fresh talent as the journey progressed, the information needs started getting addressed which in turn raised the expectations bar. Earlier attempts at BI had faced multiple challenges which resulted in their being shelved. The new resources the CIO brought in had a pedigree of success and the result was visible.

In the initial stages of education the primary requirements revolved around reporting; can fragmented systems deliver consolidated reports from the data warehouse ? Any amount of persuasion would not deter them from their resolve for reports; so the first set of milestones did reports that did not require large investments in tools or great amount of intelligence. Some of the newer business users who had experienced a different reality in the world outside craved for dashboards and analytics. They were heard but not prioritized by the powers that be.

Seeing an opportunity the BI Subject Matter Expert worked with the business members to define the landscape and put in the extra effort post work hours to build the cubes and models. He sought new tools which were granted and with renewed vigor he created working prototypes that excited him and the business users who helped him. Tentatively they approached the self-professed technophile CXO who they felt would be excited with the new way of looking at information. They were however not prepared for the reception they received !

The CXO in his inimitable way was seen as the person who exuded overdoses of confidence and threw technology jargon liberally in every meeting. Know it all, been there done that was what he wanted everyone to believe; for the knowledgeable it was massacre with unrelated keywords interspersed with unverifiable anecdotes and visions of peaks achieved in the past. He was closed to ideas from others, derogatorily critiquing the world at large for not believing in him. The team feared his acidic behavior and kept away to whatever extent they could.

Recovering from the ridiculous, the BI SME stood firm that Proof of Concepts are exactly that and they cannot be deployed or scaled. He explained that for analytics to work effectively, he needed to build the model, test all data sources for efficacy, check for exception conditions and stress test for load. Almost all – barring the sycophants and the ignorant – agreed with him silently, putting the CXO in a spot. Taken aback not used to being challenged, he directed one of the minnows to ensure that his wish and command be done and huffed away.

Put in a spot the team member frantically looked around for a solution to his predicament. Gathering information from multiple sources to create a strong argument, she was able to enroll the business champions into her cause; they too wanted the new BI solution. It took some time and effort by the business champions to educate the CXO who reluctantly agreed to let go of his tantrum. Back on track the team worked together to build the solution which promised to open up new possibilities for the business.

The generally accepted new belief is that business knows what they want; the level of awareness and understanding has improved. Decisions are now information and data driven; BI solutions deliver this and more. Change management is a critical success factor towards adoption and the journey on the evolution curve. The data deluge and associated tools to manage them has created new challenges and opportunities; the ability of enterprises to leverage these will be determined by their maturity towards analytics.

The BI solution was a great success; everyone loved it. The CXO was last seen ranting about why the team did not use Big Data !

Tale of 3 CIOs, people join companies, people leave their bosses

X had just completed 4 years in his role and grown to take on additional business responsibility. He had built a team which worked across business units and corporate IT on the forefront of some of the new technological innovations. Accolades came from peers and industry acknowledging his ability to take risks and succeed. Life appeared to be going well for him and he was enjoying his professional life. After a few quiet months or was it quarters, he was suddenly looking for a change with agitation that was alien to his happy go lucky nature.

Having spent almost a decade in the company, Y had seen career growth that would be the envy of many; his profile encompassed local and global responsibility. Staying with one industry through his career made him a specialist of sorts and he became a star. His efforts outside of work also made him quite popular in his chosen field. His company had maintained leadership in a competitive industry locally and globally carving a niche with their products. Out of the blue one fine day he called seeking greener pastures.

He was a jolly good fellow and so said all of us ! The life of any gathering, ready with a joke (sometimes too quick), Z had steadily risen through the ranks with some help from his Mentor. Through the 5 years in his company, he had strengthened the foundation and completed seemingly impossibly difficult projects that his predecessors could not. Promoted every alternate year, he had taken new challenges as they came and successfully dealt with them. Over a drink he broke down seeking to leave the company that launched him.

The 3 incidents above spanning 3 different companies and 3 different industries had the 3 CIOs reaching out to me within a span of few months. Maybe it was coincidence, but it was almost as if there was concerted action against my former team mates. All of them had high levels of anxiety and all of them wanted to get out as quickly as possible. Their stories were quite different and then they had many common elements too. They were victims of the same malaise which appeared to be more widespread than reported.

Take the first case, the company management reins passed from founder to the next generation. X found joy working with him as his new manager with an Ivy League pedigree used technology as a native. He drove the company fast and furious, recklessly at times as seen by the old school, he wanted to get somewhere in a hurry. X attempted to run with him and soon found himself at the receiving end frequently irrespective of root cause. He soon realized his non Ivy League or named Institute stature made him an outcast in the inner circle.

Y had done well through the years growing from mid-level to heading the function eventually. His sharp and quick eye for detail made him a popular choice to be included in any team struggling with a tricky problem. The company saw CEOs change thrice over his tenure; all of them nudged him to greater heights. Law of averages caught up with him; the latest CEO hired across layers from his previous company sidelining most old-timers. Y used the last resort calling global compliance which saved his position but killed his career.

