The King is dead, long live the king

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vendor lock-in

Kids ask the most interesting questions; they make you scratch your head and think. I had this experience recently when interacting with a gathering of B-school kids. The occasion was an event organized by the students with the industry exploring insights and networking. One such session was around the challenges and opportunities for the CIO. The CIOs presented were heartened that the role is one of the aspirational careers.

The question that stumped some of us went something like this. CIOs take decisions on IT strategy and architecture thereby setting the foundation of the technology that will enable the enterprise for a long time. So when selecting an ERP or similar system what are the criteria to select one over the other considering that once a specific technology is chosen, it will stay for a really long time. It’s like a lock-in because no one changes ERP systems normally. How do you then manage cost escalations and support ?

Now as I know the question is largely accurate portrayal of reality. Every enterprise when selecting an ERP has painstakingly reviewed most options before assigning the family jewels to the solution. Such magnitude of projects is always launched with fanfare with senior management speeches and project naming ceremonies. Committees are formed with best intent and sooner or later the project goes live. I am not getting into success or challenge that typical projects face; that’s another story.

Over the years with increasing licenses and customizations, the sustenance cost starts to hurt; CIOs find ways to reduce support costs or squeeze licenses deployed to keep operating expenses low. The thought of replacement is rarely tabled and considered impractical. How can such a change be ever executed ? Who will drive this ? Change will be disruptive to the business. The cost of replacement will be extremely high and not worth the effort.

I am sure that these reasons have some echoes for every CIO. Change is indeed a herculean task when it impacts almost everyone in the company; especially so when the change will have the biggest impact on the IT organization. Apart from the change that every employee will have to go through, the IT teams will have to get out of their comfort zones and drive the change from the front while keeping the lights on and business chugging along as usual.

So is ERP replacement the peak that no CIO wants to even attempt ? Or is it only for the few brave expedition leaders akin to climbing the Mount Everest ? Yes the biggest peak has been climbed a few times and so has ERP migrations done with sparse frequency. Why this reluctance in proposing the change or embracing the challenge to climb mountains ?

I believe that the vendor lock-in created around the difficulty of ERP change is to some extent promulgated by the CIO. It is time to abandon this myth and start exploring new horizons in the new world being created around us. We can be part of the creators rather than accept status quo irrespective of whether we were part of the original decision or not. Every decision taken is based on facts that that time and is largely a correct decision. Should we allow this to constrain the future ? After all if you keep climbing smaller mountains, no one rejoices with you as much as if you did climb the Mount Everest !

Walk the Talk

Almost all of my posts are based on personal experience or interactions with people from various walks of life. For a change looking for new topics to write about, I started scanning a few websites positioned at CIOs and aspiring CIOs. I also decided to look up a few celebrity bloggers and tech writers who have either been ex-CIOs or respected consultants and speakers in many CIO forums internationally.

I do receive and read more than 50 odd newsletters every day across various subjects; industry specific from retail (my chosen industry for the last 5 years), Human Resources (for people tips and ideas), ecommerce, social media, leadership, current affairs, regional news, politics, and many CIO focused sites. These are supplemented with some internet browsing, 5 newspapers and some IT magazines daily. The summaries and news briefs keep me updated with information which helps me understand trends and stay current with the world.

Coming back to my search of the sites, the idea was to look at what is the world taking about ? Can I pick up a few insights that could help me in creating the next week’s blog ? Are my posts still relevant to the CIO or I am living in a world detached from reality. What new innovation have I missed while running on the technology treadmill (see last week’s post) and getting to be a retailer and a coach to start-up CEOs and future CIOs ?

Headlines on new product introductions (tablets, phones, servers) and some of the hyped upcoming technologies took up 70% of the landing page across all the sites. A few links to notable blogs on the sites, vendor advertisements and videos made up another 20%. Desperately I started scanning for CIO leadership, business challenges, innovation, people management, and customer engagement, anything that was removed from technology.

On one site I did find some hidden behind a menu option; it was a CIO case study on how she overcame a difficult business situation with her expertise in business. On another site a menu button offered expert advice but clicking a few links got me some technology experiments and vendor sponsored white papers.  When every publication rues and makes a case for a business savvy CIO, why is the content not reflecting this ? Why are these sites still about technology and are they really targeting the CIO ?

Take any IT publication (physical or electronic), irrespective of the target audience (CIO, IT Managers, channel partners, broad-based audience), the editorial or one of the cover stories is always about what the CIO should be doing to stay relevant to the business. The underlying theme is always about business before IT. But after the preaching is done, back to business as usual, do you know about the new 64 core server or the next crossover device with zillion pixel screen ?

