You have become a Business CIO, but where is your team ?

The IT team was pleased with the effort and congratulated each other for the delivery. The team had worked hard with the development partner to meet aggressive timelines and delivered for UAT a few days early. But that is when the problem started; the team working on the UAT came up with many exceptions that poked holes in the solution; a process not captured well, some processes missing and absent data elements. It was like IT was from Mars and the business was from Venus and they blamed each other.

The CIO was peeved off by the disconnect; the vendor with high pedigree and domain expertise had been carefully and jointly chosen; the business had offered domain experts with good standing, and the IT team understood the technology well enough. So the CIO did some quick checks on the delivery versus expectations and discovered that the IT team knew the business though the understanding was not as deep as it appeared to be. There were translation losses with implicit assumptions by the business and IT.

I think the drums started beating almost a decade back on the need for the CIO to become business savvy. It was about understanding business operations so that the written and articulated processes are translated it into a solution that meets business expectations. The origin of this was the nemesis of what everyone called scope creep and resultant change requests that escalated cost and created time overruns such that the end solution at times became irrelevant to the business; bridging the gap was necessary and critical.

The CIO also had aspirations to get a seat on the Management Committee or the Operating Board or equivalent leadership team. Discussions in these meetings largely did and continue to focus on topline, operating efficiency, bottom line; essentially discuss monthly performance and numbers. Some teams had graduated to reviewing competitive activities and customer engagement while the more evolved ones discussed strategies and more openly. For the CIO to get there it was imperative that s/he understand, participate and contribute.

It took some effort and humility to make the grade, while some for whatever reason did/could not; the fruits of the effort were worth the struggle and more. As a business partner the CIO enjoyed the perks of being in the team and on the table working lockstep with other CXOs. Having a bird’s eye view of the business and a pulse of operations, the CIO stitched together the missing pieces of the jigsaw that made up the business. The transition to a business leader brought new aspirations which resulted in lateral or upward movement for a few.

The IT team reveled in the success and leadership position taken by the CIO; the adulation apart some of them attempted to follow the CIO’s footsteps that led to the transformation. The CIO was happy in his/her new found position and willingly coached anyone who wanted to follow the path. Key lessons revolved around the not so obvious soft skills which help in building relationships; s/he also stressed the need to know the chosen function or domain as well to be seen as a subject matter expert internally as well as externally.

Attempting to get to the bottom of the imbroglio, the CIO realized that the IT team involved in the project had not fully imbibed the learning citing paucity of time and work pressures. They had sidestepped some meetings and relied on their knowledge and focused on technology. The vendor to his credit had attempted to engage with the business and had suggested field trips which were deemed unnecessary by the IT team. Thus the partial understanding created a solution that evidently did not meet expectations and resulted in frustration on both sides.

It is the CIOs responsibility to push his/her team to leave their comfort zones and make the cut; business in most cases is willing to help the learning. A planned approach to engage from both sides works best; the CIO must measure the engagement levels and continuously create opportunities on both sides to appreciate each other’s expertise. Project success is an important milestone but to move to a trusted partner and advisor takes a lot more. In this case walking the talk is a difficult journey which the IT team had failed to do.

Prepare your teams the way you plan your learning, after all your success depends on them.

Scaling IT with the business

It appeared like a losing battle for the CIO; he was struggling to keep momentum going with new initiatives as well as running the business as usual. Most function heads had begun raising voices in review meetings; the CIO had been unable to find time to attend the last two management meetings trying to solve one crisis while other fires burnt bright. He was running faster than ever before to stay in the same place but was unable to; despite best of intentions and good past performance, the CIO was facing a credibility crisis now.

It was a traditional company with nondescript existence for a long time with unimpressive growth and undifferentiated products. They hired people below market median who worked with them until they retired; you could find employees with impressively long careers in doing the same thing for decades. They had invested in IT along with everyone and like everyone they had stuck to automation basics. Everything worked but never reached a wow ! Parallel systems continued thereby rendering the entire framework a passive failure.