Z had a new manager who was task oriented; the resultant change in workload gave Z a high. He rose to every occasion and delivered to promise. Some of the initiatives were industry firsts giving the company a competitive talking point. He was outspoken which was not a negative, his quick wit and mannerism portrayed him of lesser maturity. His work was commended but his manager thought he needed to grow up. Thus despite the success a search for a senior leader above him was launched forcing him to introspect and seek options outside.

Success is no longer a guarantee for continuity; political hues and cronyism seem to be the new mantras required in large doses. Managers are looking for comfort within their teams in new environments thereby throwing enterprise culture and values out of the window. In the quest to succeed, tolerance to such behavior is accepted as part of the game. Collateral damage with some exits does not appear to perturb owners and Boards. By the time the realization hits the company, the damage is already done which takes a long time to recover.

Lunch-time networking causes indigestion

The new email is a retrograde step and not an upgrade; life was so good with the older system. What is happening with our IT ? The world is moving ahead and we are going backwards. How do you expect us to be effective when we cannot even communicate with our customers ? I don’t know what to do, probably this year again thanks to IT we will have some unhappy customers !

I had approved the investment almost 2 months back and you are telling me that we still have not placed orders ? How do you expect us to work ? What is the problem ? As the Business Head when I have given the go ahead who can challenge the decision ? Why are you trying to save a few thousand dollars ? Do you know that the loss to business due to this delay is in hundreds of thousands ?

These are a sampling of lunch time ranting as described by CIO friends. One of them was a good guy, dedicated, focused, always ready to please; his team imbibed the same ethos and worked hard, always available to the business. He was successful in a typical way with conscious budgets and a fair set of initiatives that kept the engine humming. Inorganic growth and lateral expansion caught him capacity constrained which was beginning to hurt. He did not like the lunch time discussions anymore which ended up embarrassing him most of the time.

A long time back one of my managers gave me an interesting insight; we all typically have our office lunch with our teams. If you look around in the lunch room you will see a finance table, legal table, an IT group, and so on. These groups get together automatically and enjoy shop talk and extended work discussions over the rice, curry and bread. In open organizations there is a reserved table for the Managers where you will find the CXOs quietly having a meal with small talk. Most employees stay away from this table and likewise the CXOs.

My manager who became and stayed a friend believed that the world should not be polarized this way. He too ate at the staff canteen whatever food was served and consciously sought new groups every day to share a meal with. Likewise he expected all of us at C-level to break our comfort zones and network with staff across levels and functions. The discussions though initially polite became a tool to measure the pulse of the company. Employees warmed up to the idea and based on their ease opened up with some of us.

Observing this through the years I realized that the behavior is universal; birds of feather flock together. People gravitate into groups with familiar faces and shun the relatively unknown; if they find no seat within their groups they rather sit alone and not with another group; they did what they did, it was automatic. I saw similar behavior in social gatherings, networking dinners and wherever people got together. Off course there are exceptions who love to meet new people and merge into any group easily.

Practicing what I learned whenever possible, the initially forced experience soon made me welcome into any group. No walls went up or conversations died when I joined a group for lunch. The connect with people created empathy that I could use in various discussions around problems and opportunities as well as driving change which came along with the interventions IT created. We connected beyond work related transactions and built many friends who light up when we meet even in a casual encounter on the streets or a mall.

One of the answers would be that it is all about anticipating requirements, partnering the business and being proactive in your discussions. If you are a good CIO who is aligned to the business, and connected to the customer, blah, blah … lunches can be fun. Your customers’ perceptions are your reality; any change takes a lot of effort and consistency. Another view is that some people will never be satisfied whatever you do; so don’t get impacted by all these ramblings, manage them separately and keep going. Go and sit on another table rather than get indigestion.

Formula One IT

Congratulations for being the chosen one ! The business likes your solution and we are also fine with the technology, functionality and customer references. Now that we have an agreement on the price lets quickly get legalities and other formalities out of the way. The process for PO creation and other paper work will take another couple of weeks. The question is how quickly can you allot resources to our project ? I do not believe that we need 3 months to get the solution off the ground into a pilot or for that matter go-live.

Any objections to aggressive timeline expectations from the customer are brushed aside citing urgency in business need and the dynamic business environment. Software vendors sheepishly accept the modified forceful project plan which assumes turnaround of all documentation from users with no delay or for that matter existence of clean data. Idealistic as it may appear both sides approach the project with enthusiasm that is outward for the vendor who is happy to get the business. D-day arrives and the project kicks off with much fanfare.

This situation has occurred a lot more often than gets visibility; time to market expectations from commercial-off-the-shelf software implementations (leaving aside ERP type solutions) are getting shorter. Most of them offer standard process automation or functionality that is typical across companies. Thus with basic configuration and some integration the anticipation is that the solution will be up and running in no time. Reality however bites every time with outcomes that do not live up to such expectations exposing the fallacy in the approach.