They proclaim, CIOs should evolve, cite surveys from other CXOs, CIOs, vendors … and then publish technology trends, new servers, tablets, smartphone comparisons, stuff that matters to a technology professional and detached from a CIO who would depend on his/her team to advise him on  the relevant tools required to achieve the defined business objective. Why can they not walk their talk if their defined target audience is indeed the CIO or the senior IT leader ?

I believe that evolution is slower and selective than technology innovation.

What's in a name ?

In recent times, there have been many consultants, research entities and academia discussing the IT organization’s transformation. The proposed concept seeks to rechristen IT to BT to reflect the new nature of the expected role. The rationale is largely around the fact that business drives technology within an enterprise. So the function should be called business technology (BT). Many CIOs like the new nomenclature, and have attempted to adopt this new symbol that represents their purported evolution and alignment.

Flashback to 2002; I interviewed for a Fortune 50 company’s Indian operations. The process progressed well, and I joined the company (which had a federated IT organization). The corporate IT organization was responsible for standards, infrastructure, architecture, and many applications that were supporting the operations. Then we had Manufacturing IT, which focused on the requirements of the manufacturing plants, connecting to suppliers, managing the manufacturing process, and running the warehouses. The company also had an R&D IT function that empowered the large and globally spread research teams with enabling technology solutions that were critical towards maintaining the company’s leadership position. Each IT organization head reported to the respective function head with dotted line to the global IT head; they had the flexibility and independence to create solutions or choose vendors. Last but not the least was the function called Business Technology, into which I was inducted.

Business Technology worked with the sales organization. It existed in almost every country that the company operated in, and reported to the CEO. It was the largest group and also the most powerful, since the sales teams connected with customers, and thus also had the power to garner larger IT budgets. Thus this name signified a closer relationship with business. It provided technology initiatives that impacted life everyday on the field connecting with customers, while competing with others in the industry. Not that those other teams were not aligned to their respective business folks, but the impact of changes was slower, and largely created internal efficiencies or benefit. Thus, every introduction to an outsider required a five minute discourse on why we were called Business Technology.

Was BT any different? We still had our challenges around vendors, change management, new initiatives, budget approvals, technology adoption, political issues, everything that a normal IT organization experiences every day. As the CIO, my role was acknowledged with a seat on the management table, but like every other CXO, it required consistent performance to keep it there. The basic expectation from the CIO was to create business value, challenge status quo, and participate in all discussions around the table that influenced the company’s future direction.

So, what about the role today? The CIO is required to do all of the above, sometimes even fight to get a seat on the management table; in a few cases where the CIO does not report to the CEO, they are dependent on other CXOs to be their voice in the management team meetings. Will the change in name to business technology bring about the transformation and fast track the evolution and acceptance of the function better than when it is plain old IT? I guess not–the enterprise, the IT leader, and the culture largely contribute to its success. BT happened almost a decade back, evolution is catching up.

After all, as the bard said it a long time back, “What’s in a name; that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet”!

Are you happy being a CIO ?

It doesn’t matter which conference you go to, or who is the person at the discussion’s other end — Whenever the CIO’s evolution is examined, the other person always has a view on what should be a CIO’s next role. Multiple propositions get discussed, including that of the COO and CEO. Sometimes, the lateral inclusions are in supply chain, logistics or human resources, rarely in finance or marketing. But is the CIO an interim position that has to evolve into some other role? Why can’t CIOs be happy being good CIOs?

A few weeks back, a reporter called me. She said that I was one of the few people she knew who was happy being a CIO. She had not come across too many such people within her contact book despite having hundreds of listed CIOs. So this discussion continued on whether a CIO should necessarily move on to another role. If yes, which one?

I wondered a bit as she continued her excited chatter — what’s wrong in being a CIO, and that too a good one! Why is the world interested in my evolution to another CXO’s role (as if other CXOs would be extremely delighted to fill in my shoes)?

Apart from technology expertise, CIOs by virtue of providing technology enabled systems and processes across the enterprise have unparalleled visibility in terms of what happens across each function. They are expected to “know” the business, as well as understand the domain specific challenges and opportunities. Such a knowledge level is essential to provide new technology solutions, whether it’s marketing, sales, warehousing, finance or any other. Typically, this gets referred to as the wonderful world of “IT-business alignment”. Such opportunities give them an advantage over others from the CXO domain who may not have this opportunity (or the interest). Best of all, other CXOs do not get measured for knowing other functions and their ability to engage, let’s say the head of supply chain, in a discussion on the best put-away process.

