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How CIOs Work With Their Board Of Directors

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
Image Credit Presenting To The Board Is A Big Step For CIOs

Presenting To The Board Is A Big Step For CIOs

Congratulations CIO – you’ve been asked to make a presentation to your company’s board of directors. Oh, oh. What are you going to have to do in order to make your career move forward due to this opportunity and not screw it up?

What Does A Board Of Directors Want From A CIO?

First off, let’s all make sure that we’re on the same page here – do you know exactly what your company’s Board Of Directors is? It turns out that when you legally set up a company, you need to create a Board of Directors to run the thing. One of their first tasks is to find a CEO to run the day-to-day company. That’s right – your CEO works for the Board of Directors. It really doesn’t get any higher than this!

Although the Board does understand the importance of information technology, they really don’t care about the IT department – they have much bigger things to worry about. That means that you are going to have present the information that they have requested very carefully.

Arthur Langer has done some research in this area and he has the following four recommendations for how CIOs should present information to their Board of Directors:

  1. New Ideas: CIOs need to understand why they have been asked to make a presentation to the Board. The Board is not interested in what you spend most of your time worrying about – budget details, hiring issues, etc. Instead, their focus is on the company as a whole and they want to hear from you what you can do to help the company grow. This can include how IT can help out with ongoing operations as well as what you can do more strategically.

  2. Security: Every presentation that a CIO makes to the Board needs to touch on the topic of information security. Remember, they don’t care about the details. Instead, what they want to hear from you is what you are doing to protect the company against risks and what you are doing to ensure that the company’s confidential information won’t get stolen.

  3. Data: If there is one thing that is keeping your Board up at night, it’s worrying about all of that data that your company is sitting on. As the CIO, they see you as being responsible for keeping track of all of this data. That also means that you are viewed as acting as the point-of-contact if the company gets sued and one of those e-discovery programs has to be conducted.

  4. Analytics: Since the Board sees the CIO as being in charge of all of the data that the company collects, they also see you as being responsible for finding ways to get the most out of that data. This means that you need to be ready to tell them how you plan on going about doing this.

How Can You Prepare For A Board Presentation?

Being invited to make a presentation to your company’s board is a great honor. Now you’re going to have to ensure that you make the most of this opportunity. That means, sorry about this, you’re going to have to do some homework.

Here are four things that every CIO needs to do both before and during their presentation to the Board:

  1. Know Your Audience: You should do this before every presentation, and presenting to your Board is no different. You need to understand the personalities of the people who make up the Board. What is their background? What is their reputation within the company? What do other people who have presented to them have to say about them?

  2. Make Friends: How the presentation is going to turn out is often determined before it starts. If you can make contact with Board members before the day of the presentation and ask them questions, then you will have a chance to have an ally in your corner on the day of your presentation.

  3. Time Counts: When you were told how much time you had for your presentation, the person who told it to you was lying. The way that these things work out is that you never get as much time as you were told, or even as much as you ended up being allocated. The Board will hate you forever if you run over your allocated time and will love you forever if you finish up early. Always show up with multiple version of your presentation so that you can fit into smaller and smaller time periods.

  4. Use Stories: As the company’s CIO you have a great deal of sophisticated knowledge about all things related to the IT sector and how they work. Don’t share this during your presentation. Instead, keep things simple and use stories to make you points – this is what the Board will be able to remember.

What All Of This Means For You

The definition of information technology is that it is how a company uses computers to become more successful. As the company’s CIO, it’s your job to make this happen. When your Board summons you to present to them, you need to understand both what they are interested in and what they don’t want you to talk about.

When you are preparing for your presentation you’ll want to focus on what the Board wants hear: how IT can help to grow the company, data security, data management, and how best to use the data that the company has. Additionally you’ll need to do your homework in order to prepare for your big presentation.

We talk a lot about finding ways to get the CIO a “seat at the table” when it comes to mapping out the company’s future. Being asked to present to your Board is a fantastic opportunity for a CIO to make a name for himself or herself. Make sure that you take the time to prepare for this presentation and you’ll see your career take off…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: Do you think that you should prepare a separate handout for your presentation to the Board?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

How hard can it be to be a CIO at a major airline? Your job is pretty straightforward – make sure that you can take reservations, schedule the planes and the crews, and print out paychecks ever two weeks. Nothing to it, right? Well it turns out that over at the Virgin America airline, their CIO appears to have made a very bad decision and everyone is now paying for it.

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Hey CIO, Are You Sending The Wrong Signals?

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
Image Credit It Turns Out That It's Not What You Say, But Rather How You Say It

It Turns Out That It's Not What You Say, But Rather How You Say It

No matter if you are already a CIO or simply hope to become one someday, you are going to want to become a success. Just because you are the CIO, does not guaranee that you’ll be a success – it seems to take something else, something extra. It turns out that social signals are what determines how successful a CIO will be. Do you know what signals you are sending out?