Analyzing scores of such projects undertaken by many of my peers the discovery was not very surprising. The facts were largely consistent and created a picture which when played back to the CIOs made them cringe and accept it. There were reasons and there were reasons; they were not the usual that have been published by various groups who track challenged projects. In almost all cases these failed to achieve timelines as well as deliver the functionality expected and the CIO ended up with the short end of the stick.

To begin with the evaluation of available options extended to eternity with high business expectations wanting to select the perfect solution. Comparing apples with pineapples creates a situation where the end result morphs from being a custard apple to a jackfruit. Moving from one demo to another scope expands to encompass all exception conditions. Sanity prevails after some time with CIO or business CXO intervention to bring back expectations closer to reality. Elapsed time through evaluation now puts pressure to achieve results in impractical timelines.

What started as a city street drive has now converted into a formula one race ! We need to finish the journey in the fastest possible time; get your experts, put more people on the job, why does hardware delivery take so much time, put it on the cloud. Configurations cannot take that long, it should be possible to reuse expertise from other customer projects. We are not that different but we are different; what we meant is not what you have understood, you don’t know our business and we don’t have time to educate you.

Time keeps ticking with business participants unable to adhere to unworkable timelines resulting in missed milestones and angst on all sides. Reviews soon become infrequent with everyone wanting to just finish the project with redoubled effort. The cascading effect leaves everyone frustrated and wondering why they accepted the stretched targets or ever got into the project in the first place. The formula one race with no equipment, trained drivers and crew suddenly is back to being what it should have been, a street car race.

Accepting reality brings everyone back to what they should have done to begin with; plan with real assumptions, acknowledge dependencies and the need to follow a workable model with good project management practices. It is good to take time to find the right solution which needs to be given due time for deployment too. I believe that CIOs need to continuously educate business users not to apply consumer principles to enterprise software deployments. They need to push back even at the cost of being unpopular or appearing unaligned.

Sometimes they should also be ready to go to a formula one race !

And they lived happily ever after !

I had this interesting debate with an aspiring CIO on my earlier blog “The Perennially Dissatisfied User”; he talked about some organizations not really having this problem where the users kept on finding faults with everything that IT did. They are a satisfied lot if not delighted; at least they do not berate IT on everything and there is an equilibrium and harmony between the teams. The camaraderie lends itself to discussing what works and finding opportunities to solving business problems or creating new ideas to explore.

Though far and few there are such organizations who have found peace and a process design to make things work collaboratively rather than be at each other’s neck all the time. IT is seen not just as a service provider, but as an enabler and partner who can help them achieve success. Not that they do not have conflicts, they are healthy debates and resolve them to move ahead or agree to disagree. There is mutual respect for the profession and competency each brings to the table. How does this state of being come into existence ?

The foundation of any such partnership is laid over a period of time; it is about creating an engagement process which outlines the boundaries and acknowledges expertise where it exists. The governance is democratized in a way that everyone understands the implications and there is a platform to resolve open issues. Across organization layers exceptions are discouraged and do not have to become you versus us; there is no across the table creating two sides, there is only one side which benefits the function and company.

Business processes and customer expectations are open to discussion and so are technology choices; the final decision and accountability are clear in their design. Sign-offs is achieved in time or if there is a delay everyone is agreeable to the rationale. It is not about whose budget it is or who is funding the project or purchase; it is about what is the value the solution creates for the enterprise. It requires consistent maturity on part of everyone to ensure that this works. Thus success rates are higher than industry benchmarks.

There is clear communication of expectations, be it hardware standards for new devices or restrictions on access to applications or internet. Decisions on solutions are based on merit and agreement on the metrics used with everyone collectively aligned. Thus everyone works towards the common goal and thereby leaving no room for fault finding should things not work out. Whenever priorities are competing with each other for budgets or resources, the group is able to reason it out and come to an agreement on the way forward.

Escalations for exceptions are pushed back to the business and IT leaders to resolve. Policies are simple yet effective in their intent and well understood by everyone. They are living documents which are frequently reviewed against changing business environment as well as dynamic technology landscape which shifts expectations and the way of working. This keeps IT infrastructure and environment simple to govern and manage. Shadow solutions are rarely seen in such organizations with high levels of engagement being the norm.

Sounds too good to be true ? Organization culture plays an important role in facilitating this. I have seen some enterprises embrace this so well that they become the poster boys of how to use a specific technology or solution. Business CXOs talk about success stories and benefits accrued acknowledging the role IT played in their ability to win. The CIO persona and behaviour plays an important role and s/he shuns pure technical discussions and focuses on how to help the company stay a leader. IT vendors love doing business with such companies.

Is a transition to such a nirvana state possible ? Can sustainable change be made for good ? I would say “conditions apply”. To begin with the organization culture has to be collaborative and progressive; the company should be profitable with the appetite to spend, else the discussion will always be on cost. The CIO should be articulate, know the business and have skills to keep his team cohesive and motivated. When all these factors come together then you have a recipe for success that everyone talks about !

