Career / Interviews

One year? A decade? How long have you been in your current role? The
answer could be more important than you think when you next decide to

Managing IT often seems like managing the affairs of a rock band, with its curious mix of creative talent, volatile personalities, and lots of gear.

Management by walking around (MBWA) is a big part of Mainfreight, and critical in the success of the ICT team, declares Kevin Drinkwater, chief information officer of the supply chain logistics provider.
“One of our great philosophies is to visit our branches to gain an understanding of the business at the branch and finding out the issues that our team members have. So we watch what they are doing and ask them whether the systems do what they need. It has been amazing the improvements we have managed to create out of team members’ problems.

The air on the 28th floor of the ASB Centre in Auckland’s CBD seems thinner than it does at street level. At the time of our interview Russell Jones has been head of group technology for the ASB Group of Companies for just six weeks.
His new office is about as far removed from the daily rough-and-tumble of IT operations as it’s possible to get; more luxury hotel suite than server room or data centre. And there are indications that the occupant is still new to his role: Framed pictures leaning against the wall; a child’s doodle on the whiteboard.

He's only three months into the job, but a passion for education is what led Nick Hutton to his role as CEO of U21 Global, an educational institution focusing on graduate studies that operates on a 100 per cent online environment.
Hutton spent much of his childhood in North Africa, where his father headed the English Department at Ethiopia's University of Addis Ababa.

For three years, Simon Conroy’s career straddled the worlds of business and rock and roll.
Conroy, chief information officer of Flight Centre, was project manager at Freedom Air when he joined the rock band Redline as its bass guitarist.

Mike Kistner never planned on becoming a CEO. When he began his career in IT nearly 30 years ago, he was a programmer writing business applications for a company called Professional Computer Systems. At the time, Kistner was like most programmers: He just wanted to write good code. Maybe he'd someday become a lead systems analyst, he thought, but certainly never a chief exec.
Kistner, who was appointed CEO of travel services provider Pegasus Solutions on June 10, didn't begin thinking about the possibility of a career beyond coding until he began working for Super 8 Motels. An executive there one day asked the young programmer about his career plans. Recognizing Kistner's knack for problem-solving and budding leadership capabilities, he told Kistner to consider moving into management.

Two dogs are sitting in front of a computer screen. One turns to the other and says: "On the internet no one knows you're a dog." This famous New Yorker cartoon by Peter Steiner was published 15 years ago and was more prescient than the cartoonist realised. Steiner could not have known how much the issues of identity and trust - within our organisations, our social groups, online, in public and in private - would come to dominate much contemporary global thinking.
It's all about the networks

There can’t be many projects that involve moving four businesses into a single building, integrating information and communication systems comprising a multitude of servers and 14 separate networks and ensuring security and availability with a good deal of confidential information. This was the challenge that faced the New Zealand Defence Force in moving from its 60-year-old building in Wellington’s Stout Street, to a new base purpose-designed for today’s digitally intensive communications.
Richard Hitchcock, senior programme manager IT and telephony, directorate of communications and information systems strategy, was in charge of the move and upgrade. The scope of the project was “quite simple”, he says, euphemistically. “I had to reduce complexity, I had to eliminate the high cost of support; I had to increase employee productivity and to exceed our users’ expectations. I had to enable solutions to deliver best business value and improve and encourage co-operation.

Parke Pittar has had a varied life. Though born in Te Puke, he trained in the British Merchant Navy to be a deck officer; then he worked as a shipping agent at the Port of Tauranga and later as a foreman’s stevedore. The role let him visit many ports and Wellington was a natural progression, managing the container terminal at Centreport. During his four years there, he also completed a degree and post-graduate diplomas in finance, management, international business and accounting.
To broaden his skill base outside the ports industry, he spent several years at Deloitte Corporate Finance in Wellington, along with completing his professional accountancy exams.