Then something explicable happened, no one knows what changed but the company found its mojo after a long time; the business started beating market growth and acquisitions added to the excitement. It brought lot of expectations and the demand on IT suddenly multiplied. New opportunities required new skills and way of working for which the CIO and his team were unprepared. They toiled longer and harder in a quest to meet the demand; they did deliver more than they had done earlier but somehow it did not seem enough.

The CIO had hired based on need and the team was happy to find stability which they valued; they were good in a passive way and executed the orders they were handed. They never had the opportunity nor the need to collaborate or take first steps; the company was satisfied with what they had. Over the past year the CIO attempted to change team behavior and found capability improvement had limitations. Training, coaching and mentoring got acknowledgement of lessons and then they would be back to normal as soon as they went back to their workplace.

Pressure on the CIO and IT team increased manifold creating a cycle of underperformance and frustration on both sides. Adverse impact to process and efficiency due to lack of IT solutions began affecting the business. Not seeing any visible change, Human Resources was confidentially tasked to build a parallel team including finding a new CIO ! The news trickled back to within the company after some time leaving the IT team scurrying for survival. Shaken the CIO conferred with the team to explore avenues to bring themselves back into relevance.

Variations of this situation repeats itself in many enterprises where IT teams fail to keep up with changing expectations. As a C-level executive, the CIO is expected to anticipate change and plan for it rather than been told what to do; inability to demonstrate leadership results in change of CIO who pays the price for failing to scale and change with the times. Sometimes the IT team sees forced attrition and collateral casualties which leaves the team either weakened with the exits or strong with infusion of fresh talent.

It is imperative for CIOs and IT teams to anticipate change to stay relevant in the new business; they are expected to be equal partners and work across layers to institutionalize new technology enabled processes. Failing to stay relevant (see Stay Hungry, Stay Relevant) will create situations described above. The problem is a lot more widely prevalent than acknowledged; the real CIOs are able to thrive in this uncertain world, the wannabe CIOs and IT Managers sporting the title give away their lack of maturity and ability.

The CIO rose to the challenge; seeking help from industry peers, he worked with HR to segment the team into groups based on competency and capability. The group low on competency and capability was outplaced with help of IT partners; competent team moved into operations while the capable teams were happy to move into other functions. The last group which had competency and capability scaled into business facing IT roles. Fresh blood inducted into the team strengthened the organization ability to move with the times.

The CIO earned his position onto the Management table where he was welcomed as an equal.

That Critical Resource

He was passion personified and loved what he did; on most days he would be the first to arrive and the last to leave. For him there were seven days in a week which just rolled along, rarely he took even the weekends off. Meal times whether breakfast, lunch or supper happened on the move whenever a few minutes presented themselves in between fixing issues or changing code. He was in perpetual motion and yet tireless like an ideal state machine.

Users loved him as he always smiled and never said no to any request or demand. Technically he was good and working 16 hour days he almost always delivered to promise. Not that the rest of the team complained, in fact they passed on some of their work to him which he took on with no qualms. The CIOs attempts to slow him down did not change his working style until one fine day nature took its toll and he was down with illness and out of commission for a month.

A decade and more later, in another company a similar story played itself again. I don’t remember if it was the first job for the person, she had already spent a decade in the company and had been part of the IT evolution from the first set of large investments. Having spent so much time, she knew every aspect of the business and the system; when the principal vendor had a problem which they needed to validate, they would call her and she always had an answer. If there was one, she was the subject matter expert.

The company was growing in leaps and bounds which lead to increase in workloads. Unable to retain a team of professionals due to her nature of micro-managing every aspect of the work, the pipeline started getting clogged leading to delays in the regular stuff; the urgent always got priority and was addressed. The bottle-necking required drastic steps and the CIO moved her laterally to the business and distributed the work to the team. Very quickly there was no pending work and everyone was happy.

Every company has this scenario playing out in some way or the other. There is always a set of resources that are deemed critical to the functioning of the company that they end up getting overloaded. Some get into such situations by default because they are good at what they do and some create such situations because they love being the center of attention and attraction. In either case their false sense of importance leads to the person and the company suffering as observed in the above anecdotes.