My Boss Changed

She joined a company, she liked the person who interviewed her and described the role, she build relationships and was comfortable with him, she like her team and they like her back, she start working on the agenda she wanted to drive, she build relationships within the company and gained acceptance with her peers as well as layers of the company, she was settling down into the zone and everything appeared to be going great. And then her boss changed; could be a peer getting elevated or a new hire, it doesn't matter.

Her castle suddenly appeared to be like a pack of cards precariously balanced which could come down collapsing at the slightest hint. The new person had a new agenda, a new style, a new set of ideas and notions on how your department should function, a new direction, and a new set of KPIs. Almost everything she painstakingly built now appears to require change. She looked around to find that for most of the organization there was no issue with the new scenario, it’s just her and a few.

Her meetings with the new boss were a discussion in stretching the boundaries and defining the new ropes; she was pushed into new corners and suddenly everything that was working was being labelled as needs improvement. Her old boss sympathized with her but leaves her to fend for herself. He had only broken the news to her a few days before the organization change announcement saying that it was for the larger good of the company. She felt like the sky was falling but maintained her composure.

She was a star performer, which is why she were hired; the company needed a strong leader to drive change and she delivered to promise and more, her credibility preceded her joining and she ensured that it held good against all measures. She contemplated a change and banished the thought quickly; she was a fighter and a survivor, she also had a lot happening and many initiatives riding on her shoulders. The situation required a different approach that eluded her. So she started spreading into her network to seek help.

Everyone told her that she needs to understand the personality and drivers of her new boss and then work towards adapting to them. Like she manages her team, she also needs to manage upwards. After all, the new person too is a professional and has a pedigree because of which he has been hired. There may be challenges, there will be opportunities too; it is up to her to decide how she want to use them. She was disheartened, her professional pride had been hurt; she had attempted steps with limited success.

Organization changes have a way of upsetting the best of plans; at times these are internal, they could also be driven by external, environmental and industry factors. Leaders have to adapt to the situation and change strategies and plans; it is foolhardy to stay emotionally attached to them. Do not take it as a personal or professional affront; it impacts your ability to succeed. Appealing to your previous boss may project you as a weak individual. If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude.

I have observed many good CIOs unable to accept and start believing that their winning formula is being challenged. Some take the drastic step of leaving the organization to find greener pastures elsewhere. The escapist route may bring short-term personal victory, but it gets you back to the starting point where you have to build credibility all over again. Those who are smart build relationships to overcome the situation and recreate success. I believe that the choices are driven by personal values.

Don’t drift, make a choice !

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. 

Making hybrids work

When the phenomenon called Cloud made appearance on the IT landscape, it promised to disrupt many existing paradigms. You don’t need to buy any server hardware and storage, capacity is available on demand and you pay for what you use. Applications with licencing models that can adapt to business cycles, Everything-As-A-Service (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and many more), no capital investments, only operating expense. It was touted to be the silver bullet to solve all the budgeting challenges of the CIO including getting rid of the CIO.

Evolution brought competition and a hysterical wave that caught every Vendor, System Integrator, Research Analyst, and the CIO alike. New terms were coined to depict the key attributes that the cloud promised: agility, flexibility, resilience, scalability, and on-demand. Alliances of hardware, software and networking vendors vied for attention; everything was cloud-enabled or ready. When corporate data centres could not be classified, the term “Private Cloud” came to rescue.

It brought some comfort to the CIO that s/he was not seen as “not doing the in thing”; almost everyone now had a cloud, private or public. From there rose the challenge of making them work together. After all if some apps are on the public cloud while the transactional systems or other apps are still in the corporate data center  they need to inter-operate  Tools and technology solutions attempted to bridge the chasm; everyone had a variant that did something better than the other confusing the heck out of IT teams.

Someone christened the new reality of the coexistence as “Hybrid Cloud” and the term has stuck on. For simpler solutions, applications and processes like collaboration, sales force automation and the likes of Human Capital Management, the challenge was easily overcome by most. Pervasive challenges of security, data residue, service levels, interoperability between different clouds, or difficulty in migrating from one service provider to another, cut across every offering.

Evolution of the services and technology has not been uniform; a few still struggle to offer a consistent experience straddling between the data center and the public cloud. A CIO narrated a harrowing story of his journey towards making a hybrid cloud work to offer a consistent and uniform experience to his users. The vendor in question either due to ignorance or over-enthusiasm promised everything to be possible and the delivery team struggled to get even the basics working.

Step by step through the early stages of making things work, they did not just lose time, the arduous journey had the IT team struggling to explain to the CIO why the project was running totally off target. Most were not technology challenges but oversell to the CIO on what would work and how it would. Straddling the physical and cloud world to offer a seamless and uniform experience to users did pose a few challenges. I guess all clouds are not created equal as competing solutions did offer to expectation.

