Tag Archives | Martha Heller

Book Review – Be The Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

By Christian on 27th September 2016 in CIO, Digital Leadership, IT Leadership

After reviewing Martha Heller’s excellent last book, The CIO Paradox: Battling the Contradictions of IT Leadership back in 2012 I was delighted to be asked to review her new book entitled, Be The Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT.
The book rightly covers how technology now permeates nearly everything a company does and how regardless of industry, IT has moved much closer to (if not directly in) the revenue stream of the organisation.

Martha has an amazing network of CIOs and an innate knowledge of how their roles have evolved in the past 5 years including how many leading CIOs are dramatically re-conceptualising the role of IT and creating new IT operating models as a result. In keeping with this new era of IT, these new operating models distribute IT investment decisions, innovation, delivery, and adoption throughout the enterprise, rather than keeping those activities solely within the IT function.
Ultimately, these new IT operating models position the IT function as an internal professional services organisation that provides the company with a wide array of services including management consulting, customer experience, innovation, end-user productivity, and security.

I have long heralded the cause for CIOs to be more progressive and deeply involved in operating and driving the business forward; Actually being a part of the core team which leads and drives the business forward rather than being content just running the technology silo and ‘keeping the lights on.’ I have referred to this more commercially focused and digitally savvy role as CIO 2.0 with more focus on supporting the business, reinvigorating its use of technology, enhancing the customer experience, driving the digital initiative and enabling it to deliver its strategic growth objectives.

This book is full of practical and thought-provoking narrative on how CIOs can progress to the ‘2.0’ role in this new era of IT and each chapter resonates with illuminating quotes from leading CIOs who have been through this transition and which lend real world insight to Martha’s text.

Chapters such as Step in to the Digital Void, Turn IT Consumers in Co-investors and Becoming the ‘What’ CIO invigorate the mind and really help you shape your thoughts in to meaningful and effective strategic goals that you can carry forth in to your own organisations. This book is by no means an instructional guide on how to elevate yourself as a technology leader but gently steers you in to the key areas you need to consider, investigate and embrace to succeed in this new era of IT.

When digesting this book on first reading, it really resonated with me on how well it flowed and knitted together the journey to becoming a CIO 2.0.
On second reading, I did so with a highlighter pen and marked out large areas of text in each chapter from which I wanted to take time to further drill down in to.

I highly recommend this book and feel confident in saying that it will be a well-thumbed reference point for me that will stimulate my thoughts and interchanges with others for a long time to come.

The CIO Paradox: Battling the Contradictions of IT Leadership

By Christian on 13th October 2012 in C-Level Executives, Career, CEO, CIO, CIO/CTO, Engagement, Enterprise, Executive, Innovation, IT, IT Director, IT Leadership, IT Process, Leadership, Management, Process, Relationships, Strategic, Strategy, Transformation

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….

——

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.