A long time back one of my Managers told me “In every company there is one individual who is indispensable, s/he should be fired”. Curious and naive I asked “Why?”; to begin with apply the Red Bus theory, if a bus runs over the individual, what happens to the company ? And how to prevent and minimize any minor or major disruption ? The second reason is to address the growth aspirations of the person. If s/he is critical to a position, task, process or function, then s/he cannot get elevated as s/he is critical.

So whenever such a situation presented itself, I have used a step by step approach to de-risking the individual as well as the enterprise.

1.  Discuss the situation with the individual to create awareness; ensure that s/he understands the implications to self and the company
2. Explore growth aspirations and personal goals and how they may be restricted by the current reality. If this has been the situation for long, cite peer examples of growth
3. Work with him/her to find a workable solution which could be lateral or upward move, changing role or addition of resources
4. If none work, outplace the person

You also have the option to let the situation be and do nothing; not that anything has happened in the last so many years, so why should it happen now ? That is a choice to make. Have you faced such a predicament either yourself personally or within your team ? What did you do ? I would love to learn from your experience.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hyper or Mediocre IT ?

The number of IT professionals taking on to consulting after multiple changes are increasing. A lot of them were considered high potential when they worked within corporate IT functions. Some of them were also CIOs who chucked their cushy jobs to explore entrepreneurship. I started tracking down some of them to find what made them take such a step. The answers were surprising and not so surprising when analysed rigorously.

Now consider that in recent times the lament gaining popularity is the inability to find good talent; with global competition and willingness to relocate, good professionals are always in demand. And the good ones always find it easy to bag the next opportunity. That being the case, why is it that CIOs are struggling to hire and retain good talent ?

Every manager or leader has one key benchmark when interviewing people; it is they themselves. We hire people based on our own competencies. Most (fortunately not all) managers want to hire staff with equal to or lower skills than themselves especially for senior positions. Maybe it is their perception of threat to their own positions; maybe it is a low risk model when you know that the person will not be disruptive by challenging the managers’ decisions. This manager wants to know everything and be part of every meeting thereby becoming the bottleneck to progress. S/he feels insecure when new solutions are presented by others which impact his domain.

A great way to maintain status quo or keeping the lights on; in this case the CIO will perennially be challenged and discuss BITA (Business IT Alignment). The team at best delivers mediocrity and is relegated as a support function with limited participation in activities outside of their function. Organization culture too contributes to this state compounded by the CIO not reporting to the CEO. I have seen good CIOs get out of such companies as soon as they could.

Now, when you look at high performance teams, the leader acknowledges the need for diversity and challenging status quo. S/he has always hired different skillsets and encouraged open innovation. One of my observations was that these leaders define the direction and then get out of the way leaving the teams to soar to new heights. They do not micro-manage, they facilitate and encourage the team. Making mistakes is acceptable, repeating them is not. Attrition is normally low.

I believe that to create a winning team and not an also ran, the CIO needs to balance command and control with empowerment. Everyone does not need close supervision; neither can everyone be left to do their own thing. Delegation is good; however delegation does not imply abdication of responsibility. Incorrectly delegated work can lead to challenges and success denied; the CIO should own up to equal share of success and failure. After all you cannot be the father of success and know no failures.

An old adage, “People join organizations, people leave their bosses” holds true today more than ever. It is not an Oscar award speech but many leaders acknowledge their teams as the reason for their success when felicitations come the way of winning teams. The team too holds no grudges against the leader who is held high in trust and respect. The new age CIO is making these choices, are you one of them ?

Making it stick

An intense debate was on, on how we ensure team alignment across the different organizational units that form a workgroup within an enterprise. As the discussion moved towards pinning responsibility (read blame) when things go wrong, there was a palpable sense of unease across the group; specifically the team that manages the vendor relationships and is expected to deliver and monitor the service.


The discussion had started when one of the stakeholders had raised the issue of inter-dependency across other teams and his ability to influence how the team is rated during the review and appraisal. It is true that all of us are no longer islands with any connection to others. We use services from within and outside and similarly provide it directly or indirectly to internal and external customers. The work subdivided into interrelated tasks when performed in unison lead to a positive outcome (in most cases).