The CIO called for a review and experts from all over the world joined in to rescue the situation. It was a one-sided affair with no real solution emerging to the problem at hand. The CIO concluded with the pilot being disbanded. The resultant credibility loss alienated the vendor in no small measure undoing a lot of the good work that they had delivered in the past. It was almost like the nursery rhyme in real world “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put the vendor back on track again”.

I guess when it comes to hybrid, cars work and have achieved a maturity level that brings consumer confidence; with clouds I guess there are still challenges to overcome and technology to reach stability and interoperability. Until then stay cautious and don’t bet on everything to work the way it did in a pure cloud or in-house model. The user experience with hybrids can be a dampener on the enthusiasm that vendors and system integrators want you to feel while they experiment at your cost.

P.S. it would appear that the next wave promises Autonomic Computing, anyone game ?

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.

A Strategic Discussion

Recently I had a very interesting discussion with a CIO friend. She is by most benchmarks a successful CIO who has a credible record of delivering many solutions that business has used effectively across her many assignments. Over a year back she joined a company that is well established though does not score well on IT maturity. She took that as an opportunity to make a difference and help them bring mature IT to drive business value. Her road appeared well charted with buy-in from the Executive team.

The initial period or the “honeymoon period” was a dream run getting to know the business, the initial plans and fixing the basic stuff typically referred to as the “low hanging fruits” or “quick wins”. She brought the IT team together and with frequent meetings, coaching and guidance had them working towards the defined common objective for the team. Initiatives got off the ground soon enough with her team working with vigour to achieve success that had eluded them in the past.

Some of her direct reports who were new to the team; they quickly learned the business with help from other team mates and discussions at the ground level across operations. She started reaching out to her peers to gain their confidence and plan for the long-term. The projects were handed out to project leads to go and engage the business teams in a dialogue to discover current process as well as identify the critical success factors. The team charged by initial success garnered by the quick wins and the changing perception decided to approach the next level of managers and operational heads.

The IT team scheduled meetings with the operational managers to discuss the strategic intent of the new initiatives. Their progress was far from satisfactory; they had too many questions on why the need for change, what will happen to existing data, how will it impact the people down the line, etc. They were obviously not aligned to the direction agreed to by their bosses. This disconnect caused by lack of information flow downward caused heartburns on either side. The CIO attempted to moderate the discussion with limited success.

Some of the teams had no inkling of the new initiatives; looping back to business leaders the discovery was the fact that there was no consistency in communication. Some had informally spoken to their direct reports while others expected the CIO to drive the change initiatives. She was expected to broadcast and/or communicate the decisions, rationale, plans, motivation, methodology which they had endorsed. As the initiator of the proposed change the ball rested with the CIO. Not a healthy situation as she recollected to me.

She took charge and formulated the communication that was approved by the respective business heads. Then she realized that if the communication did not originate from the business owners there was a risk that the project will become an IT project with reluctant participation. Back again she coerced the CXOs to disseminate the same. The tone of the discussions now was different with the endorsement of the respective department heads.

Strategic discussions can only succeed when both sides have a complete agreement on the process and the outcomes. For the CIO to make progress, it is imperative to get the message across the layers of the functions which are impacted directly or indirectly. Any gaps here will lead to unaligned objectives; I believe that CIOs should manage the process such that they are able to create the ownership and urgency towards the meeting of objectives. My friend did make progress until one incident.

In a meeting with one such middle manager where she too was present, he got the meeting started on the wrong foot. He said "Are you folks really ready for a strategic discussion ? First fix the email system that keeps breaking down before we can get down to serious business !". Not that the email system had failed in the last six months, the experiences of the past continued to color the perceptions of progress negating any gains. And that is a story for another time.

The CEOs pet project or the Emperor’s New Clothes

It was evident that the project wasn't going anywhere in a hurry even though the CEO had endorsed and inaugurated it in a gathering of all key stakeholders. It was (had become) the CEOs project which no one believed in. The floundering state of affairs had the IT team and the CIO wondering on the steps they could take to come back on track. After all abandoning was not an option considering the large sunk capital investment and the CEOs belief. The CIO started asking around in the network to explore possibilities.

Almost a year had elapsed since the licenses were procured and the hardware installed; everyone had delivered to promise more or less within the timelines they had agreed to. The IT team had done their bit and ensured that everything worked the way it should. None of the business heads or the key users believed that the priority set by the CEO mattered; their level of thinking was far removed from the ideas perpetrated by the CEO. This disconnect resulted in sporadic half-hearted participation.

The IT team discovered bottlenecks in the master data, correlations between systems and disparate formula for the same KPI across functions. Getting everyone to the same platform was resisted actively or met with indifferent attitude and claimed conflicting priorities. The CEO in the infrequent status meetings pushed the CIO and the team with little change in outcome. The CIO explored all advice thrown at him and decided to take a few bold steps to recoup the situation.

