Archive | Relationships

The Changing Role of The CIO

This is my first piece for Samsung Business and is published here on the Samsung at Work site.

There are always many theories on the position of the CIO role, from the CIO role is dying through to should they be renamed the Chief Innovation Officer. The truth is that many still do not understand the CIO role and its place within the organisation. Many CEO’s and CFO’s still find it hard to understand IT and just see it as a money laundering operation rather than something that can add real value to the bottom line. It’s really up to CIO’s to stand up and be counted and show not only what they can bring to the table but prove they can be strategic, customer facing and deliver both innovation and revenue whilst making sure the technology still operates.

There is no doubt the CIO role has and is evolving constantly but that is true to say of all c-suite positions who want to stay relevant and ahead of the game.

As technology moves at such a pace, so must the CIO understand and work out the best way(s) to leverage it to add best value to their organisation.
Technology has seeped more in to our everyday lives and as a result the roles that manage it must adapt to become more innovative and constructive in the ways they use it.
Gone are the days of just making sure the equipment is in working order and the datacentre is operational – CIO’s are now measured on what they deliver to the bottom line and rightly so.
If you want a seat in the boardroom, you have to earn it and work very hard to keep it.

As the CIO role evolves it naturally starts to touch a lot of other technology areas such as digital and mobile.
This is where people are now saying they enter the CIO v CMO battleground with the victor seemingly the one who owns the digital space and ultimately the technology piece.
Politics aside, what’s to stop both working together? A quality CIO and CMO alliance would be a really formidable force in terms of delivering innovative and strategic solutions built around the needs of the customer.
Many companies are struggling with this ‘middle ground’ and anointing a new role, the Chief Digital Officer (CDO).
Does this only add more mud to the water of who owns what or is this another career path for marketing savvy CIO’s or tech savvy CMO’s?

What I do know is that if you add tangible value, deliver your strategic objectives, beat your KPI’s and deliver innovative solutions, you can choose your own job title and sit wherever you want in the boardroom.

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The CIO Paradox: Battling the Contradictions of IT Leadership

The CIO role can be a lonely place at times with not much written about it other than its demise or difficulty breaking in to the highest echelons of the corporate structure.

The CIO Paradox by Martha Heller changes that and has instantly elevated it to one of a handful of books I recommend as a must have reference book on every CIO’s bookshelf.

This book breaks the mould and not only enthuses you with an amazing amount of knowledge and case studies from other CIO’s but it also challenges your current strategic reasoning through its elegantly structured paradoxes.
It drives straight to the heart of the CIO role, openly discussing (with real world feedback) ways in which you can improve yourself/your IT organisation but it also takes the time to highlight ways in which you identify, nurture and manage talent within it.

It is well researched and Martha clearly knows her topic well having written about and engaged with CIO’s for many years.
My only reservation about the book is that the level of CIO’s that contributed to it errs on the larger corporate but this certainly shouldn’t detract from the lessons contained within that CIO’s from companies of all sizes can learn a considerable amount from.

The book is broken in to four sections, each of them relating to a key CIO challenge:

1.      YOUR ROLE: YOUR DAMNED IF YOU DO AND YOUR DAMNED IF YOU DON’T
2.      YOUR STAKEHOLDERS: WILL THE BUSINESS EVER LOVE IT?
3.      YOUR STAFF: THEY JUST DON’T MAKE THEM LIKE THAT
4.      YOUR FUTURE: WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE CIO?

I’ll break out a small portion of the first challenge with some of my own reasoning.
I could easily discuss and write about every single point in more detail but for the sake of the length of this review I will hold back:

YOUR ROLE: YOUR DAMNED IF YOU DO AND YOUR DAMNED IF YOU DON’T

As CIO’s you are hired to be strategic and innovative.
The stark truth is that you can spend most of your time on operational issues and whilst being the steward of risk and cost containment it can also be difficult to innovate.
Sound familiar?

This section quickly revs up and breaks in to the cost versus innovation paradox.
Regular readers of my blog will know my drive for innovation within the CIO role and the need for the CIO to add REAL value to the business through it but this must not be done without first stabilising the ‘run’ side of the IT organisation.
Running before you can walk is the death knell for many an IT leader, with the mantra here being that you must earn the trust and respect of the business in the stabilisation of the IT organisation before you move on to the chunkier, more innovative projects.

The most successful CIO’s (the ones who have broken the paradox) are those who do more than apply IT to business problems. CIO’s who have broken the paradox take the expertise that they have developed in their role as leaders of the IT organisation and use it to make improvements across the enterprise. They are company leaders, in addition to being IT leaders.

You must speak the language of the business, building relationships with business leaders, being a business leader first and a technologist second.
Whilst a huge group of CIO’s get it and are bona fide business leaders, another huge group does not….

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When you think through the various paradoxes that are broken out across the book, many of them really resonate and delve in to the essence of the CIO role.

Each of the four main sections and resulting paradoxes will be graded differently in importance for each CIO that reads this book but I’m sure that we will all appreciate every one of them just as much.

The key strength of the book is exactly this and proves that not only does it cover in great detail a wide spread of the main issues facing a CIO in executing their role but its elegantly crafted paragraphs mean hardly a word is wasted in doing so.
When you work through the book you find yourself nodding in appreciation and making notes in the margin (and in my case putting index markers in to mark key pages).

The book is filled with many canny and informed pearls of wisdom that all CIO’s will appreciate but the best quote in the book by far is:

“it is really tough to be strategic when your pants are on fire”
– Ron Kifer, CIO at Applied Materials

The simple conclusion is that this is a must read book for every CIO.
Its going to be a well thumbed reference point for me that will stimulate my thoughts and interchanges with others for a long time to come.

 

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2012 in Outsourcing – My prediction for Outsource Magazine

To get some idea of what lies in store, Outsource reached out to over 40 key thought leaders, tasking them to give their bite-sized predictions, prognostications and prophecies on what will be making headlines in outsourcing in 2012. Representing buyer, provider, advisory and analyst communities, and featuring commentary from the C-suite to the shop floor (via input from the Outsource Editorial Board and our international array of online columnists, of course), our 2012 Preview gives a huge range of perspectives from right across the space. So, for a peek at what some of the outsourcing community’s leading lights expect from the year ahead, pull back the veil and read on. One thing’s for sure: whatever lies ahead, we’re in for an interesting ride…

See my contribution here and let me know what yours would be?

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