Posts Tagged ‘ceo’

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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 »

Data Protection Secrets: CIOs Know That It Starts At The Endpoint

Monday, August 17th, 2009

CIOs Know That Managing Endpoints Is The Key To Securing Company Data <br> <div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about="http://www.flickr.com/photos/john/47544223/"><a rel="cc:attributionURL" href=
Just imagine this scenario: you’ve just been made CIO of your firm when all of a sudden one of your competitors suffers a massive data loss because of outside hackers. Your CEO storms into your brand-new office and demands to know what you are doing to secure your firm’s data. What would you say?

The Old Way Of Doing Things

Good CIOs realize that a firm’s IT infrastructure can’t just be thought of “those boxes”. Instead, an IT infrastructure consists of three layers of devices: core servers and perhaps mainframes, a set of network connectivity devices such as routers and hubs, and then endpoints – the PCs and laptops that you and I use every day.

IT Networks Consist Of 3 Separate Levels Of Equipment

IT Networks Consist Of 3 Separate Levels Of Equipment

Since there are more endpoints than any other type of equipment in most corporate networks, CIOs realize that this is where must of their company data loss efforts must be focused.

In the past, securing network endpoints often meant that all one had to do was to load up some anti-virus software on every laptop and you could check this off of your CIO to-do list. Sorry – that no longer works.

Welcome To The Real World

As we enter the brave new world of policy management, we are seeing a shift to policy-based enforcement being used to control company data that is being used on enterprise network endpoints.

Using policy-base management of endpoints allows multiple areas to be managed. These areas include:

  • Configuration
  • Patch
  • Access
  • Application
  • Anti-virus

The Case For Using Policy-Based Management of Endpoints

Let’s face it – we are all have too much to do and too little time in which to get it all done. Establishing corporate IT polices allows a set of rules to be laid down that tell everyone what is and is not permitted. When you extend these polices to cover how you manage the endpoints of the company’s network, then all of a sudden you’ve made your life that much easier.

Policies allow you to prioritize the company information that you want to protect. Once you identify this information, you’ll then be able to realize just how much of it is being stored on the endpoints!

This new understanding then allows you to set up a systems security approach to making your PCs and laptops safe. By doing this you’ll be able to ensure that your network endpoints are now secure places to house that valuable corporate data.

Final Thoughts

There’s no way that any one person in an IT department can make sure that all of your PCs and laptops are secure all the time – even if you are the CIO. Yesterday’s piecemeal approach of placing an anti-virus application on each PC and then considering the job done was a poor solution.

Using a system’s approach and establishing company policies for how management of endpoints should be done sets up a much simpler way of ensuring that all endpoints are secure. CIOs that do this 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

It’s a battle out there: hackers and organized crime groups vs. your company. Whereas you have to worry about keeping the company successful and lowering costs, all they have to worry about is finding ways to break into your network. Doesn’t seem very fair, does it? There is some good news for CIOs: application whitelisting has arrived.

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Posted in security | No 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 »

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.

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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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Posted in communication | 4 Comments »

Security Policies Are What CIOs Know Make Good Security Solutions

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
CIO's Realize That A Good Security Program Requires A Good Set Of Policies

CIO's Realize That A Good Security Program Requires A Good Set Of Policies

What does it take to do a really good job of securing your company’s systems and data? Is it just a matter of picking and implementing the right software or hardware solution? Is there a consulting firm that you can pay millions to who will come in and take care of this problem once and for all? Bad news – the answer is no.

How Policies Make A Security Program Work

Securing a firm’s systems and data is a daunting task. The first step to successful doing this is to develop a risk management program that captures and describes all of the various internal and external risks that your firm is currently facing. Next comes the prioritization which allows you to determine which of these risks is most likely to affect your firm – all risks are not created equal.

Once you have prioritized the risks that your firm is facing, the CIO needs to step in and make sure that a program of actionable policies is created in order to secure your systems. All too often, this is the step that gets skipped and no matter how much technology you throw at the security problem, if you don’t have a good set of polices you’ll never be able to secure your systems.

Polices Secure Your Systems From Day-To-Day

What too many CIOs tend to forget is that the key to any company’s security program is the human element and you manage this by having a clearly understood set of policies in place. Creating the policies is a first step, making sure that everyone knows about the policies and is living them are the next steps.

Kevin Mitnick is a reformed computer hacker who tours the country talking to businesses about the importance of securing their systems. I had an opportunity to hear him talk recently and it was amazing to hear how he acquired the information that he needed to break into company computer systems.

Kevin used a technique called “social engineering“ in which he would basically call up someone and ask them for sensitive system information. No matter if the firms had a corporate security policy in effect, Kevin was basically able to get the people that he called to violate it. No, they weren’t angry with their company, they were just trying too hard to be helpful. That’s what can happen if you don’t have security policies that are well known by everyone.

Final Thoughts

Doing a risk analysis and prioritizing the results is easy for IT professionals to do. However, creating policies that need to be followed by humans and then actually convincing their coworkers to follow the policies can be a real challenge.

A CIO can ensure that security policies will be successful by publicly stating his / her support for the policies and then by following them. Everyone will know if the CIO takes the polices seriously and by showing that you do, you 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

Does your firm currently have security policies in-place? Have these policies been communicated to everyone? Do they understand them? How can you tell if they are following them? Are you following them? Does anyone know that you are following them? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So picture this: you’re a CIO and you desperately want to be seen by the rest of the C-level executives as something more than a simple cost center. What to do? If only there was some way that you could tap into all of that incredible creative energy that we all know lives in the IT department…

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Posted in security | 2 Comments »

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