CIO is a verb, not a noun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trusting Cloud Lords

Everything is moving to the cloud if not today it definitely will in the near future, so say almost all the learned consultants and everyone who has an opinion on IT. Every large IT vendor has invested in creating their own cloud offering and acquired many start-ups who loved the dotcom like phenomenal valuations with their offerings. Private Equity, Venture funds and Angel investors have bet big on this new found paradigm that once again threatens to change the world (the last time was with dotcoms a long time back).

Different models have emerged with software, platform, infrastructure, storage, what have you, being available as a service with enterprises being pushed towards perceived agility and budget shifts from capital investments to operating expenses; pay as you go, variable cost, scalability, numerous benefits being touted with all kinds of engagements and service models. They have indeed been beneficial in many cases, disruptive in some cases with licensed software model being challenged.

Retaliatory steps from big packaged software vendors did not deter the cloud providers which continued to get funding and mushroomed all over. Unable to beat them at the game, all of them have now joined the bandwagon with their own offerings in an attempt to retain the customer. Their agility has remained a challenge competing with the nimbler start-ups. They do have the big budgets and deep pockets to squeeze out their smaller competitors and if that does not work, acquire them.

When I recently came across news that one of the prominent niche cloud players was going bust, it had my undivided attention. The provider had many partners big and small selling their solution and many major enterprises using it. The service offering was good, the price attractive and their growth meteoric. They had good funding available through the rounds. And then suddenly they announced that they had run out of cash will be winding up in two weeks’ time asking customers to find alternatives.

Not too long ago another cloud platform provider had shut shop with 30 day notice to their customers. Their largest customer had pulled the plug; that implied more than 50% of their revenue disappeared. They were smaller and not highly visible, and thus their demise did not create many flutters. The business impact to many of their customers was severe as they were left scurrying to protect their business and revenue; in a few cases survival. There have been other insignificant ones who did not really take off, becoming an epitaph in history books.

Can and should enterprises and business bet on offerings from cloud providers ? Is there a way to safeguard the adverse impact if the company went kaput or even got acquired ? Should companies put their operations or for that matter IT and information assets at risk with cloud lords ? Legal contracts and SLAs rarely offer a solution despite the lawyers debating every clause and punctuation. The impact whenever it happens even with an outage or a security compromise is real and threatens reputation beyond the revenue or profitability.

I do not believe that anyone can ignore the clouds and continue to work with the conventional models of yesterday while preparing for tomorrow. Reality is that clouds will continue to be disruptive, their value propositions worth evaluating and experimenting with; the pragmatism required is to ensure that the advantage it creates to either business or IT is taken into consideration along with the risks and potential impact should there be a need to migrate across public clouds or transition back to private cloud.

It is evident that there is no ubiquitous solution that can be applied to all cases. The CIO with end accountability along with business stakeholders should highlight the benefits along with the risks of the step towards clouds. The mitigation plan should be tested like all Business Continuity Plans (BCP) and Disaster Recovery (DR) are executed periodically. This is a necessary inclusion now for every cloud service that an enterprise subscribes to. Costs related to such a plan should be factored into the initial budgets when calculating the benefit of the cloud solution.

Go for it, you have nothing to lose and everything to lose depending on how you approach it; if you don’t, the business will always find a way to get it leaving you to manage the mess when things go wrong.

Risk, Reward, Recognition

He took a calculated risk with a new solution from a start-up vendor for a critical part of the business. The project started well and then ran into huge issues during a recessionary trend that hit everyone; under pressure the users started taking a cautious approach to every bit of functionality and wanted every remote condition part of the solution. Everyone who had signed off on the risk matrix now conjectured about the decision putting the CIO in a spot which lead to his movement.

Fast forward to another era, the CIO now with another company took on the challenge to rescue the underwater reputation of IT. He took a bold step to choose a smaller and relatively unknown vendor for an even larger business critical project; the selection process was unquestionable with sign-offs from all CXOs. The project went live with flying colours and was recognised by the users, the company – locally and globally, and acknowledged as a paradigm shift in the industry.

News about his risk ability and success was coupled with the many awards he and his team had collected. The business too was bestowed with many industry awards as they leveraged the technology solutions with due credit to the IT team. The Midas touch was such that even though the company had normally been on the leading curve of technology adoption, now it was a playing ground for every IT company wanting to invest and explore use cases that the weak hearted would shy away from.

Through the years many started seeking coaching and mentoring from the CIO; he acknowledged all, was ready with a piece of advice, networked across layers with ease, growing in stature feeding on the recognition. Industry bodies and forums wanted him as an advisor, conferences vied for his participation; everyone was satiated with his response and participation. He became larger than life in his embodiment of success and the persona became bigger than the person.