Welcome To The World Of “Honest Signals”

Dr. Alex Pentland at MIT has been studying the social cues that we transmit to others. What he’s discovered is that we communicate with others using much more than words. What we are trying to communicate comes across in our gestures, expressions, and the tone that we use.

Dr. Pentland’s research has gone one step further. What he’s uncovered is that we have a set of non-verbal cues, what he calls “honest signals”, that do more than just communicate from us to another person. They actually cause a change in the person that we are communicating with. In other words, what we are trying to get across “rubs off” on the person that we’re interacting with.

We’ve all seen this before. If we encounter someone who is very excited and outgoing, then we’ll become excited just by talking with them. Likewise, if we bump into someone who is having the worst day of their life, then we’ll be down and glum after we talk with them.

Why Do Some CIOs Succeed And Others Don’t?

Great, so now you’ve just found out that as CIO you are going to be “leaking” information through a bunch of non-verbal cues. That’s a bummer, but does it really matter – I mean you’ve got your technical act together and you believe that you know how to run an IT department, right?

It turns out that the non-verbal cues that you are giving off do matter. What the researchers have found through study is that the more successful CIOs are also the ones who are more energetic.

What this means is that the CIOs who are going to both last in their roles and be successful display a set of common traits. These include talking to others more while at the same time taking the time to listen to them. More of their day is spent engaging in face-to-face discussions. They are better at working with other people and they can both pick up signals from others, get them to talk more, and get them to be more outgoing overall.

What the researchers have found is that your attitude and the positive energy that you give off play a key role in your eventual success. They’ve found that spending more face time with the people with whom you work is 2.5 times more important than gaining access to additional sources of information.

What All Of This Means For You

In order for a CIO to be successful, it’s going to take a lot more than just having good technical knowledge. Researchers who study human dynamics have discovered what they call “honest signals” which can have a dramatic impact on your success.

These signals cause changes in the people who receive them. This means that in order to be successful as a CIO you need to be broadcasting the right signals. If not, then no matter how good your CIO skills are, you won’t be successful.

The good news is that once you know that honest signals exist and which ones are the ones that you want to be broadcasting, then you can focus on what you are transmitting. Awareness of the impact that you have on the people that you are meeting is the key to a CIO’s long-term career success…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: Do you think that you can change the honest signals that you are transmitting to others?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.
P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

CIOs have a tough job and we all know it. However, because it is so tough, it can be easy to lose sight of what is really important. As we look for ways to cut costs, boost innovation, retain key employees and simply make IT more relevant to the rest of the company, our vision can start to drift downwards towards the daily tasks and short term goals. This is when we can forget what our real job is – to show the rest of the company what responsibility really is.

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3 Skills That Most CIOs Are Missing

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
Image CreditYou Can't Be A Complete CIO Without These Skills

You Can't Be A Complete CIO Without These Skills

I’m guessing that you wouldn’t go to work naked. Then why-oh-why are you thinking about eventually becoming a CIO when you don’t have all of the skills that you’ll need to do the job correctly?

I’m not sure if this is going to make you feel any better, but it turns out that most CIOs are showing up for work only partially dressed when you consider what skills they are missing. Maybe we’d better have a talk about this…

Can You Communicate?

All too often, IT folks assume that good communication skills mean that you have the ability to get up in front of a group of people and deliver a speech without bursting into flames. Yes, this is good skill to have, but a CIO has to have more.

Remember, communication is a two-way street and not only does a CIO need to be able to tell others what to do, but you are also going to have to be able to listen to what others are telling you.

No, we’re not talking about having the ability to sit there and listen when someone else is talking to you just waiting for them to pause so that you can start talking again. Instead, a CIO needs to be able to listen, process what has been said, and then ask good, pointed questions that will help get to the bottom of any discussion.

Just to round things out, a CIO also needs to have the communication skill that will allow them to “close” a discussion. This is when you ask a final question and then have the strength to keep you mouth closed and allow the other person to provide an answer. This is how you wrap things up cleanly.

Promote, Promote, Promote!

All too often CIOs seem to have a “build it and they will come” sort of attitude. They believe that if both the IT department and by extension themselves do a good job then the rest of the company will realize it and their value to the company will increase. Sorry, it doesn’t work that way.

What CIOs need to be doing is constantly promoting both themselves and the IT department. Now you have to be careful here, note that I didn’t say “bragging”. The difference is subtle, but important.

One way that a CIO can show the value of both his position as well as the IT department is to become the thought leader on all things technical. By researching new technologies and then taking the time to educate the rest of the company about what they mean and how they can be used by the business in order to be more successful, both the CIO and the IT department will become recognized as a valuable resource.

Make A Friend (or Two)

Within the world of IT, there is often a “loner” attitude that many of us hold: I can do it all by myself. When you become CIO, you need to stop thinking this way and start making as many contacts as you can.

