After a successful career in ICT, first in Wellington then contracting in the UK and Europe, Hamish Grant returned with his family to Palmerston North, his hometown, in 2006, thinking he might semi-retire.
“My wife is English, but we met in Wellington,” he says, so the move to Europe was for personal as well as career reasons.
“It was like walking on crushed glass,” recalls Jonathan Iles, on how he felt at the end of an 80-kilometre race on rough terrain.
This week’s CIO Summit in Auckland underscores the key challenges and opportunities for CIOs in a constantly changing environment.
The challenges include changes in the CIO role itself and how they ensure they, and their team, will continue to deliver business value.
When a CIO is said to be embroiled in firefighting, that means his or her time is spent dealing with one crisis after another – systems, technology or people-related. It leaves little time for doing more strategic things for the business, so is not an ideal place to be in.
Last weekend, Mike Clarke, the CIO of SkyCity, willingly placed himself in such a situation. It was, however, not in the context of ICT management.
In defiance of the pessimists, the global financial crisis hasn’t caused our financial systems to collapse. Although a risk of relapse into a double-dip recession remains, there are some encouraging economic signs from around the globe.
New Zealand CFOs face a range of geography-specific challenges; among them dollar exchange rates and access to capital, due to the small size of the market. We asked these chief financial officers, commentators and experts for their tips on preparing organisations for the upswing we all hope is soon to come:
Public CIO of the Year: Wayne Saunders, Australia Post
Wayne Saunders is almost halfway into delivering a radical $600 million technology-led business transformation project to resuscitate the fortunes of one of the nation's largest businesses.
Wayne Shurts had no experience overseeing IT operations in emerging markets when Cadbury CEO Todd Stitzer appointed him global CIO last summer. The geographic parameters of Shurts' responsibilities at the sweets maker - with a presence everywhere from Pakistan to Palau - multiplied overnight.
The former CIO for North America now spends most of his time globe-trotting from his home base in Parsippany, New Jersey, to London headquarters to operations on six continents.
As CIO of engineering consultancy Beca Group, Robin Johansen says his role differs from more traditional CIOs. He still carries out the day to day functions of the CIO role, but he also seeks to contribute to the business “in the widest sense”.
For example, this contribution included establishing a new division, a business unit called Beca Applied Technologies (BAT) that has Johansen sitting on its board, along with another director role he holds in the company.
Owen McCall, CIO of The Warehouse, has of late been involved in online games and is encouraging other ICT executives to do the same.
He is one of the organisers of the Life Game Project, which aims to use immersive games technology to "develop life skills and positive lifestyle choices" for New Zealanders aged five to 19.
To the viewing public, broadcast free-to-air television is essentially about breaking news, reality TV, sitcoms, movies, sports and other forms of entertainment.
Damian Swaffield has quite a different perspective.
Few CIOs have had as varied a career as Ashley Mudford. He has moved from teaching to senior roles in the prison service and on to his current post as CIO of the NZ Food Safety Authority.
Mudford has been exposed to a variety of businesses and vocations unconnected with ICT and he says this gives him a unique view of the discipline he is now in.
They crossed swamps, climbed a rope, crawled under barb wire and tackled natural and man-made obstacles over a distance of 12 kilometres.
However, Pat O’ Connell and Jonathan Iles, CIOs, respectively, of Rank Group and its subsidiary Carter Holt Harvey, are undeterred.
Ron Hooton left the New Zealand Defence Force in 2005 after four years as its first chief information officer and moved to a much different sector, and another role — as CEO of ProCare Health.
From leading a 200-plus IT department, Hooton now heads an organisation with around 500 general practitioners (GPs) and nearly 400 nurses across 173 practice teams, taking care of more than 660,000 patients.
In 2006 Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) CIO David Spaziani was handed the task of assembling the Department’s disparate ICT silos into a coherent whole. The department-wide change process not only achieved this, it did so without an increase in budget or the wholesale exodus of staff, Spaziani said at the recent CIO Leaders’ Luncheons in Auckland and Wellington.
New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs has been dubbed the “mother of all departments”. It reports to six ministers, administers more than 90 Acts and Regulations, and employs 1400 staff in 21 offices here and overseas.
They say if you can remember the ‘60s, you weren’t really there.
Mary Ann Maxwell was there and has recollections of those years. “I spent too much time in San Francisco,” she says, with a laugh. With flowers in her hair? “Exactly”.
Alignment of ICT strategy with business strategy has for a long time registered as one of the top concerns of ICT management. An important element of it is the communication between CEO and top management on the one hand and with the CEO and CIO on the other.
Organisations agonise over strategy documents and architectural, functional and data diagrams trying to tease out a smooth working for the relationship, conducive to accurate communication and productive.
You may be surprised to learn how often professional references speak ill of the job seekers they purport to represent.
Sharp-eyed and highly caffeinated regulars might have noticed the brand-new employee at the Mercer Island Drive Thru Starbucks in November.
The newbie, wearing the standard-issue green apron, was receiving a crash course in just about every function at the 1,800-square-foot store. He took a turn as a barista, manned the drive-thru, handed out samples to customers, took out the trash, and assisted a patron who was trying to connect to the Wi-Fi network. He tinkered with the store's point-of-sale (POS) system. He even did some scheduling.
Vivian Chandra never forgets that a person living in a country with scant regard for democracy could get jailed for doing the job she does.
As IT manager for Amnesty International Aotearoa New Zealand, Chandra runs the information technology side of the human rights organisation, but is also active in its campaigns.
Critchlow CEO Jos Kunnen is one of the growing number of CIOs to have made the leap to the top post, bringing ICT smarts to a technically-focused company, while working to broaden its market and outlook.
He says his experience in the wider market will help him expand the mapping company’s awareness of the needs of its customers.
