Posts Tagged ‘ceo’

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Successful CIOs Know What The CFO Really Wants

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011
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The CIO Controls All The Money, It's Good To Have Him On Your Side

The CIO Controls All The Money, It's Good To Have Him On Your Side

In the classic Hollywood movie “All The President’s Men”, the heroes who are trying to unravel the web of corruption are told that they will be able to put the pieces together if they “… follow the money…”. It turns out that even though today’s CIOs are not trying to solve a crime, if they want their career to take off, they would do well to follow this same advice.

What CFOs Really Want

So if you are going to follow the money, then you are going to have to get on the good side of the company’s CFO. To do this you first need to understand what the CFO wants out of life. What you might find amusing is that CFOs face a lot of the same problems that CIOs face: they get niched, they get relegated to just dealing with one set of issues (money), and they yearn for a role in the bigger picture: setting the company’s strategy.

Now, CIOs want the same thing, but it turns out that if we take the time to help the CFO get what they want, then this can further our career also. However, first we need to really nail down what the CFO is looking for.

The first thing is that they want to become more deeply involved in setting the overall direction of the company. They feel that they understand the numbers will enough that they can contribute to this process.

What they really want to do here is to help the company come up with the appropriate types of measures that will allow it to correctly set its priorities – why do you want to spend money doing that and is there something better that we could do with that money?

Next, CFOs want to have a greater say over what the company spends its money on. Just like CIOs who think that they know better than the rest of the company what the company should be doing, it kills the CFO to see the company spend money on things that they feel aren’t going to generate a return.

What CIOs Can Do To Help CFOs Get What They Want

If you need any additional motivation to take the time to find ways to help your company’s CFO out, then how about this: more often than not your company’s next CEO comes from the CFO office. That’s the kind of friend you want to have on your side!

When it comes to helping your CFO become more integrated in the company’s strategic planning process, the CIO can easily play a bigger role. Ultimately making good strategy decisions is all about having the right data in front of you so that you can make good decisions. The IT sector has been built on data and within the company the CIO is the source of all data in the company. Taking the time to provide the CFO with the data that is needed is a good way to help the CFO position himself as a part of the company’s strategy team.

An important point that often gets overlooked is that before a CFO can start to spend more time on strategy, they need to make sure that the basic blocking and tackling financial activities are taken care of. The CIO can step in here and identify where additional automation can be used to reduce the time and effort that those actions take.

The final point, keeping track of how the company is spending its cash and the results that it is getting from those expenditures, is once again is a key area where the IT department can lend a hand. The challenge here is that that data that will be needed is spread across different parts of the company. This is a great opportunity to show off the importance of information technology – it’s going to take the efforts of the entire IT department to gather and process the needed financial data.

What All Of This Means For You

In the past few years there has been a lot of talk about IT / business alignment. Although this is still a goal that we should all be shooting for, it turns out that in the short term the CIO should make an IT department goal to find ways to better meet the needs of the company’s CFO.

CFOs are desperately looking for ways to play a more strategic role within the company. The importance of information technology in helping them achieve this can’t be overstated. The CIO is the person who can make this happen. By providing the financial data that the CFO needs in order to participate in creating strategy as well as helping to ensure that day-to-day financial activities are taken care of the CIO can be a great asset to the CFO.

In many firms the CFO is one of the prime candidates to move into the CEO position when it opens up. CIOs who have not allowed themselves to be confined by the definition of information technology and who have instead reached out to provide extra help to the CFO will be well situated when the CFO is promoted. It turns out that when you “…follow the money…” CIOs can end up in a very good place…

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

Question For You: What do you think is the best way for a CIO to find out exactly what data the company’s CFO is looking for?

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

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?

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Why Is The CIO Position Reporting Structure Broken?

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
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There's Something Broken When It Comes To The CIO Position

There's Something Broken When It Comes To The CIO Position

Don’t look now, but there’s something wrong in the world of CIOs. The CIOs that I’m working with are being asked to do more and more for their companies. It would be fair to say that IT has become an indispensible part of the companies that these CIOs work for. Then can you tell me why at some companies CIOs don’t report directly into the CEO?

The Bad News

In a recent survey of firms, less than half of the firms that responded said that the CIO reported directly to the CEO. This means that even as IT becomes more and more important to the economic well-being of a firm, the person who has been tasked to implement the firm’s IT strategy is being prevented from participating in the planning the company’s overall strategy.

What does this actually mean? In a nutshell, it means that a critical line of communication is longer and more apt to break than it needs to be. Considering all of the challenges that modern firms face, the CIO needs to be at the right hand of the CEO when ways to move the company forward are being discussed.

