Archive for the ‘strategy’ Category

« Older Entries

5 Suggestions For What Should Be On A CIO’s To-Do List Right Now

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010
Image Credit You'll Only Be Able To Accomplish What's On Your CIO List

You'll Only Be Able To Accomplish What's On Your CIO List

The time has never been better to make an impact in the success of your company as the CIO. However, there are a lot of different things that can conspire to distract you from tacking the tasks that really need your attention. Here’s a list of 5 items that should be on every CIO’s to-do list:

Information Collection: Inside And Outside

The CIO is in a unique position to be able to both collect and to set up systems to collect feedback from everyone that the company interacts with. This can include both vendors and customers.

Once the information has been collected, it becomes the responsibility of the CIO to make sure that all of the data is processed and transformed into knowledge that is usable by the rest of the company. This knowledge then needs to be distributed in a way that will make sure that it gets into the hands that need to see it.

Evaluating The CIO Based On Business Metrics

In the old world, how good of a job the CIO was doing was based on technology metrics such as the company’s email system staying up. Those types of metrics no longer truly reflect the type of job that a modern CIO is being asked to perform.

Ultimately a CIO should be evaluated based on how well the IT department is supporting the rest of the business in being successful. This should go well beyond simple technology issues and be more focused on things such as maximizing customer value and boosting profits while helping to reduce costs.

Vendor Management

Almost every firm out there has been working hard over the past few years to try to minimize the number of vendors that they are dealing with. That’s been a great idea because it has simplified the task of vendor management while boosting a company’s buying power with the vendors that remain.

However, CIOs need to realize that if they cut back the number of vendors that they are dealing with too far, they may miss out on opportunities to implement innovative product solutions that will provide the company with a competitive advantage.

CIOs should meet with as many vendors as possible and continuously evaluate their product offerings against the company’s strategic goals. When there’s a match more time and effort should be invested to determine how the vendor’s products can be best used by the rest of the company.

Go Mobile

The entire world seems to be going mobile and as CIO you are going to have to be constantly be making evaluations of just exactly where it makes sense for you to add more mobility to your company’s operations. Sometimes this will also require you to say “no” when staff want to start to use the newest & shiniest mobile technology.

Ultimately it’s going to require some hard decisions to be made. Adding mobility needs to complement the company’s overall strategic goals. As always, mobile security has to be one of the key issues that you’ll deal with as the CIO.

Getting Ready For Change

If there is one thing that is constant in IT, it’s change. This means that as the CIO you are going to have to make sure that the entire department is ready to help the company leap out in front of their competitors when economic conditions allow it.

What All Of This Means For You

A CIO’s to-do list always seems to be getting longer. The trick is to make sure that you are spending your time working on the correct things.

We’ve provided you with a list of 5 items that need to be on every CIO’s to-do list. The trick will be to make sure that these tasks line up with the company’s strategic direction.

CIO’s who are able to line the IT department up and support the rest of the company will be doing their job. Those who can check the most things off of their to-do list will be the ones who come out ahead in the end.

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

Question For You: Who do you think a CIO should work with to make sure that IT projects match the company’s strategic goals?

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

It turns out that a CIO really doesn’t do all that much. I mean, they don’t do any coding, they don’t debug network problems, and they don’t design next-generation storage solutions. Sorta makes you wonder just exactly they do do? It turns out that most of a CIO’s time is spent doing scary stuff, like managing people…

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in strategy | 8 Comments »

It Takes A Strategic Execution Officer To Get Anything Done Around Here

Monday, November 30th, 2009
Image Credit CIOs Have Yet Another Hat To Wear: Mr. Make-Sure-The-Project-Is-A-Success

CIOs Have Yet Another Hat To Wear: Mr. Make-Sure-The-Project-Is-A-Success

We all dream of the day that we will get the nod to become CIO — finally we will have arrived. Or will we have? Take just a moment and think about all of those major projects that you’ve see during your career that started out with a bang and ended up failing and going away with a whimper. When you are CIO, things are going be different and that’s because you won’t just be the CIO, you’ll also be the company’s Strategic Execution Officer.