Adversarial attitude is the result when we are not satisfied with the result or our perception of the effort put in by others. The conventional solution is to create Service Level Agreements, cross-linked KRAs (Key Result Areas). Review meetings are often heated while everyone trying to pin the “blame” on the other. Such meetings are rarely productive and highlight the gap resulting in the “you” versus “us” stance. The meeting was headed for a showdown that would have been messy for everyone with skeletons tumbling out of the proverbial closet.

It was an eye opener remark from one of the participants in the meeting that had everyone hushed and staring at the person who uttered the words “But are we are all not on the same side of the table ?”. Could anyone have disagreed to such a profound insight ? Speechless everyone exchanged glances feeling generally uncomfortable without acknowledging the cause.

The acknowledgement of the fact that we all are working towards the same objective is a starting point not just for any collaborative endeavour, but for teams within the organization. Everyone contributes and brings a skill to the table that matters, even if in a small way. When we are in a challenged situation, we know that the best recovery strategy is to help the other overcome the challenge and not berate the lack of skill or achievement.

Great teamwork is always a result of shared goal and common objective; the acknowledgement of complementary skills within the team provides a framework that nurtures healthy collaboration and focus on what matters, i.e. the result, without compromising the quality of team spirit. Keeping this as the foundation of review helps ensure better outcomes. It is indeed difficult to sustain such a mindset when one is at the receiving end.

The hierarchical leader of the team and the CIO in this case has to play the role of setting expectations and resolve confrontations and conflict which will always be there. The matrix organizations of today are necessary; we have to learn to live in the rain.

Offsite Meeting effectiveness

Every leader at some time seeks to engage the team in thematic exercises that are personified as offsite or outbound programs. Most of these are facilitated by external trainers who engage the team in field or classroom exercises. Typically such events spread over 1-3 days in out of city resorts where the external environment entices the participants while they struggle with the agenda and expectations. Almost everyone looks forward to such a sojourn from day-to-day work.

Over the years I have attended and conducted over a dozen such programs with teams, large and small, across organization layers. All of them were great experiences and opened up a new line of thought, provoking some action or reaction with me as well as other participants. Many companies conduct these annually by department or sometimes horizontally taking layers of management for team building, bonding and improvement of cross-functional dynamics.

In the last outbound program one of the participants posed a question to the moderator, how can we ensure that the learning from this program stay with us and bring about positive change? The volatility of learning defies expectation and evaporates by the time everyone reports back to their workplaces. Nonetheless this does not deter teams, companies and trainers world over from conducting such programs. The moderator promised to revisit the question before close of the program.

CIOs probably manage the most diverse teams with skills and competencies that are specialized in their own right. Be it infrastructure which can be subdivided into network, servers, data centers, or core application stacks that require technical, functional and architectural expertise; all of this and more form a typical IT team. Each professional equipped with ‘professional arrogance’ believes s/he is unique and better than the other. For the enterprise to function cohesively, these teams have to work in tandem like the machinery in a shop floor lest production come to a standstill.

The siloed nature of teams creates friction as well as competitive spirit that require the CIO to balance internal expectations with the expectations of the business leaders and customers. Outbound and offsite meetings thus serve an important purpose of breaking the ice, bringing together the teams even if for a short while, and provide a platform for exploration of themes that bring success to the team. It is foolhardy to expect everyone to create the same level of benefit for themselves; if some of them find their change agent, the event has served a purpose. It’s analogous to a classroom where all the students listen to the same teacher but hear differently.

Coming back to the moderator of the last outbound, in the final session, he said, “I am sure you liked parts of the program, participation level was great. I had nothing to give to all of you; it’s for you to decide what you want to take back.” Well said indeed, because no one can ensure what you take away from any program, discussion or stuff that you read; it’s a choice the participant makes based on his/her presence, participation (or lack of it), fiddling with the phone, or side talk.

On another note, Zig Ziglar said, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing, that’s why we recommend it daily.”

Murphy at work !

Any festive season brings with it a sense of joy, bonhomie and general feel good factor. After all, there is a planned celebration, friends getting together, family reunions, and if nothing else, some quality time with the family. We all look forward to such occasions to come. Different reasons across the world make for such gatherings, be it festivals, commemorations, faith; however, the world unites together to bring in the New Year.