The starting point was revisiting the outcomes expected from the project; what is the need ? Who benefits from it ? Do expected key users feel threatened with the new process ? Is there a problem with the technology ? Did we get the architecture right ? Are internal and external resources deployed the best ? Were timelines set realistic ? The answers were what he thought they would be. Everything was fine, it is just that people nit piking and splitting hairs, blaming the tools and the result.

So what were the real causes of the lack of traction and belief ? Evidence pointed to the fact that the CEOs thinking process was ahead of the curve which his team found it difficult to connect with. Sycophants in the team prevented others from raising the issue and everyone was on a merry-go-round. End result, the CIO was left with the orphan baby crying for attention and an adverse impact on his performance bonus. So he had to find a solution and that too quickly.

Working diligently through the layers with open communication flowing through the hierarchy, the IT team and the partner worked step by step resolving all direct and ambiguous queries. External Subject Matter Experts were brought over the next six months to educate the users on why the CEO defined path was the way to go in the future. Global benchmarking helped in reinforcing the way less trodden locally. Finally one business head saw the value and agreed to be the guinea pig and the proponent.

The BU head worked with the CIO for further six months reaping the benefits and promoting the cause to his peers who grudgingly began to acknowledge the benefit. The CIO pressed hard this time and found no push backs  The acceptance and traction was good. Three years since the start and two years from the time the problem was elevated, the solution was a big hit. Everyone quoted it in internal meetings and external seminars as the strategic differentiator. People raved about it as one of the best implementations.

Incidentally the CEO had moved on just when the project started turning around. His last words of advice to the CIO that he believed in the solution, he should continue to pursue it. We all see such favorite projects of CEOs and other CXOs faltering after a great pomp and show. They take away a lot of energy, budgets and resources to see through to fruition though rarely anyone wants to challenge the need or the relevance at that time. The emperor’s new clothes will always be a parable with learning for everyone.

Role of the CEO, Part 2

Sometime back I was party to a great discussion between CIOs on how to ensure that their boss the CEO is an ally rather than an adversary or a bystander. The CIOs were pragmatic in not expecting the CEO to become tech savvy or understand why server sizing or database tuning is a complex task or engage in a discussion on the merits of NL SAS on the SAN box. The discussion focused on how the CIO should approach the CEO; s/he is a customer as well as the final decision maker and that can make things complicated.

Today most companies have the CIO directly connected to the CEO with IT becoming an integral part of running the company’s operations. CIOs played different roles during the economic uncertainty some gaining in prominence and others falling behind a bit. Measurement criteria changed for some CXOs and market dynamics transformed roles and expectations. The CEO under pressure to deliver growth and whatever expectations the Board and shareholders set for the management in turn raised the performance bar.

The CEO as a consumer of information started demanding ad-hoc and complex analysis of historical information and future trends that sometimes challenged imagination. Doing more with less never went away, the constantly shrinking budget and stratospheric expectations created a precarious situation for the IT team and the CIO. Challenging the CEO on his need and at the same time ensuring that one experience does not influence the other decision created a tightrope like situation.

Customer is always right is a maxim has always been professed until one company decided that the customer does not know what s/he wants; so let’s tell the customer what she would need and s/he would happily embrace it. We all have been at the receiving end of this for a while now; only recently the sheen has been wearing off. But can the CEO be convinced using such a simplistic premise ? Every leader intuitively knows what they need to succeed, the CEO is no exception.

So can the CIO be the confidante to the CEO and give him/her the inputs s/he needs in various scenarios and business situations ? Should the CIO even attempt to get to that position ? What will be the acceptance of the CIO in such a role by other CXOs ? Will the CIO be able to live up to the demands and pressures of being a shadow to the CEO ? Is the CIO being too ambitious in his/her reach ? And how many will be able to get there and stay there ?

A CIO flooded with operations will rarely have the opportunity, this requires the CIO to first create a strong team which frees him/her to engage with CXOs on what matters. The CIO also needs to imbibe all the soft skills that help him/her form lasting relationships and manage expectations. Finally the CIO needs a support ecosystem to consistently deliver to promise. Only then can the CIO can expect to even begin taking the baby steps required to engage the CEO in a way that brings the two together.

Coming back to the CEO as a customer, every consumer of information starts with a broad idea which takes shape with discovery of various facets as the solution evolves; this is what we in IT call iterative development or scope creep. It takes a huge amount of effort along with loads of credibility to challenge and engage constructively without getting beaten up. Having said that I believe that CIOs should explore this uncharted territory; if done well it takes the relationship to the next level which is a great place to be.

Building a partnership

It does not matter if the vendor is big or small, local or global, domain centric or broad based, custom solutions developer or provides package implementation services, hardware products or software licences, or any kind of service provider; they all want you to believe that they all are worthy of being anointed as a preferred and trusted partner to your IT and business initiatives. Everyone without exception believes that they imbibe behaviours that qualify them for this elevated position.

