Posts Tagged ‘leadership training’

5 Things That CIOs Need To Stop Doing

Monday, June 15th, 2009

CIOs Need To Stop Doing Things That Hold The Company Back

CIOs Need To Stop Doing Things That Hold The Company Back

I firmly believe that the reason that any firm has a CIO is so that they have someone who can drive the company’s IT department to provide services and support that will enable the rest of the business to grow faster. It really is that simple – if you can leverage your IT department to support what the business is trying to do, then you’ll be more successful. Of course, this only works if the CIO is doing his / her job…

First You Need Respect

Bob Evans (no, not the breakfast sausage Bob Evans) over at InformationWeek has been thinking about why, of all of a company’s senior leadership, CIOs seem to be the ones who get the least amount of respect.

His conclusions are that the world at large believes that CIOs lack the business skills that are needed in order to have a seat at a company’s strategy steering table. It doesn’t help that all too often CIOs tend to talk using technology terms that seem to go right over the heads of the rest of the business.

If CIOs are to take the reins of the IT department and turn it into the engine that allows the rest of the company to move faster, then there are 5 things that they need to STOP doing.

#1: Stop Avoiding Customers

In order to provide the firm with the tools and services that it needs to meet the needs of its current and potential customers, CIOs need to be spending time meeting with customers. It’s all too easy to become focused on internal issues, cost cutting, and staffing challenges. Get out and talk to customers in order to find out what you REALLY need to be doing to support the company.

#2: Stop Avoiding Change

It is all too easy for an incoming CIO to adopt the “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it” mentality. However, even as you read this the world is being changed by the arrival of Twitter, the long rumored Apple tablet PC, etc. Changes of this magnitude mean that everything must be constantly reconsidered by the CIO in order to find ways to allow the company to move faster and perform better.

#3: Stop Doing Projects Based On “Gut Feel”

Microsoft is getting ready to come out with a new operating system. Should the firm upgrade all of its PCs? Good question. The answer lies in another question: how would upgrading those PCs help the company achieve its business goals? Could the money be spent on something else that would do a better job of achieving those goals? It’s the ability to justify projects based on solid business reasons and not “gut feel” that has been missing from the way that CIOs have been doing business.

#4: Stop Spending So Much On Support

We’re not just talking about money here, we’re also talking about time. Everyone seems to be hung up on the 80/20 rule when it comes to support / new business. Over at HP they’ve found a way to do it, so why can’t everyone else?

#5: Stop Supporting Stereotypes Of CIOs

Evans points out that both at the online version of CIO magazine as well as over at Fortune magazine, disparaging things have been said about the role that CIOs play in firms. CIOs need to stand up and push back – as long as reporters and press are allowed to push them around, they will. CIOs need to start to publicize the fact that their departments are powerful enablers that the firm desperately needs in order to stay ahead of the pack.

Final Thoughts

No senior leadership position is easy to perform these days. However, CIOs have the double burden of having to stay in front of a rapidly changing technological wave as well as being intimately connected to what’s going on in the firm’s business. This can be done; however, in order to be successful, CIOs need to stop doing things that produce more harm than good.

Questions For You

How often does your CIO meet with customers: once a week, once a month, or once in a blue moon? Does your CIO talk about change or does he/she actually cause it to happen? Does your CIO have the ability to turn off the technology talk and turn on the business talk? 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

The role of a  CIO in any organization is to find ways to enable the company to be more successful. Underlying all of these different ways to assist the business there is one area that every CIO must master first: providing great internal communications. An opportunity to radically transform how a firm’s employees communicate has arrived and it’s time for CIOs to step up and lead the charge…

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

Women In IT: What’s The Current Score?

Monday, May 18th, 2009

Women Are Making Progress In IT, But There Is Still Work To Be Done

Women Are Making Progress In IT, But There Is Still Work To Be Done

How many women work in your IT department? Is your CIO a woman? The answer to the first question is probably “not that many“, and the answer to the second is all too often “no“. We’ve been aware that this is an issue for awhile, how are we doing on addressing it?

How Do Women Feel About Working In IT?

One of the best places to start when we are trying to figure out where things currently stand, is to ask the women who are currently working in IT how it’s going. Rob Preston over at InformationWeek did some data collection and he discovered a study on this topic that was released by a women’s professional organization called Catalyst.

