Career / Opinions

The Australian Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner, has been on the front foot about the efficiency, or rather lack of efficiency, of federal government ICT. In April, Tanner invited Sir Peter Gershon to lead an independent review of the Government’s management of ICT.
Sir Peter was the architect of the UK Government’s 2004 Spending Review “Releasing Resources to the Frontline”. It identified cash and funding redeployment savings in excess of 20 billion pounds, triggering a major rethink of ICT management and procurement in the UK.

I recently spent a stimulating Sunday evening with a multi-generational group of friends in a spirited discussion of generational differences. As you might expect, liberally sprinkled throughout the conversation were the terms baby boomers, Gen X and Gen Y. Simply using one of those descriptors was supposed to allow each of us to magically construct a mental profile of a person’s aspirations, motivation, and attitudes — both positive and negative.
Cataloguing is a characteristic human trait that allows us to provide structure and order amid the apparent chaos of daily human activity. Over the past few decades, as businesses have successively sought to understand and predict the behaviour of consumers, it has usually been sufficient to apply a simple, age-related generational model. The post-war period brought us the baby boomers (people born between 1946 and 1960), followed by their offspring, Generation X (1961 to 1981), and then Generation Y (1982 to 2000). However, such a simplistic approach is no longer proving adequate to describe and characterise the consumer base — something more insightful is needed.

For politicians, the key to success is winning the hearts and minds of the voters. Former U.S. president Ronald Reagan was particularly adept at this, using his skills as "The Great Communicator" to get his message across and win the electorate over to his way of thinking. CIOs are not unlike political leaders in that their success depends largely on winning the hearts and minds of users and customers. Those CIOs who take communication seriously are likely to have an easier road to success.
Ken Fitzpatrick is one of those guys. He understands the value of communications, and he has applied that knowledge to help build success in his role as Director, Information Services for steel manufacturer WGI Westman Group Inc. And perhaps it shouldn't come as a surprise, but Fitzpatrick is also a politician.

How can organisations ensure that they have the right leaders in the right roles to deliver their strategies, and how can they develop their high-potential leaders of the future?
Organisations commonly, and unsuccessfully, approach this twin problem by dealing with elements of the leadership jigsaw without seeing the whole picture. For example, they send important executives on expensive overseas leadership programs or run off-the-shelf training programs for middle managers but neglect some of the other crucial components of an overarching leadership development approach.

In the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game Michael Lewis tells how in 2002, Oakland A's manager Billy Beane used nontraditional statistics to turn the small-market franchise into a team that could compete with big-market franchises. The story holds lessons for IT management about the importance of understanding objectively the strengths, weaknesses and behavior of individual players in order to build a successful team.
Beane dispensed with the traditional -- and subjective -- baseball wisdom that scouts relied on to draft players and created an objective method for scouting based on statistics that weren't valued by his competitors. By taking this new approach Beane revolutionized the way baseball is managed and played, changing fundamentally the concepts behind building a winning team. Theo Epstein, general manager of the Boston Red Sox, used a similar approach to win World Series championships in 2004 and 2007.

In April 2000, the Harvard Business Review posed the question, "Are chief information officers obsolete?"
My favourite part of the response then was: "The fundamental mistake one makes in predicting a CIO-less future is believing that the future will have many of the same components as the present. It never does."

To all you unmarried men or married women out there; to all you workers who "accidentally" opened your colleague's pay slips only to discover they're getting paid more than you; to all you lottery winners who have yet to find the time to spend all the dough; in short, to all of you who feel that your life is going down the toilet, I bring a message of hope from the happiness experts: Things will get better once you pass through the U-Bend.
I'm not making it up. That's what it's called - a U-Bend - taking its name from the shape that most long-term studies of happiness take on when plotted according to age. In surveys, people describe themselves as happy when they're in their teens, very happy when they're through their mid-fifties, and relatively unhappy during what scientists describe as the "poopy" years in between.

Compassion. Candor. Transparency. A focus on family.

CIOs are calling me. A lot. The country's economic instability has them nervous and thinking about their next job. Most are set on another CIO role and some are ready to move into "the business."

You can reach the pinnacle of your career as a CIO of a major organisation and still have significant weaknesses in critical leadership competencies.
Because of these weaknesses, we don’t represent a consistent brand to our customers.

Have you ever asked a child what they want to be when they grow up and received the answer, "an IT consultant"?
Arguably, the information and communication technology industry, more than any other sector, is in need of an image makeover - and soon. It's a fact that the name alone may be enough to send yawns around a room of year 12 students. So how do we attract people to an industry lacking a strong, identifiable brand image?

Over the last 20 years, as the CIO role has changed, the competencies required to succeed have changed, as has the level of performance expected for CIOs to be successful. And it's getting harder for CIOs to distinguish themselves as outstanding.
As noted by Carl Wilson, 20 years ago the focus of IT was on technology only, and that technology was fragmented. The key priority for IT managers was keeping all those wonderful mainframes, minicomputers and PCs happily running in their own little worlds. Even within IBM's world, 3081s did not talk to AS/400s and definitely did not talk to PC-XTs. Thus, a limited number of relatively low-level competencies were all that was required to succeed: Functional technology expertise with a dose of results orientation, a dash of team leadership and a sprinkling of people development expertise.

The CFO can be one of the most influential individuals in your enterprise, in terms of how IT is perceived and managed. However, at times, the two do not see eye to eye and view each other as stumbling blocks to achieving their individual and enterprise goals. This is particularly problematic when a “parent/child” relationship exists because the CIO reports to the CFO.
I hear recurring (and disturbing) themes from CIOs that many CFOs think:

Stretched between managing their environments and delivering on new enterprise requirements, most CIOs report “not enough” time or resources as one of their key challenges.
As innovation becomes the mantra within their enterprises, CIOs are being asked to focus on the new things. This is difficult to do if you are concentrating more than half your time on what you have always done.

I often get asked for advice on how to handle situations that seem to be spiralling out of control. A typical example is this scenario:
“Last month I was brought in to sort out the mess in IT. The chief executive officer gave me control of the equipment and the people, as long as I get them working properly.

In my role with executive programs in Gartner, I talk to hundreds of chief information officers around the world every year and I answer many questions about how they should respond to the challenges of being a successful CIO. But surprisingly (or maybe not), one of the most common comments that I hear is, “I’d love to get out of here, but where would I go?”
The simplest response is to tell them to find another CIO role at a different enterprise. Often, however, I tell them that they are asking the wrong question. For many of these “weary” CIOs, the question they need to answer is not “where” but “why”? Sometimes a change of job is not enough. Same job in a new place will not satisfy them. A change of career may be needed.