What Have I Signed Up For?

Business processes are like pit-bulls: they really don’t like change and if you try to change them, they are probably going to bit you really, really hard. This is one of the reasons that so many major company initiatives fail — nobody really wants to go to the effort to change.

What’s been missing for far too long has been a Strategic Execution Officer and since so many of today’s major projects involve the IT side of the house, who better to assume this role than the CIO?

In your future role as your company’s CIO / Strategic Execution Officer you will not only be responsible for making sure that the new IT systems go in on time, but also that the company’s processes and the behaviors of the staff are changed so that the new way of doing business actually gets implemented.

Sound challenging? It does to me. That’s why we need to reach out to researchers Dr. Jeanne Ross and Dr. Peter Weill who have taken the time to look into what four things a Strategic Execution Officer needs to do. Let’s see what they recommend.

Create & Manage IT Systems Used For Strategic Initiatives

A CIO will tend to look at a given project and search for ways to get it successfully implemented. A Strategic Execution Officer realizes that in order for the company to be successful, the core processes that allow the company to operate smoothly and efficiently need to be digitized.

This means not just one IT project, but potentially several need to be done in such a way that they support the company as it is today and as it will be tomorrow. Key components of this type of solution include a single well-managed database, a standardized development system that allows the creation of different applications to easily talk to each other, and a solid communications network so that workers can access the data and applications that they need from just about anywhere.

Become A Leader In How The Company Does IT Governance

The CIO / Strategic Execution Officer is the one person in the company who is best situated to see it all. This means that you are going to have to take an active role in the company’s IT governance process.

You are going to have to be able to make some hard calls when it comes to identifying what the company’s IT priorities are. On top of this, you will have to be able to communicate to others in the firm what the different trade-offs are to each decision.

Make Business Units Actually Use Digitized Business Processes

Time to play Mr. Tough-Guy here. As Strategic Execution Officer you are going to have to show up and make each of the company’s business units start to use the new digitized business processes once the implementation is done. This is not going to be easy to do.

We all know how this plays out: a project goes in and then half of the company finds a way to get their jobs done without using the new system because they don’t want to be bothered to learn how the new system works. You must not allow this to happen. If you have to take away the systems that are allowing them to work around the new system, then so be it.

Create Both Structures And Initiatives That Make The Company Change

Making the entire IT organization ultimately report to the Strategic Execution Officer solves the problem of how to motive the IT staff to follow through on a company-wide change. In firms that have multiple CIOs, this is one way to quickly solve a lot of common structural problems.

Getting the business unit leaders to sign up and agree to use the results of a multi-year IT project can be tricky. Identifying and removing real and perceived obstacles is one way to go about doing this. Another is taking the time to talk with each business unit leader in order to make sure that they understand why the change is happening and how they will benefit from it.

What All Of This Means For You

Becoming the CIO of your firm will be a major accomplishment in your IT career. However, far too many of us have become CIOs only to eventually fail at implementing some major company-wide project.

The reason that so many of these projects fail is because the company lacked a Strategic Execution Officer to see the project through from start to finish. This is a role that you are going to have to be willing to step up and play.

As the Strategic Execution Officer you will be responsible for coordinating projects that span the entire company. Your ability to be successful at doing this won’t rest so much on your technical skills as they will rest on you ability to motivate the business unit heads to participate in both the project and its final results. Good luck!

What will a Strategic Execution Officer’s biggest challenge be at your company?

