Posts Tagged ‘business strategy’

New Name For CIOs: Strategic Execution Officer

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009
CIOs Need To Learn To Manage Wild IT Projects<p>(c) - 2007</p>

CIOs Need To Learn To Manage Wild IT Projects(c) - 2007

In order to complete in a global economy that is moving faster every day, more and more firms are committing to implementing those really BIG process digitization projects. More often than not the CIO will find himself / herself in charge of not only the implementation of the new software application, but also the overall success of the project. How do you go about doing that?

What Goes Wrong With Big IT Projects

We all know the statistics – most big IT projects are not successful. However, the key question is why? It turns out that all too often the issue is not with the new process automation technology that is being implemented, but rather with the management challenge that comes along with a project like this.

The reason that managing a large transformational IT project is so hard is because the CIO also needs to be finding ways to drive the new business process changes that will be required once the new systems have been installed. It turns out that nobody likes change!

What Doesn’t Work?

It seems as though IT departments have been trying since the beginning of time to find a way to tackle this two-headed IT project beast. One approach has been to give responsibility for the success of the project to an executive governance committee. It turns out that this type of committee does an excellent job of defining the strategy for implementing the changes that will be needed, but does a lousy job of executing it.

Another approach has been to create an IT task force to implement this type of change. They generally do a good job of getting the new application up and running, but they lack the wide-ranging authority to cause other parts of the company to change how they are doing their jobs.

What Does An IT Strategic Execution Officer Do?

If the CIO is willing to step up and tackle leading both sides of a major IT process automation project, just what do they have to do? There are three fundamental tasks that they will need to deal with:

  • The implementation of the process automation application(s).
  • Making sure that the new technology gets adopted by the rest of the company.
  • Making sure that the new processes that the project has implemented start to get used by everyone.

Ultimately, the CIO will be filling the management / leadership gap that exists between coming up with the process automation plan and actually changing the company to use the project once its been implemented.

Final Thoughts

No CIO wants to take on more work – there’s not enough time in the day to get everything done as it is. However, ensuring that big IT projects get implemented correctly and that the company transforms its processes in order to use the new tool is the key to the company’s long term success.

This is a clear example of where a CIO gets to practice for his / her next job: becoming CEO. Nobody else will be as well positioned to implement cross-company changes. CIOs who can pull this off will have found a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

The basic job of a CIO is to ensure that a company’s IT infrastructure operates smoothly and allows the company to conduct business. On Monday, August 3, 2009, PayPal’s CIO failed at this most basic of jobs…

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Posted in product managment | 4 Comments »

Cisco’s John Chambers’ Recession Tips For CIOs

Monday, August 10th, 2009
John Chambers Knows How To Survive A Recession

John Chambers Knows How To Survive A Recession

It can be a long and lonely journey through a recession for anyone, including CIOs. The company’s very survival may be at stake, the CIO’s job may be at risk, and of course there is that big unanswered question about what needs to be done to prepare for life AFTER the recession is over. Maybe Cisco’s John Chambers can offer us some insights…

Who Is John Chambers?

Michael Malone over at the Wall Street Journal had a chance to sit down with John Chambers and ask him for some guidance  for how CIOs can make it through these troubling times.

Just in case you don’t know who John Chambers is, he’s the CEO of the computer networking giant Cisco. Roughly 3/4 of all Internet traffic is estimated to run over Cisco gear and if you own a LinkSys router in your home or use one of those little Flip digital cameras then you are a Cisco customer.