One fine day he sold the Ferrari like the Monk from the famous book and gave up all the glitz and fame to start all over again. There was shock and rumbles of “something must have gone wrong; after all he was taking too many risks; it was too good to last”. Puzzled people who knew him or thought that they did, queried “Why ??”. A few bold ones asked the question in vain, others wondered, the void he left behind was too large to fill and thus remained a vacuum with his absence being felt by everyone.

I caught up with the CIO who had retreated into a dark hole, asking the obvious hoping to gain some insights into the compulsions and rationale that had many wondering. He quizzed me instead to postulate the reasons of which I denied him the possibility instead pushing for words from his mind and heart. I found it hard to believe his story but it was his story only in a way that he could think of the future. I sought his permission to write about it which was granted. In brief I reproduce the same.

I thought I was invincible; I always took calculated risks though they appeared to be undue from the outside. Every success fed my ego, my success went to my head until I failed; I could not believe it, I tried justifying it to myself, oscillating between being the victim, blaming circumstances and everyone else. Until I realized that it was not about others, it was about me. That made me introspect on what success means to me; I analysed my situation, my behaviour, sought feedback, and decided to use it.

I shared my ideas with my teams and the business who took them on as their own thereby reducing the risk of failure. Success brought rewards and recognition which slowly and steadily began to once again boost my ego and self-esteem where I was becoming uncomfortable with the situation. I had been to the peak and had fallen hard. The heady feeling of invincibility beckoned again and was difficult to resist. So to put to rest the temptation, I quit; to start all over again. I feel at peace and excited to once again conquer new peaks !

Risk is a 4 letter word

It was a conference of supply chain heads who had gathered to discuss and debate their collective future. The themes revolved around agility, efficiency, constraints and opportunities; all in a day’s work for a CSCO or a Chief Supply Chain Officer. I was invited to talk about IT lead supply chain innovation and why CSCOs need to partner with their CIO to be successful. It was a good feeling that other functions are looking at IT and their CIO to help them win.

The conference agenda was similar to what CIOs typically see in an IT event; a few vendor sponsors who want to sell their wares, in this case warehouse automation solutions; select IT vendors pitched in to discuss Warehouse Management and Transport Management Systems. Then there were a couple of luminaries from the supply chain world who were looked upon as beacons of success to share their winning formula. And finally a few odd men like me not from the domain to talk about collaboration and synergistic success.

The half day ended quickly enough which happens when you are having fun; the evening transitioning into an informal gathering of the speakers and the participants. CSCOs are a smart lot who know what they are doing and how to get there. They also acknowledge internal and external dependencies that aid or curb their success. IT is one of the key tenets to their capability to execute; thus there were a lot of questions to probe how CIOs perceive the partnership.

We all know that most CIOs are always willing to partner with other CXOs to create change; when there is equal or more commitment from the other side, it is a recipe for a winning team and results that matter. As the discussion unfolded I heard some good stories and some filled with angst and agony. A mixed bag if there was one with fingers pointing in all directions. So I started digging deeper.

A CSCO began narrating his journey towards creating improvements in warehouse processes with some IT enabled automation; the journey took twice as long as promised and thrice as long as expected. He also talked about his struggle in getting his CIO to agree to evaluate a warehouse management system. The CIO kept throwing back questions and never took the steps forward to understand the challenges on the ground. He had almost given up his quest to use IT for competitive differentiation and then budget not being a constraint started creating shadow IT organization to fulfil his need.

Another one talked about his CIO being the best partner creating quick and dirty solutions to solve every business challenge despite budget constraints; he praised the IT teams pragmatism and alliance with the supply chain team and warehouse managers to improve inventory turns and reduce labour required. Analysing the situation with some additional questions, it was evident that the two CIOs approached the opportunity differently.

Apart from everything else that includes alignment, business understanding, etc. that everyone talks about as qualities that a CIO should imbibe, the risk ability of the CIO has direct correlation to how often s/he is able to create a WOW! moment. Everything safe equals no risk; and no risk also mean that innovation takes a back seat. As long as the CIO plays safe, s/he is bound to slip on everyone’s perception. Business will find a way to overcome; the CIO can decide to be a part of it or will sooner or later find him/herself relegated to the background.

I believe that CIOs should give up inertia and work on their risk ability to stay successful. I close with a collectible quote from Keith Johnstone: Those who say 'yes' are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say 'no' are rewarded by the safety they attain.