Can a CIO Become Too Strategic? - ' Page 2'
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Downward Spiral
Granted, a certain amount of discontent among staffers is an inevitable part of every organization—and certainly not a phenomenon exclusive to IT. A tight economy has meant that everyone has had to do more with less. And it's easy to scoff at someone else's decisions, whether it's a boss or a parent, imagining how much better we could run things.
Rick Proctor, vice president of information technology at Thomas Nelson Publishers Inc., a Christian publishing company, says the unhappiness felt by IT underlings is not new. "I can remember thinking that myself before I became an executive," Proctor says. "You're looking up at the person above you and thinking, 'I could do that, why are they making that decision?'"
And it's easy, too, to assume that as more CIOs are picked from business units rather than traditional tech roles, grumbling among staffers would increase—but this is not the case.
According to our survey, 66 percent of all IT executives report that alignment is easier when the CIO has business experience.
"Our CIO doesn't come from technology, and that's critical," says Patrick Wise, vice president of advanced technology at Landstar System Inc., a $1.6 billion transportation services company. "In fact, none of his direct reports started out in technology, including me. That gives us a better perspective."
Ron Remy, deputy CIO at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, agrees: "We're blessed. Our CIO comes out of a line of business, and that's extremely important".
Instead, the survey results clearly point to a leadership issue, says John Kotter, the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School (now retired), and CIOs need a wake-up call.
"If CIOs believe they are doing a great job and there is evidence to the contrary," he says, "then the first step is to face the reality of their own leadership performance."
In Kotter's opinion, those leadership problems begin at the level of top management. CIOs still haven't done enough to gain respect at the executive level. "I haven't seen a whole lot of effectiveness in the boardroom," he says.
Faisal Hoque, founder and chairman of the Business Technology Management Institute, agrees. "You can count on your fingers the number of CIOs who have clout. It's not hundreds."
It's not as if CIOs aren't making an effort. Although the number of CIOs that report to CEOs has remained flat for the past three years, at roughly 60 percent, CIOs' commitment to strategic alignment as a top priority has shot up from 39 percent in 2002 to 70 percent in 2004.
CIOs also report they're spending more time on business issues—a CIO Insight study in 2002 showed that CIOs spent 44 percent of their time on business-related issues; today, that figure is 51 percent.
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When it comes to execution, it's key to have your staff firmly behind you. Involving them in strategy ensures your vision is well communicated. |
The Old Way: Top Down
1 The CIO meets with the senior executive team to discuss how technology can best benefit corporate goals.
2 The executive team discusses important technology initiatives and directs the CIO to begin work on certain projects.
3 The CIO returns to the IT shop with his list of projects and discusses them with his direct reports, deciding who will be responsible for execution.
4 The direct reports, who do not under-stand the strategic initiative and have limited insight into the overall business value, implement the plan based on the CIO's requirements.
5 Projects ultimately do not live up to the business unit's expectations; alignment worsens.
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The New Way: Bottom Up
1 IT project leaders sit down with business leaders to discuss how technology can best benefit corporate goals.
2 In tandem, the IT and business leaders formulate a strategic plan that includes projects, schedules and budgets.
3 The plan is presented to a cross-functional senior management team, which compiles proposals from the various business/IT teams. The proposals are reviewed and prioritized.
4 Senior management releases the final strategic plan. Because projects are assigned to the people who proposed them, the IT/business partners are much more likely to champion their initiatives.
5 Projects are reviewed monthly to ensure they stay on track; alignment improves.
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The absence of the CIO-as-leader, exacerbated by the CIO's continued struggle for respect in the boardroom, puts IT lieutenants in a tough spot. It's a primary cause of IT's lack of credibility among businesspeople—which persists, Kotter says, because CIOs don't do enough at the executive level to win the respect of other business unit leaders.
"In private, division general managers bitch endlessly about the IT twerps who don't know anything about their business, disrupting their people and costing a fortune," he says.
Without the CIO to act as their big stick, lieutenants are left to fend for themselves, which quickly leads to resentment—especially when the business units paying for the tech projects put the pressure on to deliver on unrealistic goals.
One IT deputy at a subdivision of a major telecommunications firm, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agrees this can be an agonizing effect of poor leadership.
Before her CIO finally stepped up to the plate and demanded organizational change, "projects would come out from everywhere and instead of having it planned out, it would be a frustrating competition for dollars and resources," she says.
For example, the marketing department would create an IT project that would involve the sales and operations departments—without getting their buy-in first. As a result, the IT department would have to play middleman, negotiating and prioritizing projects between units.
"The end result was a lot of highly paid IT folks spending time negotiating instead of delivering technology products," she says. Today, the IT shop finances strategic initiatives, which are chosen and managed by a committee comprised of IT and business managers.
Meanwhile, many lieutenants report that their CIOs react harshly to bad news, which makes honesty difficult, says Robert Sutton, a management science and engineering professor at Stanford University.
"No one wants to deliver bad news to the boss," he says. "A well-documented effect is that people with lower status learn to avoid this, as the messenger is shot. So their bosses are given only the good news," further distorting the CIO's view of how well IT is performing, and creating trust issues between the CIO and his lieutenants.
And that may be the worst consequence for the CIO—the loss of credibility and trust, not with the business side but with your own staff—the people who must make your vision a reality.
One deputy CIO at a global manufacturing company says there is a definite feeling among his coworkers that their CIO, who is struggling to gain a place at the executive level, is more loyal to board members than to his staffers.
"Too many times the CIO toes the party line," he says. "At the execution level, we focus more on actual delivery and we get frustrated with the corporate line." This, he says, makes his team feel "as if our hands our tied."
Granted, CIOs can't always share everything they learn in the boardroom. But it's imperative to have the loyalty of your direct reports to make sure that the strategy you set with your executive peers is executed properly.
"It's a very difficult leadership task," says Kotter. "I can't think of a CIO of a major corporation who I have seen in operation and said to myself, 'Wow, this guy really has it together, his executive committee is on the same page, and his troops are excited about what they are doing.'"
Failing to gain and maintain that credibility will only lead to greater resentment—and ultimate failure. John, the pharmaceutical company IT executive we spoke to, says this is the toughest blow of all.
"When the current administration was brought in, they said all the right stuff," he says. "They talked about standardizing, centralizing, identifying roles, everything a big company must do. But they have not done it." The effect, John says, is "a train wreck waiting to happen."
Data migrations are fouled up, monitoring tools that are supposed to keep track of projects aren't being implemented, and no one is taking responsibility. His assessment: "It's going to take years to clean up this mess."
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