John Chambers was at the helm of Cisco when the tech world really took a dive back in 2001. When he talks about what CIOs need to do to survive the current downturn, he knows what he’s talking about…

Chamber’s Suggestions For Surviving A Recession

John Chambers has a playbook that contains four key elements for how to survive a downturn. The playbook has been created based on years of experience in the tech industry and having had a chance to watch once great companies fall by the wayside. Here are Chambers’ key points:

  • Be Realistic: All too often CIOs like to pretend that the challenges that they are facing are all caused by the current economic situation. In reality, it’s more often a combination of what’s going on in the market as well as challenges that they are creating internally. Being able to realize that these are two separate groups is the first step in coming up with a plan to deal with them.
  • Assess Your Situation: When  a CIO discovers that a recession is starting to happen, he/she needs to ask themselves how long they think that this is going to last (they always end eventually!) and how deep it’s going to be. The answer all too often turns out to be that it’s going to last longer than you anticipate and be more severe. Knowing this you can create plans that will see you though the entire downturn, not just some made up short period of time.
  • Get Ready For The Upturn: This is the part that so many CIOs miss – all recessions eventually end. Although the ability to do a good job of cutting costs will help see the company through the recession, it’s the ability to position the IT department to help the company burst into the lead once the recession is over that will prove a CIO’s true value.
  • Get Closer To Your Customers: You would think that this would have always been on Cisco’s list, but Chambers admits that it was added only after the 2001 recession. The closer that you are to your customers, the sooner you will realize when a recession is starting because you’ll see the pain that they are starting to feel. This helps you to react quicker and better.

Final Thoughts

In an era in which firms seem to go through CEOs like copier paper and in a region of the county, Silicon Valley, in which there are very few survivors, John Chambers has not only survived, but he has done a great job of thriving. His experiences with multiple recessions provide a great lesson for all current and future CIOs who want to help their companies to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

The very first baby boomer was born on January 1st, 1946. Soon after that a LOT more baby boomers were born. This generation of workers is just now reachingretirement age en-mass. With the possibility of having a large group of experienced workers leave the workforce all at once, should CIOs be worried?

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Posted in recession | 5 Comments »

Can HP Survive? Do They Have The Secret CIO “Juice”?

Monday, June 8th, 2009
Mark Hurd Has Done Wonders At HP - Now Can He Find Enough Innovation?

Mark Hurd Has Done Wonders At HP - Now Can He Find Enough Innovation?

HP’s CIO Randy Mott has done some fantastic things in helping to turn the company around. However, now things are starting to get tricky and it’s not clear that the company is going to be able to continue to be successful. Everyone seems to think that what they need is a shot of that “innovation juice” and it’s not clear that Randy’s going to be able to deliver it…

What HP Did Right

Ok, so let’s admit it – HP had lost their way under Carly Fiorina’s guidance. They brought in Mark Hurd as CEO (who then brought in Randy Mott as CIO) to turn things around. Hat’s off to Mark – he’s done a great job.

Ashlee Vance over at the New York Times had a chance to talk with Hurd awhile back and he revealed that he sees HP in terms of four “quadrants“. These quadrants include operations, products, business & technology trends, and competitors.

Clearly Hurd has an analytical outlook on life – many people have remarked on just how good he is with balance sheets and dealing with numbers in general. It turns out that this is both good and bad.

The Problem That HP Has Now

HP has done a fantastic job of cutting staff, reducing costs, and negotiating great deals on parts. Having achieved just about all of the benefits that one can get from doing these types of actions, the question that comes up is “what next?”.

Shareholders like growth and in the immediate past, HP’s been growing by cutting. Now that that’s all done, how will it maintain its growth? This is where that pesky thing called innovation comes in…

Old Solutions Won’t Work!

HP used to be able to count on the famous HP labs to come up with new product ideas that would show them the way forward. However, in the current era of budget cutting and project justifications, HP has shrunk the number of projects that their labs are working on from 130 down to about 50. That may not be enough to have enough of those “eureka” moments where breakthroughs happen.

Next Steps For HP

The trick here is to find a way to recapture that “juice” that a technology company like HP needs to have in order to survive. This is exactly where CIO Randy Mott should step in.

As CIO of HP, Randy is in a unique position to help Hurd out. Since HP sells information technology products and services, their very own CIO is the person who can help them evaluate which ideas they need to run with.

Yes, yes – both Hurd and Mott like to run a tight ship with metrics ruling the day. I believe that that time has come and (partially) gone. Now is the time for Mott to throw open the doors to his IT department and start up some trial projects and initiatives. HP is so large that they could easily run multiple evaluations in parallel.