For many great characters in fiction, the unheralded assistant was often the key figure behind the scenes keeping their heroism on the right track. The Lone Ranger had Tonto, Sherlock Holmes had Dr Watson and Batman had Robin. Increasingly, chief information officers are likewise recognising the benefits of having a well-established second in command.
Far from being a corporate "mini-me", there are benefits both for having and being a deputy CIO. While there is plenty of industry conjecture about an IT skills shortage of programmers and graduates, also quietly festering is the issue of a lack of a strong second tier of senior executives ready to take over the CIO reins.

A good CIO needs staying power and nerves of steel. Owen McCall, chief information officer of The Warehouse Group, set his sights on system stability from day one and never let up until he achieved it. Four years on he is confident that first base is covered and can address some of the other challenges: “Business enablement” and revising perceptions some areas of the business still have about IT unreliability.
For The Warehouse there is increasing competition, with new entrants in general merchandising and national retail space growing three-times faster than retail sales. As well, so-called ‘large-box category-killers’ such as Harvey Norman, Supercheap Auto, Bunnings Warehouse, Mitre 10 and even Number 1 Shoes have been expanding their retail footprints. Convergence has led to grocery businesses increasingly selling general merchandise — not to mention, of course, The Warehouse diversifying into groceries with its own Extra stores. Three Extra stores were opened, with plans to expand to 15, but further expansion was put on hold last September; as the company wanted to assess the performance of the new venture.

With the unstable economy, companies are planning cost-cutting measures to compensate for other rising costs and decreasing sales that are impacting their earnings. Those reactionary companies could learn a lesson from Dow Chemical, which operates in a continual state of cost containment.

How do you feel every morning when you park the car outside the front of your office? Aside from the usual irritants that come with battling peak-hour traffic, what does the prospect of another day at the coalface really mean to you?
Ideally, of course, as a senior IT leader you should walk through the office with a spring in your step, enthused about the changes and improvements you can make to the business.

Rob Fyfe is one of the few chief executive officers with a CIO role on his CV.
However, in Fyfe’s case, his ascent from ICT chief to the top table has been swift, at just under three years, and within the same enterprise.

Mark Ratcliffe officially took up the position of CEO at Telecom network business Chorus on April 1, but when interviewed in March, he said he was already settling into the position. “I’m certainly not doing anything else [in Telecom] at the moment.”
Ratcliffe was CIO of Telecom from 2000 to 2006 and subsequently chief operating officer technology and enterprise. In that role he was in charge of the development of the entire Telecom network and its move towards pure IP.

Work-life balance was something of an obscenity in corporate circles during the "efficiency purges" of the 1980s and 1990s. But as the annual global cost of high staff turnover approaches half a trillion dollars and with the global talent gap soon to hit 23 million, the subject has shot to the top of the corporate agenda. Work-life balance isn't just fashionable - it's hot.
A plethora of surveys and studies suggest companies that can attract and retain staff are tipped to outperform those that don't by between 30 and 50 per cent. In some instances, this translates into a doubling in shareholder value.

Commander Corina Bruce has chalked up a number of firsts in a distinguished 20-year career in the military.
She was the first female uniformed officer to go to sea in a warship; the first software engineer to transfer to a purely engineering role; and the first woman in the Navy to come back to work part-time in uniform after taking four years off to have children.

Your dream may be to take your business public and retire rich. Or you may want to sell out to someone like Google or Microsoft and retire rich. Or you may have a great business idea and need money for growth and expansion. All these options require finding someone that knows something about money.

Joe Beery has big plans for 2008, having spent the past 25 months integrating US Airways and America West Airlines as the combined company's senior vice president and CIO. (The two carriers announced merger plans in 2005.) With the integration in his rearview mirror, Beery is now ready to implement new systems, modernize old systems and work on customer service initiatives.
"It's a very exciting year for us," he says. "We're growing. Our IT group has more than doubled in size, and we still have a major push to do a lot of hiring right now."