A good example of what can possibly happen if the CIO does not report directly to the CEO happed at Sony. Their Playstation network was hacked and confidential customer information was taken by parties unknown. As big and as sophisticated a company as Sony is, their CIO reports in to the Chief Transformation Officer who in turn reports in to the CEO. Talk about a broken pipe!

A Ray Of Hope?

The solution to this problem is clear: the position of CIO needs to report directly into the CEO. The challenge is finding out how to convince those 50% of firms that don’t have this structure to make the changes that will be needed in order to make it happen.

The big question is what will motivate these firms to make this kind of change? As with all things in business, the reason for making a change needs to be based on the company’s bottom line.

In the case of the CIO, it’s the IT department activities that don’t have anything to do with keeping the lights on that will provide a compelling story for having the CIO report directly to the CEO. Tasks such as mining the customer and sales data that the company has collected in order to gleam new customer needs and buying patterns are things that the CEO needs to both lead and respond to. The only way that this can happen is if the CEO and the CIO are directly talking.

Additionally, as the specter of digital break-ins becomes ever more possible, the CIO needs to be working with the CEO in order to determine what data needs to be stored, how long it needs to be stored, and when collected information can be disposed of. Only by agreeing on a company-wide policy and then implementing it can firms start to deal with creating an effective defense against being hacked.

What All Of This Means For You

All too often companies give lip service to the importance of IT to their overall success while at the same time relegating their CIOs to report to someone who is not the CEO. This contradiction clearly shows that something is broken at the top of many companies.

Recent surveys have revealed that CIOs reported directly to the CEO at less than half and maybe even fewer of the companies surveyed. What this means is simply that the CIO is not being heard where he or she needs to be heard: at the top of the company. As security threats grow and the value of business data becomes more and more important, this kind of organizational structure cannot be permitted to remain in place.

The change that needs to occur is that CIOs need to report directly the company’s CEO. It’s only by setting up this kind of reporting structure that the types of conversations that need to occur around data retention, infrastructure security, etc. will happen. Considering what the rest of the company is asking the CIO to accomplish, it sure seems as though inviting them to the big table is something that has to happen sooner rather than later.

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

Question For You: If a CIO does not report to the CEO, who do you think the CIO should talk to in order to change this situation?

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

Everybody loves the cloud. Or at least that’s pretty much how it seems if you’ve pick up any of the IT trade rags in the past 18 months. They are filled with articles talking about how the cloud is going to save IT departments tons of money and how it’s the next great thing. Well, not all CIOs are convinced of this and considering some of the humongous security issues that are popping up, you might want to rethink some of your cloudy thoughts…

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CIOs In Crisis: Do We Have A Problem Here?

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
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What Is It Going To Save The Role Of The CIO?

What Is It Going To Save The Role Of The CIO?

What’s Happening To All Of The CIOs?

You and I both know that a well run IT department is what can make one company more successful than its competitors. That must mean that the IT department is important, and therefore the CIO must also be important, right? If that’s true, then why are some of the really big companies like News Corp, Harrah’s, ConocoPhillips, etc. getting rid of their CIO and then choosing to not replace him / her? What are they thinking?

What’s The Problem Here?

If firms feel comfortable getting rid of their head of IT (the CIO) and not replacing that person, then clearly there must be a crisis here. It sure looks like today’s CIOs have not done a good job of advertising just how valuable they are to the rest of the company’s executive leadership team.

This is pretty easy to understand. However, there’s a problem with this explanation. You would think that all of the upper management positions would be faced with this same challenge of conveying their value to the company. However, it seems like the CIO is the only position that companies feel comfortable leaving either open or in the hands of a less senior member of staff. You can’t say the same for operations, finance, human resources, etc.

What Could We Do To Solve This Problem?

Arthur Langer has been researching this issue and he believes that the problem that IT has is that we’re lacking support. If we worked in accounting, then we’d all be CPAs and everyone would agree on the way that things needed to be done.

IT has no equivalent accreditation system. Langer points out that the field of IT is lacking any sort of professional body that could provide its stamp of approval for how an IT department is run or what goals it chooses to focus on. Although such an organization may be a long way off, in the near term IT at least needs to do a better job of getting the message across to the CIO about IT actually does.

Langer makes a good point when he states that he believes that there is no question that CEOs value what an IT department does. It’s just that what we do is so far removed from what he understands, that CEOs really have no clear idea how to manage their IT resources.

Ultimately, this is what is currently missing: an IT best practices organization that can provide CEOs with this kind of management guidance. Sure we’ve got the ITIL standards, but those are far too detailed. What’s missing is that top-level “here’s how you run an IT department” type of guidance.

What All Of This Means For You

Even though you may not yet be a CIO, you need to start thinking about how you are going to effectively deal with this issue. The last thing that you want to have happen is for you to finally become the CIO only to lose your job because the job itself was seen as being not all that important.