Final Thoughts

HP has made a remarkable comeback from the brink of despair. However, as they try to move forward, innovation and clever sparks of imagination are what’s going to be needed. HP’s CIO Randy Mott has the resources and the talent in his shop that would allow HP to use itself as a testing ground for encouraging its employees to make suggestions and have them tried out. Let’s see if they make the most of this opportunity…

Questions For You

Has your IT department lost its spark of creativity due to relentless efforts to drive costs out of your organization? Do you think that just having a highly efficient organization is all that is needed or does innovation also play a role? What do you think HP could do in order to re-awaken its innovation engine? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

Coming Up Next Time

What would you say is the biggest challenge that CIOs are facing today? All that today’s CIOs seem to get a chance to talk about is costs. What’s missing here is a way for CIOs to communicate in a company-wide manner just how much value the investments that the company is making in IT are returning – the revenue of IT if you will…

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Posted in innovation | 4 Comments »

3 Ways To Bring Business And IT Together

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Executing A Single Business / Technology Strategy Leads To Success

Executing A Single Business / Technology Strategy Leads To Success

In the end, it all comes down to execution. No, not chopping heads off, but rather how you go about having your IT department perform the tasks that the business needs them to do. How hard could this possibly be?

What’s The Goal?

The power term “alignment” is tossed around a lot these days. I think that it’s gotten used so much that a lot of us have forgotten just exactly what it means. In its simplest form, when a company is truly aligned then it is able to mange both its business and its technology together.

As simple as this may seem, too few companies are able to achieve this goal. The reasons are many: differing personalities, budgets that are unrelated, lack of accountability for business results, etc.

Fredric Fishman has spent some time  thinking about this and he’s come to the realization that in order for a a company to commit to managing both its business and its technology together, then it needs to do three things well:

  • Provide a clear vision for the organization
  • Create a well-defined roadmap that shows how to get to the future
  • Measure outcomes against predefined criteria

One Strategy For Both Business And Technology

If you have any hopes of bringing your business and technology activities together, then you’re going to have to make sure that the firm has a living business strategy. The world changes and your business strategy needs to be able to change with it. One way to accomplish this is to implement processes that will allow feedback on the business strategy to be collected and used to make adjustments.

The next step is to make sure that everyone understand just exactly how technology is going to be used to achieve each one of your business objectives. Finally, don’t just hope for the best – make sure that you have criteria in place to judge success before you start any IT project.

Strategic Imperative: Talk & Spend

A company’s goals are no good if nobody knows about them. Make sure that any planned investment in technology has a direct link to a business objective. This kind of decision making won’t happen overnight. You’re going to have to take the time to create internal processes that will allow your staff to learn how to make the correct investment decisions.

Once again, good communication is at the heart of any well run organization. You need to make sure that EVERYONE knows what the expected outcomes are and what the expected business results are. This will establish a sense of ownership and will make sure that everyone has “skin in the game”.

Measure, Measure, Measure

The best IT programs in the world don’t amount for much if you can’t determine what their impact was. You need to monitor the outcomes of each IT investment decision so that your decision making process just keeps getting better.

This is where IT folks can really shine: collect those metrics, stats, and usage data and use these numbers to measure impacts and report results.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, the steps that we need to take to align technology and business are pretty straightforward. The challenge is that this calls out not for a technology solution, but rather for a human-to-human solution. Within IT we’re great at writing code and hooking up new systems, now we just have to do a better job of talking and communicating with the rest of the company.

Questions For You

Within your firm, do you feel that you have a clear vision or is it just a piece of paper on the wall? Do you know how the company is going to achieve its stated goals? Are there effective ways to measure your IT results in place today? 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.

Coming Up Next Time

HP’s CIO Randy Mott has done some fantastic things in helping to turn the company around. However, now things are starting to get tricky and it’s not clear that the company is going to be able to continue to be successful…

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Posted in alignment | 5 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…

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Posted in strategy | 2 Comments »