The study revealed that women working in the IT field were basically satisfied with both their jobs and where they worked. However, there are still big issues when it comes to how they interact with their bosses, how fair they think decision making is, and how much of an opportunity they have to participate in planning.

How Many Female CIOs Do We Have?

We’ve got more today than we had 5 years ago; however, there are only about 75 female CIOs in InformationWeek’s top 500 companies (that comes out to be about 15%). This list includes:

  • Kathy Owen – Unum
  • Marina Levinson – NetApp
  • Beth Perlman – Constellation Energy
  • Leslie Jones – Motorola

There’s been improvement, but there is still a long way to go.

What Tech Companies Do A Good Job Of Promoting Women?

This is where the rubber meets the road. Any company can talk a good line about how much they support diversity; however, promoting someone into the senior management ranks means that you think that they have the best chance of driving revenue. Here’s how the familiar tech names stack up:

  • HP – 21% of senior executives are women
  • Oracle – 18%
  • IBM – 13%
  • Google – 13%
  • Cisco – 11%
  • Microsoft – 11%
  • Dell – 0%

Oh my – did you see that Dell number? There is no excuse for that – women make up too much of the total IT workforce today for any company to be that unbalanced.

The Next Steps

So should IT departments start to institute mandatory gender based promotions so that 51% of their senior staff are female? No, that’s not the correct solution. In the end, what we all want is the best people leading the company independent of gender.

IT may always be just a bit “male heavy” because of the nature of the beast. However, for any company to succeed, you need to make sure that everyone has a chance at the top spots and you need to make sure that you have a bench of capable employees that is made up of all genders. That’s the secret to real long-term success.

Does your IT department have a balanced number of men and women leading it? Do you feel that women have an equal shot at senior management positions? What does your firm do to prepare workers to become senior managers? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in career | 1 Comment »

Out Of Time, Out Of Talent – Why IT Departments Fail

Monday, September 1st, 2008

IT Departments Need To Hire From Outside To Avoid Business Stalls
A business stall can hit a company / IT department at any time. There can be many reasons for what causes a stall including having a premium product or abandoning a good market segment too early as a company goes looking for greener grass. If that was all that could happen to a company, that would surly be enough. However, there is one more key contributor that can cause an otherwise successful company to lose forward momentum and go into a tailspin: they run out of talent.

In this day of IT layoffs and downsizings, it doesn’t seem possible that a firm could run out of the IT talent that they need. However, it’s having a lack of IT leaders and their associated staff who have the necessary IT capabilities and interpersonal skills that are so desperately needed in order to execute the company’s strategy.

We’re not talking about not having enough SQL knowledgeable programmers here. Rather what we are discussing is a lack of specific required capabilities that are needed by the firm. These capabilities can include such things as the ability to sell complex IT solutions, or perhaps some special skill in marketing IT solutions to a given market segment. This lack of talent becomes most glaring when it occurs at the executive level within the company.

How Do Talent Shortages Happen? It turns out that most internal shortfalls in skills are a result of a company’s too strict adherance to a “promote from within” policy. What’s interesting about this is that this situation is most often seen in company’s that are lauded for their strong sense of corporate culture. This internal promotion policy serves the company poorly when the company’s business environment presents it with a novel challenge or when their competition suddenly increases.

What Role Does Experience Play? A big one it turns out. Rapidly developing events in a company’s market place require the company to quickly respond by modifying how it does business. Having a narrow set of experiences in the executive suite means that the company’s ability to quickly respond to such changes can be severely limited.

So What’s The Solution? Quick question – does your IT department have any program in place to formally monitor the balance between both company lifers vs. those who have been brought in from the outside both in the executive team and lower on down the management ladder? It’s the outsiders who are going to bring in fresh approaches and perspectives. Even if the firm does bring in outsiders, does it incorporate them into the company? Studies show that between 35%-40% of senior executives don’t make it past their first 18 months. The correct way to solve this problem is to set up a formal IT department policy that states that HR will work to ensure that there is a mix of management. A good suggestion for a mix ratio that seems to work is to ensure that there is between 10% – 30% of management that is from the outside.

Where does your IT department’s management talent come from – inside or outside? Does your company actively hire from the outside? How long do new senior managers seem to last? Why do they leave? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Tags: , , , ,

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in CIO, business, ceo, leadership, leadership training | 5 Comments »