A CIO is only as strong as his / her network and that means taking the time to develop real relationships with as many people as possible. Not all CIOs have this skill.

What All Of This Means For You

If you really want to eventually become the CIO, you’ve got some work to do. There are a set of skills that you’ll need to have developed before your big day comes.

In order to remain a CIO once you get there, you’re going to have to have the ability to be a good two-way communicator. You’ll have to learn to spend your time tirelessly promoting both the IT department and your value to the company. Finally, you are going to have to get good at that critical skill: networking.

None of these three skills are impossible to do. However, the key to being a successful CIO is to get good at doing all three at the same time…!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: Which of these three skills do you think is the most important for a CIO to have?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Perhaps just for a moment we can consider the day-to-day activities of any IT department as being a sort of race. Collectively we are all running and trying to move out in front of the IT departments at the firms that our company is competing with. In this type of analogy, the CIO is running out in front of everyone else and is showing the department which way to go. But how does the CIO know where to go?

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Iran’s Twitter Revolution Holds Lessons For CIOs

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009
CIOs Need To Plan On How To Deal With Twitter <br> (c) 2009

CIOs Need To Plan On How To Deal With Twitter (c) 2009

Politics is a fascinating subject and I’m sure that we all have our own opinions about the events that are currently unfolding over in Iran regarding their recent elections. However, this posting isn’t about the elections or who won. Rather it’s about the amazing flow of information that happened even in a heavily restricted / controlled environment. We live in the 21st Century and this unfolding story holds many lessons for modern CIOs…

What Does An Election In Iran Have To Do With Twitter?

Noam Cohen over at the New York Times has taken a look at how information has flowed since the unrest began. In all honesty, “twitter revolution” is probably an overstatement. Web sites, text messages, and simple person-to-person conversation probably did a better job of spreading news than Twitter did. However, Twitter did do an amazing job of getting information OUT of the country.

Remember that Twitter is only three years old. It’s impact is much greater than its age would lead a CIO to believe. Although you might not be dealing with a disputed election, Twitter could play a big role in your company’s future.

What Twitter Means To Your Firm

There will be times in the future that your senior management (CEO, Chairman, etc.) will want to control what information is released about your firm and have some control over what people are saying about your company. Twitter opens up a whole new channel for people to talk about your firm. Here are six lessons that the Iranian election have taught all of us about this powerful new communication tool:

  • Twitter Really Can’t Be Stopped: Twitter messages (“tweets”) are really a form of one-to-many communications. There is no centralized site that can be shut down or forced to remove information by court order. There is no stopping this beast.
  • There Is Power In Numbers: A single tweet probably doesn’t mean much. A couple of tweets won’t attract attention. However, a series of tweets about the same subject will start to create an ecosystem about an event or a viewpoint. This can attract attention and start to generate more conversations.
  • Buyer Beware: Remember, on the Internet nobody knows that you are a dog (a saying from the early years of the Internet). Since the people participating in Twitter have no real identity, you really can’t trust what they are saying until its been verified.
  • Home Of Bad Information: There are probably people trying to communicate truths using Twitter, but there are probably also people who are trying to spread lies using Twitter. Whether it’s to drive your stock price down (or up) or prevent / encourage a takeover, all sorts of people will use Twitter to spread completely made-up stories.
  • Twitter People Use Twitter: CIOs always have to keep in mind that the people using Twitter are generally tech savvy folks who are online a lot. This does not necessarily represent the public at large.
  • Twitter Is Connected To The Media: The popular media “gets” Twitter and they are listening in order to get leads on new stories and dig up sources. This means that almost any storyteller now has a potential direct line to a major media outlet.

Final Thoughts

Twitter is yet one more way for people to communicate. It takes a little getting used to for most of us as we struggle to understand why anyone would take the time to send 140 character messages to communicate when we have so many other tools that we can use. However Twitter (and all of its variants) are here to stay.

CIOs need to adapt to this new world. When future events affect your company (disasters, mergers, takeovers, product issues, etc.) Twitter will probably play a role in how information gets out to the world at large. Developing a communication strategy that includes Twitter is a critical CIO responsibility. Addressing this issue this will mean that CIOs will have found a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

Questions For You

Are you using Twitter now? Is anyone discussing your firm on Twitter today? Have any of your competitors had discussions about them happen on Twitter? Does your communication strategy currently have a plan to include Twitter as a part of how you communicate information to the outside world? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

One of the great things about working in the IT field is that whenever things start to get boring, we have the ability to create new buzzwords and make things interesting all over again. The arrival of “Cloud Computing” on the scene a couple of years ago showed that this cycle has not gone away. Maybe it would be worthwhile to take a step back and make sure that we’re all on the same page here – what is cloud computing and why should anyone care?

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