Reshaping Strategy Through the IT Transformation Initiative

Hello again, Sun Inner Circle readers, it's Bob Worrall here with my contribution to summertime reading. The topic, however, is appropriate for all seasons: reaching IT goals faster and more efficiently. A key aspect of the Sun approach is a departure from traditional IT management. In my department, employee teams help define strategy in a program we call the IT Transformation Initiative.

In addition to ensuring that IT continues to be run faster and better, the program has gone a long way to lift an internal metric called the Recommend Sun Index, or RSI, which gauges morale. It also measures how likely Sun employees are to recommend the company's products, services, or career possibilities. As I write, the RSI inside my department has risen from 70 percent three years ago to 87 percent today.

Both figures, I would argue, are high. When the RSI hovered at 70 percent three years ago, the IT department was in the middle of a massive restructuring process in which headcount was reduced from 2000 employees to 600 people. While many people didn't like the restructuring process, a combination of proactive career counseling and communicating the business logic behind the changes kept the RSI at a respectable level.

Openness and communication also ensured a smooth transition to a new organizational model, and employees made invaluable suggestions about shifting processes and roles to outside vendors. The transformation process worked so well that it made sense to keep the program in place to address new IT strategies. Today, the transformation teams are critical extensions of my staff and drive the way job roles map to new initiatives.

To give you a more complete picture of the IT Transformation Initiative, I spoke with Linda Martino, the program's executive sponsor for the last two years. Linda reports to me as vice president of Sun Information Technology, and is a keen advocate for getting results through more employee empowerment. In the excerpts of the conversation you'll find below, we talked about tangible results of the program, as well as things other organizations might consider when involving employees in strategy decisions.

Worrall: What do people outside of Sun find most surprising about the IT Transformation Initiative?

Martino: That a grassroots approach to problem solving gets bottom-line results. The entire transformation initiative is based on the idea that many organizational problems can be solved by passionate employees who want to be part of the solution.

Since the launch of the program in 2005, Sun IT has been able to ensure an extraordinarily smooth transition to outsourced services — and now boasts one of the company's highest morale and lowest turnover rates. In fact, our turnover rates are among the lowest in the industry, which is really critical for our operations. Your readers, Bob, probably don't need to be reminded that exceptional IT professionals are always hard to find.

Worrall: That's very true, yet people outside of Sun often seem astonished that employee insight should be part of the solution. But the fact remains that people at all levels in Sun IT constantly come up with ways to make the organization more efficient.

Martino: That makes me think of how the concept of pace is central to the Sun IT organization. To understand what pace actually means to the organization, the transformation team ran a number of brainstorming sessions and came up with very aggressive definitions of how to speed up work throughout the organization.

Worrall: That leads to a question I frequently hear: How does the initiative ensure that employees address issues that matter to the entire IT department?

Martino: Part of the success of the transformation project is due to organization — and the rest comes down to employee commitment. All of the people involved volunteer to be part of the IT Transformation Initiative.

The transformation project currently is made up of 40 employees. The core group consists of eight people, and then there are four subgroups that tackle particular matters defined by the IT department's executive staff.

Just to give your readers an idea of what these teams do, let me quickly tick off their responsibilities. The eight-member core transformational group works with the executive team to define the challenges, and then suggests which of these issues should be addressed by the initiative.

Then we have the organizational alignment team, which is wrapping up its activities defining roles in the restructured IT organization. The culture and environment team addresses important morale and workplace issues, while the talent development team helps IT employees with career tracks. And then we have the integration and measures subgroup, which makes sure the other teams are on track and on deadline.

Worrall: In your two years of executive sponsorship, how much time have you spent keeping these groups focused?

Martino: As the executive sponsor of the transformational project, I can tell you that these teams are pretty much self-governing — I know because I attend about 85 percent of these meetings, but very rarely have to jump in to steer the conversation. Having an IT director as the leader of the core team also helps. This provides additional guidance and steers people away from suggestions that might create problems for our HR, legal, and finance departments.

Plus, most IT people at Sun are pretty senior, and their years of experience helps keep things on track. The few naïve suggestions I've heard have come from new or fairly junior people, but the rest of the team usually jumps in to explain why something won't fly.

There is, of course, a practical limit to how many projects you can actually handle in the course of a year — and there is also a limit to the number of IT employees who can participate in the initiative over the course of a year. That's why we make a conscious effort to cycle people through the program. Every year the employee leadership changes, along with the matters to address.

Worrall: Let's talk about program metrics. What do you see as the key measurements of the IT Transformation Initiative?

Martino: The RSI ratings are a critical gauge of success, and probably one of the reasons why Computerworld recently selected Sun as a best place to work in IT.

We also measure results based on program goals, which are defined in a roadmap that the integration and measures subgroup assembles every year. This roadmap identifies areas in need of attention, along with the timetable for specific activities that will resolve these issues. Then we score ourselves quarterly on whether we have met these objectives and delivered items on schedule.

Some of these deliverables include Webinars and presentations that address things like job training and providing IT staff with information about new directions in strategy.

Our scorecard also includes areas where IT is not doing as well as we would like — especially in matters related to employee development and communication. These findings, by the way, are made available on the internal IT site for anyone in the organization to examine.

Worrall: When I talk about the IT Transformation Initiative outside of Sun, someone invariably asks the cynical "what's in it for the employees?" question.

Martino: Well, participating in the IT Transformation Initiative is a good career move. Team members have access to the executive team, which can really help personal brand recognition. It may be one of the reasons why people are begging to join the transformational teams. IT employees at Sun can see that team member suggestions are usually supported by your office, Bob.

Besides, team members can get a head start on increasing their performance scale ratings by helping develop job requirements. For example, the talent development team has put together a comprehensive job and career architecture that maps out every single job in the IT organization, as well as the descriptions of the qualifications needed for these positions. This allows people to really think about the best way to contribute to the organization in the months and years ahead.

Worrall: All this honing of skills increases the agility of the IT organization, wouldn't you say?

Martino: Absolutely. As employees gain a better understanding of strategies and goals, they tend to map their careers to these objectives. As you know, the skills IT professionals need at Sun are now quite different from the job requirements a few years ago. These days many of our employees have become experts on outside IT vendor management — and these kinds of skills will continue to be in demand as we move forward with a software-as-a-service model where IT services are purchased from outside vendors.

Worrall: What advice would you give to other organizations about starting a program similar to the IT Transformation Initiative?

Martino: Start by taking employee satisfaction surveys seriously. These feedback mechanisms are essential for identifying areas that a transformation group can tackle. And make sure that people know their feedback will not be judged or used against them. Ask employees what they'd like to see in the survey itself. This can identify areas that can be transformed — because an executive team usually finds it difficult to understand all the sources of morale and performance problems.

I'd also suggest that a company new to this kind of employee empowerment tackle just one or two issues, and initially hand-pick the employees to focus on it. Give these people enough leeway in terms of authority, accountability, and budget, and then watch the employees run with the program.

And by all means, be clear about what can be changed — and what cannot. If you do so, focus will take care of itself.

Worrall: That's very true. It's also important to give credit where credit is due. At Sun IT, the executive staff makes it a point to recognize the contributions of the transformation teams, which encourages more contributions from people whose insight has become an essential ingredient of success.

Bob Worrall
CIO, Sun Microsystems
cio@sun.com