6 things CIOs should do different in 2015!

Everyone wants to become an IT leader, at-least a few years ago when we all saw these cool SVP IT, CIO and other roles emerge as power aggregated towards to the center or to the top [which ever your favorite direction to power might that be].

Banking industry was the first to have these celebrated roles, outsourcing made it even more cool as CIOs started to learn to manage vendors – well, they thought they did at-least, and this made it even more fun and exciting to be around. You have conferences where you could meet your peers and double-check with them if you are strategic enough. Sounds cool, right?

Despite the move towards getting accepted in the board and being part of the executive team where some CIOs even got to report to the CEO, a CIO's life is getting harder and harder. That is a plain fact and I know it since I talk to many of them on a regular basis. Sad reality is that this job is quite shaky and the lifespan of a typical CIO has shrunk dramatically to 1 - 1.5 years!

CIOs are being let go because they are not strategic enough, many are choosing to move out themselves because the role is not exciting enough – yes, that happens as well and a lot are getting lost in the CMO, CDO wars. A handful of CIOs seem to chug along longer but none knows if they are glorified survivors or really strategic guys doing awesome stuff. Basically what I'm trying to say is that there is a lot going on out there!

CIOs spend an awful amount of time identifying stakeholders and pleasing them while these same stakeholders are out there to place demands that CIOs must understand and execute.

Normally a dysfunctional organizational structure is the culprit here, most CIOs report to the CFO but a lot of strategic decisions are coming from all directions where CEO, CMO, CDO, hardworking folks in R&D, guys managing production plants, folks running the Supply Chain or some other very important VP needs something to be done pronto!

2015 onwards: A well connected and effectively networked organization can definitely help and CIOs must work together with those important stakeholders. A disconnect with CEOs, sales and customer care in this digital era can be fatal for the CIO. This will help the CIO to manage expectations effectively and build his/her capability for the digital enterprise that works for his stakeholders!

So get business minded and build those bridges in 2015!

Why the hell did we embark on this idiotic project?

It's amazing how everyone literally is flocking like bees around the coolest project there is. If not, folks are scheming to carve out a large scale project that will feed the egos and also the professional lust of all those professionals who want to satisfy their cravings to be part of that project. While totally understandable it also might be the most stupidest way to run your department.

But while IT projects undoubtedly can be extremely seductive and may possess the treacherous magnetism of a black hole, for the CIO this is where your career is about to go bust! A really good pathogenic project can easily maim or even kill the careers of all those it infects. It can even cause IT and/or corporate-wide famine and strife across the whole enterprise. I've witnessed it more than once, with the firm ejecting out the CIO to lick its wounds or massage its pride – which even side he/she may have touched and left hurting in his/her pursuit to "do the right thing".

2015 onwards: Focus on the projects that matter for business success – whether digital, social, big data or the next big thing, and kill the ones that don't! Challenge your stakeholders for a bigger piece of the pie by showing them the bigger piece of the pie!

Am I doing it to stay in the market or digging my own grave?

Many CIOs are still stuck in the old world and enjoying outsourcing vendors attention, many of them I speak too have gone past that stage are either going through a self-discovery journey (read: looking for a new job) or redefining their IT department to act digital, something almost everyone is doing these days apparently. The latter tend to enjoy that cool feeling of surpassing mere mortal CIO peers in the search of real feeling of doing something meaningful, but be warned, this is just a feel-good stage.

2015 onwards: No, to answer the previously state rhetoric question – you are not digging your own grave if you are engaging the IT vendors / outsourcing vendors effectively. You need access to skills and capabilities, they have them. Use them in your useful projects which you just identified and prioritized above. Reconfigure your sourcing strategy!

Consultants of one kind or another have existed for centuries. Han Fei Tzu, founder of the so-called legalist school of ancient Chinese philosophy and adviser to the emperor, has been called the first consultant

Excerpt From: McDonald, Duff. “The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business.”

Ever wondered why on earth do firms hire consultants? Well, this is Ross Perot's view.

I come from an environment where, if you see a snake, you kill it. At GM, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is go hire a consultant on snakes.

Reason why I have hired consultants, when I was on the buyer side were pretty simple:

• I & my team didn't have the skills in-house to do those things.
• I wanted things to move fast and be done fast

Whatever your reason,relationships with consultants is a pretty much love hate relationship. You hate them for what they know and how they operate, you love them for what they know and how they operate.

2015 onwards: Keep the right consultants that support you and even guide you too move on with the right projects and impart wisdom and courage to kill the ones that you don't need. And as for those other consultants, ditch them!

Strategy is such an intangible thing, sometimes folks are all going mumbo-jumbo about it. There is hundreds of thousands of dollars to be spent at ivy league colleges to learn about it from folks who've never treaded the real world themselves, but still we inevitably get sucked into those black holes.

Strategy could, however, be pretty darn simple thing actually. President John F. Kennedy packaged it in pretty simple in just one simple sentence: there is this unattainable vision with a neatly packed in timeline for the project, seems like a bloody good strategy and direction setting to me!

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.

President John F. Kennedy speech to the Congress on May 25, 1961

2015 onwards: You know what's going on with your business, you'd be a fool if you didn't. Digital is today's exclusive high-level priority and strategy for all firms, you will be greeted with resistance of immense magnitude, but be bold and stay on course. This is the agenda for you to do something truly strategic!

Many CIOs are smug and satisfied about some ball-gazer analyst firm's benchmark which is based on the following: (IT spend / Total firm revenues) = % of revenues spent on IT. I have spoken to CIOs who have held on to the "Oh, I don't need any help, I'm well below the industry benchmark".

I couldn't help thinking about what Tim Robbins said sometime ago

There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.

There is not much money coming from the business like it used to in the heydays. Many CIOs are under pressure to do more with less: gee, haven't we heard this before!

2015 onwards: Whether it is a bold grand plan or a multi-year, well-thought out sourcing strategy that is aligned to your business goals, do it very well in advance! Revise it within the first quarter of 2015, if you did it in 2014! Have watertight arguments which businesses will buy in both strategically as well as financially.

In Closing

What CIOs typically go through is maybe less painful that what CMOs undergo but this is about to change as businesses will demand active duty from all leaders within a corporation.

CIOs looking for survival cannot hide anymore behind operation rooms or server racks like before. Experienced CIOs are slowly leaving and war stories / horror tales for new or recently appointed leaders are the stuff we will see in the coming months. The path to glory or even a regular CIO day job will become increasingly preilious.

Survival, as Annie Lennox put it is a bad strategy if you are a CIO in 2015

Dying is easy, it’s living that scares me to death.

So stop surviving and start kicking some ass making a difference to your business! Happy 2015!!!