Now, imagine this scenario:

New Years’ eve, and the day begins with an outage notice from the network team citing a company-wide network outage for causes unknown. The team gets down to figuring out the cause and fix, but the problem appears to be more than just a router failure. It is evident within a few hours that it’s going to be a really long day, maybe a night too, before the situation comes back to normal. So what do you do? It is evident that vendor support will be limited, and global support skeletal.

In a not too dissimilar scenario on a Saturday morning, I have seen the Operational CIO get off a meeting not to return. On another occasion, a balanced CIO keeps tabs periodically, and on the other extreme a “strategic” CIO continues with his life as usual, knowing that the team will finally resolve the situation.

Murphy strikes when everything appears to be nice and bright with the world at large. He has a way of unsettling the best of plans of good men. These are the times for which all the plans are created, the maintenance contracts signed, and the service levels (SLA) monitored. The machinery has to crank itself up on such moments to deliver. Everyone in the team has to know what they are expected to do, including communication within the enterprise, of the situation and plan remedial action. Beyond the explicit, on such occasions, relationships work their magic. Teams with passion, understanding of the impact and ownership will always rise to any occasion.

So in such an eventuality, what is the role of the CIO? It does not matter whether the CIO is operational, strategic or balanced. Should the CIO continue with preplanned celebrations while the team toils the midnight oil? Or lend a moral shoulder to lean upon? Just get out of the way lest he becomes a pain for the team trying to solve the problem? It is important for the CIO to understand the value he will bring to the situation and decide what works best. But one of the key actions required is to communicate the impact if any to business, what are the measures being taken to minimize the adverse impact, and keep information flowing periodically to keep shortening tempers at bay.

Post incident resolution, acknowledgement of the effort along with words of merit and appreciation are definitely worth engaging in. The message it sends will ensure that when Murphy strikes again, the team will be up to the task.

Challenges of an upturn

All the analysts have just wound up their discussion about the challenges faced during a downturn. There have been many stories, case studies, and insights on how to survive. In a few cases, the focus even went to topics such as how to thrive in an economy that challenged everyone.

Some parts of the world continue to face issues, albeit to a lesser degree. The turnaround time required for these players is slower than developing nations, where the upswing is visible, and there is already talk about withdrawal of government instituted stimulus. With the sun just beginning to raise its head over the horizon and returning growth, the problems of economic growth have already started bothering companies.

Problems? Yes, economic growth has its issues. I’m referring to the problem of talent retention.

During recessionary trends and slowdown, organizations tightened their belts. Increments were frozen cold, and many took a cut (which hurt), but then it was better than losing your job. Bonuses and variable pay were also victims of the reducing top lines. Most business units squeezed out costs. Thus, fixed costs came down, and helped generate better profitability ratios than ever imagined by many enterprises. Employees stayed put, and worked diligently to help companies tide over difficult times.

By the turn of the year, growth was back in the black. Suddenly, there were murmurs within companies about reinstatement of imposed cuts. Will bonuses be paid again? What kind of increments can employees expect? Predatory companies also saw this as a great opportunity to cherry pick bright talent from competitors, and across verticals. In a few cases, these organizations even targeted high potential individuals by name.

With no clarity, communication or delayed reaction from their own companies, these individuals decided to take the mercenary approach and move on to the highest bidder. The trickle that started late last year, has suddenly assumed scary proportions in many companies. Talent retention has come to the fore, and is now the highest priority for some of the impacted companies.

Inhouse IT organizations will see a high impact due to the coming back of “good times”, since most technical skills are not industry dependent. At the same time, IT companies are hiring (or announcing targets for people acquisition) with a frenzy similar to the scene witnessed during Y2K days (there used to be a standing joke “Trespassers will be hired”). Can CIOs work around this problem with proactive steps (or in a few instances, even go against the enterprise timelines), to retain their best?

I believe that a few CIOs will be able to ring-fence their teams, but many will suffer through the year. Some will end up hiring the best talent from other companies. However, no CIO can afford to sustain a lack of action, as status quo is not an option.