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Just imagine the day that you become CIO: you’ll be able to shed all of those past associations and friendships that have gotten you to this exalted position and finally you’ll be able to focus on what really matters: forging strong links with your company’s senior management. Well, sure, if you don’t really need to get anything done…

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in strategy | No Comments »

Wicked Ways Of Managing Wicked IT Problems

Thursday, September 25th, 2008
Dorothy Knew How To Deal With Wicked Problems

Dorothy Knew How To Deal With Wicked Problems

Wicked IT problems can frustrate even the best of us – by their very nature, wicked IT problems have no solution (that’s why we call them “wicked” and not just “hard”). As we talked about last time, although you may not have the tools to solve these types of problems, you do have the tools needed to manage them. However, the key to dealing with problems like this successfully is to involve the entire IT department (yes, these problems are really that big). Let’s talk about how you’d go about doing that…

The first department-wide step that you’d need to take is to get everyone to focus on taking action. In traditional problem solving, we think though all of the possible strategies that we could execute and then pick the one(s) that we think will solve the problem. Sorry – that approach doesn’t work when you are dealing with a wicked problem. Instead, what you need to be doing is some experimenting. Specifically, choose a collection of strategies that you think MIGHT work and start executing on them. This approach actually has a name it’s called the “science of muddling through“. One thing that you’re going to have to keep in mind is that every action that you take to deal with the wicked IT problem will cause the problem to change. Remember, we’re dealing with a wicked problem here!

Finally, you need to take the hardest step. You need to implement what is called a “feed forward” process for your IT department. We are all very familiar with feedback systems where we compare the results of our actions to our original plans and then change our actions accordingly. Once again, bad news – feedback won’t help you to deal with a wicked IT problem, instead  you are going to need a feed forward solution. A feed forward process requires IT management and workers to take the time to imagine the IT department in the future. The future should be defined as being 5, 10, 25, and even 50 years down the road. The goal of this process is to picture what the IT department will be like, and then to determine what steps need to be taken today in order to move the department towards that goal.

So there you have it – ways to mange your wicked IT problems. Remember, when you enecounter a fustrating IT problem, there is always the chance that it may be a wicked problem. These types of problems can’t be solved and so you’re going to have to practice some wicked management…

Have you ever encountered a wicked IT problem? Did you try to start multiple strategies to deal with it all at once? How did this turn out for you? Have you ever had your IT department try to imagine how the department will look in the future? What did you do with this vision? Leave a comment and let me know what you are thinking…

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in strategy | 2 Comments »

Managing Wicked IT Problems

Monday, September 22nd, 2008
How to manage wicked IT problems

How to manage wicked IT problems

So we’ve chatted about Wicked IT Strategy problems – these are the ones that you really can’t solve. Given that, you’ve got a couple of different things that you can do. The easiest is to throw your arms up in the air, say “this can’t be solved”, and then work very hard at getting promoted so that it becomes someone else’s problem. Good luck with that approach! Let’s take a look at some other solutions for those of us who feel a deep burning need to make the world a better place for all…

Let us acknowledge that wicked IT problems can’t be solved. So your next best alternative is to come up with ways to cope with them. They aren’t going away, so you need to find some common ground that will allow you to live with them. As with all of us in IT, there are countless complicated solutions that you could probably come up with in order to address any problem. However, here are a couple of relatively simple actions that you can take that will yield real results:

Make everyone responsible for finding a way to manage the problem. This means that you need to reach out and drag in employees, customers, management, etc. and you need to make sure that you document everything that is said and establish clear means of communication between all parties. Because a wicked problem is so complex, it will take a wide variety of views and opinions in order to come up with unique ways of managing the problem. However, be careful! Don’t just collect inputs. Instead, make sure that everyone is involved in actually implementing their suggestions. Yes, having more people involved will make things more difficult, but because of the complexity of the problem they are all needed. Documenting all ideas and discussions will become more important when a plan is finally agreed on – the documentation will be needed in order to communicate the plan to the rest of the department.

Define what your department’s identity is. Although many different suggestions will be made as to how best to manage the wicked problem, it will be critical that whatever solutions are finally put in place are true to the IT department’s identity. The department’s identity is the cornerstone of its strategy and provides both direction and focus for the IT leaders. An identity is made up of a department’s values, competencies, and its aspirations. Staying true to these will allow critical decisions to be made quickly and painlessly.

But wait, there’s more that you can do to manage wicked problems. We’ll cover these next time…

Have you been able to assign responsibility for large problems to all of those who need to be involved? How did that work out – did the number of people who were involved make it hard to reach any sort of decision? Do you know what your IT department’s identity is and do you reference it when you are making decisions? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in strategy | No Comments »

Wicked, Wicked IT Strategy Problems

Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Some IT problems can't be solved - these are wicked problems.

