My First 100 Days as CIO

Welcome back, Sun Inner Circle readers. As regular recipients of this newsletter already know, I’m Bob Worrall, and I publish a letter in this forum to share topical industry issues and my insights as the CIO of Sun Microsystems.

Last month I invited Bob Brewin, Sun distinguished engineer and the CTO of Sun Software, to guest write a letter in this venue on the meaning of Sun’s decision to open source Java. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, it’s worth a read if only because Bob is intimately involved in all software decisions here at Sun and because Sun is now far and away the largest contributor to both the open source software and free software communities.

As I write this letter, the new year is freshly upon us, and I think I will turn introspective and discuss some of the lessons I learned during my first 100 days on the job as CIO. I recently had the opportunity to address a large group from our services organization during an all-hands meeting and share some of the personal discoveries at my 100-day milestone. I’d like to take this opportunity to expand on some of those revelations, as well as draw out some implications vis-à-vis the changing role of the CIO industry-wide and the consequences for employees of an IT organization.

What I Learned During My First 100 Days
When I assumed the job as CIO, my first priority was to understand the critical issues facing our organization, so I traveled to a number of different Sun locations, gathering ideas, thoughts, and issues from hundreds of IT employees as well as Sun executives across the company. I also wanted to understand how our IT organization compared to other organizations so I spent quite a bit of time speaking to customers and participating in industry events.

Without a doubt, the most striking lesson from my travels was that in terms of IT performance Sun is remarkably ahead of the industry. It’s tempting to take the great technologies here at Sun for granted. But when compared to industry benchmarks, it’s clear that Sun's IT organization is doing some remarkable and leading edge things. This is something that all Sun employees need to take stock of — and be proud of.

Of course, all of the lessons from my first 100 days aren’t as celebratory. Most poignantly for me, I discovered that the job of a CIO is a 24x7x365 commitment. There is simply no off button. Whether speaking to a Sun executive at 10 p.m. on a Sunday evening, hosting customers at a weekend strategy session, or participating in a 5 a.m. program review meeting, the CIO needs to be always on. Simply put, we have 35,000 people and 1200 applications that are depending on us in IT and we can't let them down. The many facets of IT make it a dynamic, challenging and highly complex environment to manage.

Not only is a CIO expected to be on around the clock, the job also requires the ability to switch topics at a moment’s notice. Not too long ago, during the course of 10 minutes I had three very different conversations: I met with senior executives to discuss employee issues, I met with the CISO to chat about network security, and I called a customer to share Sun’s technology vision. That was pretty typical. While I confess that ability to switch contexts so quickly is a learning experience for me, it’s a skill that a CIO must have given the speed of business.

Finally, on a more melancholy note, I’ve begun to realize that — after having been in IT at Sun for 16 years — this might be my last IT job ever. As we all know, the average shelf life of a CIO is pretty short — they tend to move up or move out — so it's just a matter of time (hopefully years) before I'll be faced with the realization that it's time for me to move on to something outside of IT, leaving behind the many friends and peers that I've come to respect and admire here at Sun. Forgive the nostalgia, but I mention it only to explain why it matters so much that I make a significant difference while I am here.

The Changing Role of the CIO
It is no exaggeration to say that the role of the CIO has changed dramatically during the past 10 years. In fact, while the jobs of other senior executives have been relatively defined for some time, CIOs have witnessed dramatic regulatory, security, and business model changes that have turned their jobs upside down. Ten years ago, it was the CIO’s job to dutifully manage IT budgets and oversee the release of new technologies. Today, a CIO is a full-fledged member of that executive staff that is engaged in critical business strategy decisions.

In case readers are wondering why I chose to share my personal revelations about my first 100 days on the job, it’s because the role of the CIO itself is witnessing such a dramatic transformation. For instance, mention regulatory issues and most people think Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). Yet just recently a slew of new rules regarding federal discovery of records retention kicked in. As a result, I’ve spent countless hours with attorneys and a host of internal experts to learn about the new regulatory landscape and disseminate that learning to the organization.

In addition to regulatory issues, as the role of the CIO changes, I’m more involved than ever in creating efficiencies in internal business processes. Increasingly, the CIO is being called on to demonstrate to internal compliance and financial teams, as well as the board of directors, that the company is employing well-known, recognized, and standard program management methodologies, including proper business risk evaluations, tolerance levels, and financial controls across IT projects.

Historically, many IT organizations have focused on technological development and project schedules. But in doing so, they have ignored the third pillar of IT success — financial management. CIOs are increasingly being asked to provide the training resources, knowledge, and expertise to ensure that program managers are properly trained and certified in program management methodologies and that IT employees are good stewards of corporate financial obligations.

The Role of ‘Chief Productivity Officer’
Aside from internal business processes, Jonathan Schwartz sent a strong message to the organization when he introduced me as “chief productivity officer” at a recent company function. Historically, the CIO has been the steward of corporate information and assets in the form of applications and systems, but the orientation of my job is clearly shifting to focus more on positively impacting the end user experience — rather than only paying attention to the availability of applications.

As the so-called CPO, I am trying to decompose the services offered by the IT organization to view them in the context of making people more or less productive. And then I try to target the services and processes with the greatest productivity return. Take Sun’s Open Work program, for example, which promotes a mobile and distributed workforce to reduce costs, save time, build employee morale, and reduce the environmental impact of commuting. I view Sun’s transformation into a virtual organization as a clear example of how IT can be used to improve the productivity and live-work balance of employees.

Ultimately, all of these changes in the role of a CIO speak to one fundamental idea — CIOs need to deconstruct processes and procedures to reinvent IT. That’s because the old ways of imposing structure and process to manage what goes on in IT have made organizations less flexible. Today, IT organizations have to adapt at amazing speed while providing flexible and cost-effective solutions to the business. The fundamental challenge faced by CIOs is how to develop appropriate risk-based policies and procedures, while providing more flexibility and greater speed to market.

The 100-Day Lessons for Everyone
The lessons learned from the changing role of the CIO not only hold meaning for executives serving in that capacity but also for people across an organization. For instance, after I delivered my speech about my first 100 days, a Sun employee raised his hand to ask two simple questions: How can I help, and how does this impact me?

My answer was similarly direct: No matter where in an organization, every employee interacts with existing processes and procedures. And it is incumbent on all employees to challenge existing premises and ask: Why are we doing things a certain way? Even at the most junior levels, people interact within existing workflows. If there are thousands of gears that drive the organizational machinery and every gear has a number of cogs, then an improvement to even the smallest cog can make a tremendous difference.

The final lesson for everyone comes from the first piece of advice I received upon assuming the role. A senior executive pulled me aside and said: If you don’t already know how to do so, you’ll soon learn to delegate. And not only has that proved true, but also it speaks to the nature of enterprise itself. There are simply not enough hours in the day for me to respond to every email message or deal with every issue. And so it is for many of you.

Everyone should learn the value of delegating. It is all too easy to sacrifice lifestyle and family for the sake of a job. But it’s also true that no one can do an effective job if he or she isn’t managing their personal life as well. In a sense, you might say that we're all our own chief productivity officers. So, as head CPO, it’s my job to make sure you all have the tools needed to make yourselves as productive as possible.

Bob Worrall
CIO, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
cio@sun.com