As CIO what you are going to have to do is 1) do a good job of running your IT department, and 2) do a good job of educating your CEO on how to manage his / her IT assets. This means that you’re going to have to do a lot of different tasks: create IT best practices for your company, collect industry research and show it to your CEO, create management guides to instruct your CEO on what you need him / her to do for IT. Congratulations – when you become CIO, you also become a teacher!

Although this may seem like it would take up a lot of your precious CIO time that could be spent forging strategy and harnessing new technology, think again. Teaching your CEO how to manage the CIO and showing how to use IT to make the company more successful just might be the best thing that you’ve ever done – it could even save your job!

Do you think that at your company the CIO is necessary or do you think that someone lower down could do all the same things?

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

At the end of the day, an IT department is simply a collection of projects. Some of these projects are short lived (“we’ve got an outage!”) and some are much longer (“let’s install a new ERP solution”). However, it turns out that today’s CIOs have been taking the wrong approach when it comes to scheduling these IT projects and it shows…

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Who Should A CIO’s BFF Be: The CEO or The CFO?

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
Worldcom's Bernard Ebbers Would Have Been A Bad Friend For CIOs To Have

Worldcom's Bernard Ebbers Would Have Been A Bad Friend For CIOs To Have

The times they are changing. Let’s take a moment and have a talk about one of a CIO’s key survival skills: the ability to successfully negotiate office politics. Specifically, if you could only have one best friend, who should it be: the CEO or the CFO?

Changes In The Workplace

The workplace that a CIO works in looks nothing like it did as little as 10 years ago. The changes that have happened have reshaped the boundaries of power. The CEO used to be the rock star who acted as a visionary leader. Think of Bill Gates, Tom Siebel, and Larry Ellison. However, the corporate scandals that rocked the business world at the start of the new millennium (i.e. Worldcom, Enron, etc.) has created the need for a change at the top.

Philip Tulimieri and Moshe Banai have taken a look at the that changes that have been taking place in the C-suites of major firms. They believe that a new focus on ensuring accountability by the senior executives, especially the CEO, plus the arrival of new regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have changed who investors want to have running the company.

In the past, CFO were generally in the shadows of the CEOs – simply acting as mangers of the company’s money and trying to make sure that the company didn’t do anything too wild that they couldn’t pay for. This is all changing now.

The Arrival Of Co-Leaders Of A Company

In today’s corporate world, the balance of power is shifting. No longer is the CEO the only person running the show. Instead, the CFO is now playing a larger role – sorta a co-leader if you will.

The roles of a CEO and CFO are still different. A CEO has the responsibility of always being positive and working to move the company forward at all times. The CFO, on the other hand, is responsible for making sure that the company approaches every situation with caution and does its best to minimize the risk that it is being exposed to.

Tulimieri and Banai have made the interesting discovery that the rise of the CFO has meant that the role of the Chief Operating Officer (COO) has started to decline. The CIO is also responsible for this – that automation of much of a firm’s back office operations has reduced the need for the COO.

What’s A CIO To Do?

CIOs need to navigate these new corporate political waters very carefully. Yes, the CEO is still an important ally to have on your side; however, no longer is this enough – now you also have to be on good terms with the CFO.

One of the biggest challenges going forward will be keep both leaders happy. It’s important to realize that there will be disagreements between the CEO and CFO and that’s when the CIO needs to be most careful.

The challenge for any CIO is on which relationship should the most time should be spent. This will be different for every company. However, the CIO has the opportunity to show a great deal of value by facilitating communication between these two executives.

Final Thoughts

A CIO who can provide the information that a CEO needs in order to drive the company forward while at the same time providing the information that the CIO needs in order to measure the risk, will be seen as valuable.

The arrival of the CFO at the top of the company’s decision making structure means that being able to measure the financial value of every IT project will become even more critical. The world changes and CIOs need to make sure that they pick their corporate friends very carefully!

CIOs who can survive in the new world of company leadership and who can find a way to make friends with both the CEO and CFO will be better at finding ways to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you think about someone trying to make off with your company’s private data, what comes to mind? Some wily Russian hacker who sneaks into your company’s network through the backdoor? Perhaps you need to update your thinking. A recent report from Cisco revealed that the real threat is coming from insiders. What’s a CIO to do?

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A Mentor Network Is What You Need To Become A CIO

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
CIOs Need Mentors To Be Successful (c) - 2008

CIOs Need Mentors To Be Successful (c) - 2008

I’ve got a quick question for you: what is the next step in your career? What do you want to get promoted to? In fact, as long as we are talking about that, what comes after THAT promotion? If you want to become a CIO, then career ladder generally goes: IT worker, manager, director, executive director, CIO. Got a plan on how you are going to get to that next step?