Some IT problems can't be solved - these are wicked problems.

Some problems just can’t be solved. As an IT guy with an engineering background, I find this hard to believe – it goes against my grain. I mean, back in school I encountered lots of problems that at first blush appeared to be impossible to solve. However, once I had gotten a little deeper into whatever class I was taking at the time things started to become more clear. New tools that I had learned could be used to solve what had previously appeared to be unsolvable problems. In the world of IT, the IT department can even help keep a company out of an economic stall and so I though that there was no problem that an IT department couldn’t solve. It turns out that real life is not nearly so neat.

Dr. John Camillus has spent the past 15 years studying how companies create their own strategies. During this time he has uncovered what he likes to call “wicked” business problems – strategy issues that are difficult because our traditional processes for solving problems just can’t resolve them. IT departments face these types of problems internally as well as facing them as part of a company’s overall strategy planning process. Wicked problems can be especially trying for IT departments because they seem to resist being solved by our standard techniques of gathering more metrics, revisiting the core issues and creating a more detailed definition of them, or even the time honored technique of breaking the big problems that we can’t solve down into smaller problems that we hope that we can solve. Dr. Camillus says that not only do our traditional ways of dealing with problems not work on wicked problems, but they can also make things far worse.

Dr. Camillus recently wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review in which he discussed wicked business problems. In it he stated that organizations, like an IT department, will most likely encounter a wicked problem when they are facing either a period of constant change or have encountered challenges that are bigger then they have ever seen before. Within an IT department, it won’t just be the technological complexity that make a problem a wicked problem, but rather all of the social issues that come along with it that will turn it into a wicked problem.

How can you tell if your problem is a wicked problem? It would be nice if wicked problems came labeled as such. However, they don’t. Having the ability to identify a wicked IT problem early on can save any IT leader a significant amount of time and grief. You won’t be able to tell just by looking at the problem itself, but rather you have to take a look at what surrounds the problem. Specifically, if a problem is causing confusion, discord among your IT team, and there has been a distinct lack of progress in creating a solution for it so far, then there is a good chance that you are looking at a wicked problem.

Just to make sure that you really do have a wicked problem and not one of those more common really, really hard IT problems, there are some additional criteria that you need to check before you can call an IT problems a wicked problem:

  1. Too Many People Are Involved: A problem that has too many people who are impacted by it starts to look like a wicked problem very quickly. Each person who has a different vested interest and is working on a different set of priorities will contribute to making a difficult problem into an unsolvable wicked one.
  2. The Cause Of The Problem Is Not Clear: There is no single cause for the IT issue that you are dealing with. Generally there are multiple sources that have fed the problem including competition, issues with employees & staffing, company strengths that have become decrements, and a traditional domestic vs. international focus can also compound the problem.
  3. The Problem Is Shaped Like A Blob: This is an especially tricky characteristic to deal with – the problem seems to change shape everytime you try to deal with it. This makes it hard to “get a grip” on the problem and so you may not have any idea as to where to start.
  4. You’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before: How can you solve a problem that doesn’t look like any other problem that you’ve ever seen before? When you face a problem that you’ve never seen before, the question of what tools or techniques to use to solve it becomes even more critical.
  5. There Are No Signs Showing You The Right Direction: Most problems come with some sort of indication of what the correct next thing to do in order to solve it is. However, wicked problems have no such indicators. You are truly on you own here.

So what’s an IT leader to do once he/she has spotted a wicked problem? One key thing that Dr Camillus has learned is that wicked IT problems can not be solved. Instead, you need to find ways to mange them. How to do that is what we’ll talk about next time…

Have you encountered any wicked IT problems? Did you know it was going to be a wicked problem right off the bat or did it take awhile to discover this? What did you do about it? Were you ever able to solve it or does this problem still exist? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in strategy | 8 Comments »

« Older Entries