Can a CIO Become Too Strategic? - ' Page 1'
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: Introduction">
John's voice is hushed, hurried—and desperate. The veteran employee of a prominent pharmaceutical company, who requested anonymity, has worked in nearly every corner of the IT shop, and things have never looked worse.
"Everyone I know at work is using every stress-management technique they have—working out, smoking, chewing nicotine gum, you name it," he says.
Why? For starters, he says, a new CIO was hired a few years ago to trim any remaining fat from an already lean budget. More projects are being outsourced—and IT positions liquidated— despite repeated promises from upper management that IT jobs are secure, John claims.
Worst of all, those who voice their concerns about how IT is being run aren't just ignored; they're fired. "It's really dirty pool," he says. "The last director who spoke up about a project that wasn't completed properly was demoted, then pushed out the door. He was our last hope, someone who stood up to the business divisions."
Although corporate executives tell staffers they're merely looking to gain efficiencies, John and many of his coworkers are convinced that the real plan is to replace veteran staffers with younger, cheaper people.
The result, he says, is that current IT staffers feel isolated and helpless—and unwilling to deliver. "When you know that their way of managing is 'Do what we tell you or we will replace you,' " John says, "what kind of motivator is that?"
Much ink has been spilled over the past decade about the need for IT executives to think more strategically. And plenty of CIOs have gotten the message: More CIOs report to the CEO, sit on the executive committee and participate in corporate strategic planning.
The effects of that shift, however, have not been entirely positive.
An October 2004 CIO Insight research survey revealed that CIOs' perceptions of how well their IT departments are being run are much rosier than those of the executives who work for them.
While 94 percent of CIOs believe their IT shops are very good at adapting to changing business conditions, only 73 percent of their direct reports agree.
Roughly 26 percent of IT lieutenants cite a weak CIO or IT leadership as a reason why their companies are not better aligned with the business, compared with 4 percent of CIOs.
Only 23 percent of IT lieutenants say their managers are "very effective" in working with business units, compared with 44 percent of CIOs, and 44 percent say their CIO is ineffective when it comes to eliminating or changing IT projects that no longer match business goals.
Even the business executives in our survey held a more positive view of the IT department then the CIO's direct reports. Most distressing, roughly 40 percent of IT lieutenants report that low morale significantly impedes their company's productivity and effectiveness in achieving business goals. What's going on?
Strategic CIOs often find themselves in a catch-22. On the one hand, they need to focus their efforts upward, convincing their CEOs and other top-level executives to view IT as a strategic partner, not merely a cost center.
On the other hand, they have to manage their team of IT experts, many of whom still don't understand the business value of their initiatives.
But as CIOs spend more time in the boardroom, and less time in the computer room, managing both up and down the food chain becomes an increasingly difficult challenge, and too many are failing to find the right balance. "It's a reality," says Ellen Kitzis, group vice president of Gartner's EXP program and coauthor of The New CIO Leader (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). "CIOs get so crazy thinking about what they need to know from business executives that they become a stumbling block, a broken part of the chain in terms of communicating that vision down."
The results can be disastrous. Staffers are burning out in the face of overwhelming business demands, feeling isolated and unsupported—and questioning their loyalty to the CIO. This ultimately drives an even deeper wedge between IT and the business, making alignment—the very problem strategic CIOs are trying to solve—an impossible task.
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