The Problem With Career Mentors

It used to be that what you needed in order to climb out of an IT postition was a mentor - someone who would take you under their wing and guide you during your career. Bad news – those days are long gone.

It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the old way, it’s just that the world started to move faster. Nowadays nobody stays in a given position long enough to act as a mentor to you for any reasonable length of time. Even if they did, they are probably too busy to spend enough time with you keeping your career on track.

The old way of picking a mentor and having them work with you over time to shape and guide your career is gone – things move too fast and change too often to allow this to work any more. Instead, you need to discover how to create networks of mentors that they can use to provide the career guidance that you will need over the years.

If you thought the old way was tough, just wait until you try to figure out how to do things using the new way!

The New Way Of Managing Your Career

Dr. Dawn Chandler (CA Polytech State University), Dr. Douglas Hall (Boston University) and Dr. Kathy Kram (Boston University) have spent some time looking into this problem with the modern workplace and they’ve got some ideas about how we can fix things.

Since there is really no way for you to get a single individual to agree to act as your mentor for the 40-45 years that your IT career is going to last, instead you are going to have take a different approach. You are going to have to create a network of mentors that you can use to accomplish what you need to get done.

Oh, there is one small problem with this clever solution: most of us are not all that good at creating a mentor network like this let alone trying to maintain it. It looks like you are going to need some suggestions on how best to do this.

Building And Maintaining A Mentor Network

One of the first things that you are going to have to realize about building your mentor network is that the people that you are going to ask to be a part of your network will not all be the same. This means that you are going to have develop a special set of skills in order to be able to (1) find them, and (2) create relationships with them that will make them want to mentor you.

Here is what you are going to have to do in order to create a mentoring network that will help your IT career move to the next level:

  • Talk, Talk,Talk - you are going to have to be willing to take the initiative and reach out to those people that you want to be a part of your mentoring network – they aren’t going to contact you. Once you’ve contacted them the first time, then you are going to have to work at maintaining contact with them so that they don’t forget about you.
  • Be Sensitive – Not everyone that you talk to is going to want to be your mentor. It’s going to be up to you to take the time to pick up on the message that they are sending your way. Few people will actually come out and say “no”, so it’s up to you to detect those folks who would like to decline the opportunity.
  • It’s The Takeoff That Counts – when you’ve found someone who is willing to be a member of your mentor network, then you’ve got to be willing to make an extra effort to make sure that your initial interactions with that person go very well. They will set tone for the rest of your relationship. Show up early for meetings, follow up quickly on actions, and pay attention when they are talking.
  • Be Prepared – make sure that you get ready for every meeting with someone who is in your mentor network. Research what you want to ask them, make sure that you can show that you are making progress in your career, and come prepared to ask questions about challenges that you are currently facing.
  • Information Is The Key – you need to be willing to share information with your mentoring network. This does not mean that you have to tell them all the details about what you had for breakfast today, but rather that you be willing to lay out your current challenges and failures that you’ve had – you know, stuff that can be hard to talk about.
  • It’s A Two-Way Street – if someone agrees to be a part of your mentoring network, then you have agreed to do your best to help them out also. This means that you have a responsibility to help your mentors out whenever you have an opportunity to do so. This can be as simple as passing on information that you run across to actually doing work for them.
  • Be A Nice Person – Nobody want to work with a jerk and they certainly don’t want to mentor one. No matter what kind of day you’ve had, always be on your best behavior when you interact with a member of your mentor network.
  • Be Positive – how you choose to view the world is a key part of how others see you. If you have a positive attitude you will naturally attract people to your mentor network and you’ll be able to keep them there. If you’ve got a negative attitude, then nobody is going to want to lend you a helping hand.

Final Thoughts

As a member of an IT department, you are undoubtedly busy. However, it turns out that you have yet another job on top of your “day job” – managing your career. You can’t do this by yourself and so you’re going to need to have someone guide you – a mentor network.

Creating and maintaining a mentor network is no easy task. However, if you go about doing it in the right way it can become a powerful force that will cause your career to shoot ahead and make sure that you don’t get left behind.

CIOs (and those who want to become a CIO) who are able to build and maintain a good network of mentors will boost their careers and by doing so will have found a way to apply IT to enable the rest of the company to grow quicker, move faster, and do more.

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Why did you decide to go to work in the IT field? I can really only speak for myself, but there was a bit of glamour to the IT field when I entered it. Everything seemed to be so shiny and new and change was happening so fast that you just knew that this was going to be “the place” to be in order to have a great career. Is that still true or has something fundamental changed about our profession?

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