I am not sure when the transition happened but sometime in the recent decade the term partner replaced the vendor or provider. I think people went back to basics in the early part of the millennium driven by the slowdown, started focusing on leveraging existing ones and building new relationships. Business was tough to come and choices plenty which is where people made the difference. This subtle transition eased into our way of working and no one objected to the new reality.

Today we have partners providing total outsourcing, specialized domain specific or business process outsourcing, desk side support, apart from the various categories listed above. Many of these who have put in their heart and blood into delivering products/services irrespective of the contract or commercial arrangement are truly partners to a CIO and the enterprise; my respects to them. We also have partners providing toner cartridges, USB sticks, printing paper where price is typically the determinant factor !

Recently a CIO friend narrated a story where she met a new vendor where the discussion started with the intent that we would like to be your partners in success and not keep it transactional. The CEO and the team downward demonstrated high passion and commitment at the discussion table. They got engaged in a few projects as a precursor to what could be bigger things and achieve the status of a trusted partner. With many vying for the same business, it was seen as a prestigious win.

The slip between intent and execution has many horror stories spread across the industry. Senior teams from vendors attempt to build relationships with the CIOs, the sales team works with the domain specialists and the next level, and the delivery team which typically has no connect with the process starts discussions with the project managers and the users of the proposed solutions. And that is what transpired here too; one project was delivered well enough, the other killed the relationship.

What appeared to be a dream run became a moon race with surprises all through the journey ! The initial effort estimates did not fit the project reality; either the team who did the initial study did not understand the complexity and expectations or her inputs were ignored in the proposal. So there was an attempt to restrict scope to fit the resources allotted. That upset everyone involved; the CEO made a visit, so did others involved in the initial discussion. Much water had flowed and a dam was essential.

Restoring some sanity to the project with the vendor CEO approving the additional investment and some hit on the CIOs side too, the project looked like being back on track; but that was a false positive. The lack of trust made success elusive; the potential partnership gained adversarial tones with each pinning the blame on the other. It took some effort to bring everyone to a common understanding and move ahead.

Partnership is built over a period of time and is a function of delivering to promise consistently across the layers. It takes effort to sustain it and requires investments and transparency from everyone. Everyone hates escalations which result due to lack of communication and assumptions. In my experience I have found partnerships that have stood the travails of time when there is no gap in expectations on both sides. Sales transactions do not build partnership, they only address tactical need.

The long and short of IT

People with goals succeed because they know where they are going. This has never been so true in the current economic uncertainty; companies struggling for growth put their employees in peculiar situations. They are expected to deliver monthly and quarterly targets whereas the discussions are expected to be strategic and long term. This is challenging for the CIO and the IT team where typically projects do last beyond a quarter (with agile exceptions) and investments require a 3-5 year horizon.

When I met with the management team of a large enterprise vendor selling applications and technology solutions, there was a paradoxical discussion on my long-term needs and their short-term requirements. They wanted me to present the Business and IT roadmap for the next 3 years and initiatives where technology was a critical component, which I did leading to discussions on technologies and partner solutions that would become projects in the future. They had their team and many partners listen in.

The sales team and some of the leaders from partner companies wanted to know who they should connect with in my team and when they can come over for a detailed discussion. They came in different avatars, confident, cocky, arrogant, tentative, all types made up the discussions on the possibilities. I intuitively liked some, was intrigued by a few and did not see value in the rest keeping in mind my priorities.  Their interest was to strike at the opportunity and if they can meet their monthly or quarterly targets.

I don’t mind helping when I can, however the gap between the talk and the walk was evident. How can a discussion at two different planes be aligned and create value ? My timeline was not aligned to their urgency to sell. So I advised them which some took in the right spirit while a few found it difficult to accept that I did not want their solution/technology. They espoused the efficiency, potential saving, the best in class nature of their wares showing incredulous surprise that I was rejecting their pitch.

How do we align expectations that all stakeholders have the same shared vision of the future and the direction being taken ? What should CIOs do to set the groundwork ? It is a difficult discussion in many cases with hierarchical selling that puts pressure on the CIO while s/he has to balance the set of internal priorities and needs. Balancing tactical with the strategic is a fine skill that very few are adept at. To have a bird’s eye view with ability to pick the target like an eagle separates the good from the best.

I have found that in most cases plain speak is the best option; be upfront with what are your priorities, what you need, how you will evaluate the options across different vendors; essentially what is the decision making criteria and the timeline, who will be involved etc. you get the point. Most vendors find this transparency a great starting point and they are willing to work with you. There will be exceptions when they try despite the open communication; they need to be managed with a firm hand.

So coming back to the discussion that transpired; it took some effort to not get upset with the blatant disregard for the stated intent and objectives. I could finally prevail upon the recalcitrant vendors to align to my priorities and reality. Over a drink later in the evening there was camaraderie between us and everyone acknowledged the candidness though they had found it difficult. Does it mean that CIOs do not always do this or vendors need to learn how to listen better ?

