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Hello Inner Circle readers,
Many of you may have seen CIO magazine's 2009 "State of the CIO" survey. I always look forward to reading these surveys, as they help me gauge the temperature of my fellow CIOs and understand the extent to which we face the same challenges. While I agreed with many of the points brought forth in the survey, I found a few areas where my opinion diverged from that of the group. Below is some commentary on points in the survey I found compelling.
Balance new business needs while keeping core IT services sound
Survey said: "Many of you report spending less time and having less of an impact on the number-one element keeping your company alive: customers."
Technology is important in discovering, qualifying, and attracting new customers, but if the CIO over-rotates to spend too much time in that space, they'll ignore keeping the legacy stuff running.
Clearly, paying attention to customers is a priority for everyone. In a recession, we are all fighting for fewer customers. But what concerns me about this statement is that some CIOs may over-rotate on this topic alone, and in doing so, sacrifice all the other equally important elements of their jobs. Like it or not, most of what CIOs do day in and day out isn't very exciting to most CEOs, but I would argue that keeping IT functioning to the levels the business requires is just as important as generating new customers. CIOs need to carefully balance the new, emerging or tactical needs of the business with a careful eye towards keeping the core IT services sound. Technology is important in discovering, qualifying, and attracting new customers, but if the CIO over-rotates to spend too much time in that space, they'll ignore keeping the legacy stuff running.
Get a temperature reading from strategic partners
Survey said: "While business leaders absolutely agree that tech is important to their company's products and competitive positioning, they also say IT isn't performing as well in these areas as CIOs think."
Many CIOs are so inwardly focused on their projects, priorities and programs that they become myopic in their view of the world. I strongly agree that many new CIOs fail to get the 360-degree view of IT from their business partners. It's like a performance review — a good performance review gets feedback from peers, managers, executives, stakeholders, etc. You must do the same in the role of CIO. You need to get a temperature reading from the CEO, CFO, perhaps the head of sales, all of your strategic partners, as well as your direct staff. It's incumbent upon CIOs to realize what the recession means in terms of IT impact and plan accordingly.
Understand your stakeholders' success criteria
Survey said: "49% of the business execs [surveyed] judged IT's performance [in terms of acquiring or retaining customers] as "fair" or "poor." Another 5% said IT did not support acquiring or retaining customers at all."
It's no surprise that core executives have a lower opinion of how IT is doing than CIOs do. Most of us look in the mirror and judge our performance based on our own criteria, while the people we're providing services for have a different set of criteria. A struggle for many CIOs is that most of our stakeholders will never understand what goes on in our work life. CEOs and CFOs, unless they came up through the IT organization, don't understand managing networks and all that complexity. So when it comes to defining success, the two camps operate with different sets of criteria. So unless you're constantly polling your stakeholders and customers and understanding what their success criteria are, you'll always have a different rating in the end.
Think outside the box in terms of cost-saving solutions
Survey said: "...the financial meltdown rewrites the CIO's agenda. CIOs need to stand up and employ skills beyond the basics to align with business and deliver payback."
You can't wait for direction from the boss. You must be proactive and think outside the box in terms of solutions that will drive down costs without sacrificing services. The point here is to proactively go to your boss and acknowledge that you understand the recession and its business impacts. Offer creative things you can do to address the cost structure beyond laying people off and cutting services. That goes a long way with management because you aren't hiding and hoping it blows over.
Communicate clearly in terms business can understand
Survey said: "IT gets cut in the first wave, but if you cut too deeply — or in the wrong places — the company will be unable to respond to demand in the second wave."
You have to be able to sell your story and strategy clearly, articulately, and with data.
It's critical that CIOs don't merely take instructions from the CFO or CEO, but stand up and be willing to go to bat for core infrastructure initiatives. These are what will sustain a business long-term rather than just offering a 30-day budget bounce. Again, it goes back to my point about not over-rotating. IT tends to be viewed as a cost center and people assume there's no drag effect on these decisions, when we all know there is. This is ample rationale for being a key voice around the executive table. This is a time when CIOs have to be very visible and proactive in selling their messages. You have to be able to sell your story and strategy clearly, articulately, and with data. Everyone is fighting for those precious dollars, and only if you can communicate clearly in terms the business can understand, will your message be heard above the noise.
Focus on traits that mark a change-making CIO
Survey said: "Develop traits that mark a seasoned, change-making CIO: breadth of knowledge, the ability to sell a story and support it with data and the nerve to take charge."
Range of knowledge — CIOs who survive a long period of time tend to have a breadth of knowledge. More and more we are seeing CIOs coming out of the business or with some kind of combined technology/business background. The argument here is that to succeed as a CIO you need to develop your range. At Sun we have a very active development program for our core talent. We rotate people through various functions of IT to gain a better understanding of both IT disciplines as well as business disciplines.
Power of persuasion — Being a good storyteller is an important trait in times like these. Raise your message above the noise and find a crisp, succinct way to communicate to the decision-makers the impact of their budget cuts.
Strength in numbers — I am a huge proponent of this. IT people in general love numbers, stats, and figures — it's part of our DNA. Being able to translate in financial terms, risk terms, personnel terms, and service level terms the impacts of the decisions being made is only possible if you have a thorough understanding of your statistics. Most IT people do not have a deep knowledge of financials. This understanding is vital.
Nerve — I agree that CIOs need the nerve to stand up, share data, be confident in that data, and participate in the business conversations. I don't totally agree with the notion of steering committees. There is a time and place for engaging business in the dialogue of prioritizing IT dollars. But whether for cultural reasons or insecurity, many CIOS over-rely on committees as a proxy for making tough decisions. If you're concerned about the pace of decision-making or speed of execution, then forgo some of those steering committees and decide for yourself.
Get engaged in whatever vehicle you can get engaged in
Survey said: "Know your business and assert and explain how IT makes a difference. Be an equal."
Agreed. Don't sit in your office all day. Get out and talk to your IT employees. In the case of a large enterprise, get out and talk to sales, get on the road, visit customers, go to industry events. This is not the time to sit aimlessly in your office waiting for directions from above. Get engaged in whatever vehicle you can get engaged in.
In next month's column I'll highlight the outcomes of several of these types of meetings I've been holding myself with customers and stakeholders.
Until then,
Bob Worrall
CIO, Sun Microsystems
cio@sun.com
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