This advantage and ability to influence business outcomes opens up possibilities. Maybe, just maybe, the CIO could take on additional responsibilities beyond “mundane” IT. In all possibility, he can bring about the best while improving the present. Analytical abilities come to the forefront at this point, whereupon the CIO typically challenges status quo, seeking a better tomorrow. So the question of whether a CIO is ready to take on the role of another CXO or a COO becomes irrelevant. If we push the envelope a bit further, he even has a remote chance of being a CEO. So pressure starts to build upon the CIO to get on with it.

So what’s wrong in being a good CIO? Why can’t the CIO remain in the current role and evolve it into a meaningful contributor to the organization (a difficult task to consistently execute)? At this point, the Board may benevolently grant a seat in the Boardroom’s hallowed chambers with other CXOs, executive and non-executive directors. The CIO then reaches the pinnacle of success within his role’s dimensions. Sustaining this peak position obviously requires as much effort as it took to get there. It’s at this juncture that the CIO can be deemed ready to challenge any CXO and succeed in the new role. Of course, this requires the ecosystem to at least be neutral (if not positive) towards the CIO. A negative or a non-conducive environment will be a challenge for any CXO, including the CIO. (See Are Boards ready for the CIO?)

Time to get back to the question “Are you happy being a CIO?” If you are, great! Build upon your success, challenge the organization, and keep on asking the question, “What do I need to do to get to the Boardroom?” If you aren’t, you are probably a CIO by accident or unable to find the magic formula for success (the magic formula is for another day). If you face a personal crisis on your role as a CIO, you should find yourself a mentor or coach who can help. Otherwise, go and find the right job for yourself !

CIO Publications have yet to evolve !

On an average, I receive more than 100 email newsletters every week from various publications and sites that focus on CIO agenda and leadership. These newsletters are expected to help me keep abreast with what’s happening around the world in the domain that I made my career with, which is Information Technology — now almost always referred to as IT. My mailbox has been full of such messages for as long as I can remember, maybe a decade or so now.

A decade back, the IT leader — now referred to as the CIO — focused a lot on applications, infrastructure, new technology innovations, and business process improvements. In a few cases, the CIO also participated in discussions that were indeed strategic in nature. Contributions to ideas and products were happening even then, as they are the norm today. Ten years back, emails were not as many as they are today, pure-play content sites were few, and not too many sent daily updates. The focus was typically on the nuts and bolts that make up IT infrastructure, the wrapping around it, the database, middleware, presentation layers, and packaged applications which were replacing legacy custom coded programs.

The CIO’s role started transforming in the early part of this millennium. This was driven with the expectation that if a CIO has to retain his right at the table, he has to become more business savvy and leave technology to partners and outsourced teams, as these skills became commodity. IT teams reorganized themselves around business functions and avidly pursued learning of, and about the business and processes. The focus was on how IT teams could contribute towards achievement of common corporate goals and objectives. Vendors and consultants changed their pitch to the CIOs talking about business issues, measuring the efficacy of the CIO’s business knowledge, and how they applied this towards solving real business problems.

Thus CIOs started to attend executive development programs, speak about business technology, scavenge management books, and debate with management thinkers. It was suddenly about how to challenge CEOs and other CXOs on how they can contribute to the business. A few expanded their roles into other parts of the business.

All along, CIOs continued to stay in touch with their roots through various newsletters, magazines and online publications. These media channels continued to feed them with latest happenings in technology, vendor landscape and case studies of how someone leveraged technology investments (in a few cases). IT-business alignment was one of the much debated subjects.

But guess what? Media continued to push technology content down the throats of CIOs who were not really interested in that stuff anymore. Yes, awareness of trends, innovation, new gizmos, and collaboration technologies was important, but not to the level of detail that is being published. That is stuff for IT managers, the doers, and the technical teams (outsourced in many cases).

And that confused the CIOs on whether they should retain the level of in depth technology expertise which is being thrown their way. Most weaned themselves off such content, to make the move towards domain, industry and softer issues that a CXO has to manage every day. Content for such learning is rarely available from even marquee publishers — offline or online.

Such disconnect between expectations drives home the point that the evolution of information givers to the CIO is still incomplete. Media has lagged behind the role that they themselves have created for the CIO by egging them away from the technology stuff towards what matters. We are thankful for that, and hope that CIOs will no longer be subject to tips on how to configure a listener for a DB or resolve malformed IP packets or even look at performance management tools for networks!

By attempting to address a range of audience which spans mid-level managers to executive directors and senior vice presidents, the upper segment is being alienated. And if the CIO is indeed the focus, then a major transformational change is required.

The solution to this for the CIO is to diversify their reading habits and include a large portion of business publications to make up for what their daily bread and butter is lacking in.