Rotten Eggs

The craze for new gadgets and devices appears to be growing day by day. Emotions run high for some iconic devices and brands where people are willing to endure cold nights and mornings waiting for the store to open. The queues are visible across countries, so it is a global epidemic. These are normal consumers vying with the technophiles to be the first to own the product !

I own multiple devices including a few from the company in discussion, but never stood in queues to be amongst the first, though I know a few who did. I have always waited for a couple of revisions or generations to pass by before acquiring the new iconic device; the primary purpose seems to be to be seen displaying it prominently or announcing it by the footer in the email.

I get carried away; this is not about new devices or the long queues, but about rotten eggs. In China, fans threw rotten eggs at the stores when the company announced to teeming crowds who queued up for long hours that they will not be selling the much awaited device; for the security of their customers who turned up in large numbers, proclaimed the announcement. Did they come armed with eggs waiting for the store to open ?

The incident triggered many wild thoughts. Is the idea extensible to other irritating behaviors from say IT vendors who take the community for a ride ? What if every time there is a breach of trust, can I shower the vendor sales or support teams with choicest tomatoes (I am vegetarian you know) ? Is this a feat worth emulating when projects do not meet timelines or when basic requirement misunderstanding by ignorant consultants becomes a change request ?

It does have finality to the statement it makes. If I don’t like the outcome I am going to demonstrate my ire.  Sil-vouz plait, it may aggravate the situation, but it does create a warm, fuzzy and a lighter feeling to have vented out the frustration and anger. Will the slinging match create a better relationship between the CIO and the other parties ?

Last week, working on a post contract changes to some service delivery benchmarks, I had an urge to pelt a lot of stuff on the negotiating party. My primal fantasy had to be suppressed to stay within defined corporate behavior and work on the issues step by step steering it towards desired outcomes. Civilized acceptable behavior does not provide latitude to hurl objects when events do not take the turn we desire; even when the consumerization of devices brings unwelcome distractions.

Relationships are built over a period of time, but they can be strained for a long time in an unguarded moment. This applies to any relationship, peers, bosses, team, vendors, family, and friends. CIOs forge relationships possibly with a larger set in comparison to some of their peers. Success is highly dependent on setting and managing realistic expectations. Service delivery and change management are key tenets of the IT agenda.  

After all we don’t want to be at the receiving end of the rotten eggs.

The Power to say No

Over the years for the business dependence on IT has grown to reach a state that it is unimaginable to think of any business running without IT. I am sure that we can start creating a list of exceptions which may be different by geography or economic classification, but predominantly every business operation uses IT to sustain, grow, diversify, improve, analyse, and a lot more.

Over the years the IT Head also transformed through the journey working lock step with the demands of the organization providing the necessary solutions, sometimes wildly successful and challenged, delayed or unsuccessful. Through the era the IT leader kept moving outward from the glasshouse to the factory, warehouse, corporate office, and field and wherever the internal customer was present, and then beyond to where the external customer lived.

Over the years as the transition occurred to the CIO, the discussion changed from the nuts and bolts, three letter acronyms, servers, routers, hardware, software, networking, to business process, order to cash, procure to pay, customer analytics, increasing revenue, strengthening the bottom line, creating competitive differentiation, managing supply chains, collaboration with the suppliers and customers, new business opportunities, until the difference with other CXOs started blurring.

Over the years one characteristic that has not changed is the acceptance of demands = reasonable or otherwise, requirements - rational or not, time pressure to deliver - urgent or not, budget cuts - downturn or not, accepting everything business desired, spoke about, or demanded. The IT function was expected to stay subservient to cajoling, coercion, ransom, threats, with the proverbial sword hanging inches from the neck; if you cannot do it, we will find ways outside to get it done a la shadow IT.

IT was not expected to challenge, they were expected to deliver; whether it is a report that no one sees, a quick fix that stays in UAT for weeks beyond the deadline, systems that saw usage drop faster than the stock market in the downturn, one liners or vague or assumptive requirement definitions, or in recent times consumer devices to be connected to corporate networks. A challenge or denied service was sacrilegious and a pile of turndowns could lead to “lack of alignment” to what business wants.

With increasing comfort with business, conviction, and communication, CIOs have looked the other in the eye and engage in a non-confrontational debate which has germinated into acceptance of the CIO viewpoint and its intent only to the best interest of the enterprise. It’s a newly discovered facet that boosts confidence and fuels itself; the spark is now traveling virulently. CIOs have created the freedom to say “No” to the unreasonable and ill-defined.

When any discussion is based on data, facts, and sound logic, the outcome normally takes predictable route. The acceptance of the CIO into the “Inner Circle” is happening; the retention requires practice of democratic principles. CIOs should exercise this power judiciously and use it to create a better solution or paradigm that encompasses hitherto unused tenets. It takes some wisdom to differentiate between the need and the want and not play favourites; it is always a bad time for dictators who can be overthrown quickly.

Go and exercise this choice, you will be surprised !