New Group CIO: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched" (Mike Tyson)

...when reality has other plans.

Topics:

• I. Don't rely solely on people's common sense when making changes
• II. If you're wading through mud, aim for altitude
• III. Understand the challenge, look for existing expertise and take responsibility together
• IV. Draw a red line between still ok and no longer ok

The contract documents are signed, 
the announcement is scheduled, 
the equipment and accesses are in place, 
the first day arrives 
- and I start my listen-and-learn tour, 
for example:        

1. Key stakeholders: Expectations, starting point, role

What the (real) business models are

• What are the success factors that have a direct influence on profit and turnover or a direct impact on costs, administrative overheads or the tax burden?

What is wanted - and really needed

• What are the value contributions of IT to the business needed? What are the short-term priorities (and which of these are serious risks)? What should I pay particular attention to in the first 30 days?

Capture the dynamics and sensitivity of the management structure

• Where does the stakeholder see themselves in relation to IT (coach, supporter, uninvolved or even opposed)?

Better to allow only one definition of success

• What are the most important expectations for the performance of the role? What would "success" of the role look like after some time?

The shoe has to fit

• Does IT need to move in a different direction quickly? Where was my predecessor not successful (challenge: where was he particularly successful)?

2. Your management team: Understanding IT and its management

• Are the right people in the right positions?
• Is IT designed for maximum organisational effectiveness?
• What would be the recommendations for the transfer of responsibility? What should I do differently?

3. Your employees: skills and attitude

• Which IT employees do you feel most appreciated by?
• What are the main causes of the problem? What should be done differently?
• Is the employee a risk (frustration, tendency to migrate with critical expertise, dominant knowledge, open or hidden dissent, near-crashes, etc.)?

Now the levers for action and leadership have been established, expectations and expectationabilities are balanced, initial experiences with me confirm my capabilities and the quality of my decisions, initial priorities have been set in the project portfolio and in the operation, initial Win-Win relationships have been established and there is generally increasing hope that things will now improve.

...and then REALITY kicked in        

?Digital transformation - yes, but not at me, please

I was also brought on board because I have knowledge and experience in the digital transformation of companies. However, when the introduction of new digital collaboration structures became more concrete (which would also mean a change in management methods), one board member refused and wanted all meetings to be recorded on paper, typed up and emailed by the secretary to the best of his understanding, as he claimed this would give him more control over the documented content. Two divisional managers see a problem in having to enter their own topics in advance and document the results on their own points during the meeting themself. The secretariat is unsettled because this would make meetings faster, more focussed and more frequent and it would be hard to keep up. What's more, if it becomes clear that the Executive Board is not following suit even with this comparatively small adjustment, this would have a fatal signalling effect on all other corresponding initiatives in the company.

Changes that are not really intended to change

Most application-related IT services are provided in combined business/IT units. There is always friction with IT Operations regarding responsibility and accountability. A proposal drawn up by IT Operations and myself is rejected by these units because it has not been agreed with them, even though the presentation of the draft was intended as a first base agreement. It was argued that the structures in their own area would have to be adapted beforehand (which is hardly objectively true).

Band-aid over band-aid to stop the pipeline leaking

The IT landscape is highly fragmented due to various carve-outs and mergers. The resulting over-complexity creates a sensitivity in which a comparatively small and common local interventions can trigger a domino effect in which the critical main systems fail one after the other and sometimes even drag each other into the abyss. For cost reasons, the system architecture was never put on a new footing, but only selectively mitigated the problem areas at the time. The few specialists who have been around long enough avoid complete written documentation in order to secure their jobs, and some service providers have contractually agreed to exempt themselves from responsibility for their own interventions. Some managers who are close enough to critical failures make a genuine effort, but are unable to build up a complete picture of systematic problem areas and the underlying causes.

Pressed from designer to administrator

The CEO of the group who brought me in received an interesting offer and left the company. Another board member reluctantly took over. He wants to be able to approach me at any time with any request (no matter how irrelevant) and quickly becomes agitated if I don't get back to him quickly enough, regardless of how urgent it is. He doesn't keep me informed about important developments and has stopped my urgently needed adjustments to the organisational structure so that the works council doesn't cause him any problems. He labels results as "apparently-accurate" and leaves me in the dark about what I should and shouldn't agree with him.

...how do you make something out of these challenges?        

I. Don't rely solely on people's common sense when making changes

It is not enough to provide urgently demanded new IT tools for digital working methods, including operating instructions, and trust that this will speak for itself. New ways of working call self-conceptions into question, harbour risks, have to (be able to) be mentally mastered in the first place - and can easily be beaten to death with the "I am ultimately responsible" argument.

Establish Win-Win levers

• Demonstrate plausibly to what extent the change will benefit people personally at work and what will make them look good in front of their superiors. Convince the people responsible for the implementation with concrete insights that you understand the tasks of both sides and that they are in your sights. You will be more effective if people are convinced that you will not assert yourself at their expense. Build consensus by seeking advice and offering the prospect of influencing your decisions

The power of the known

• Make it compulsory to participate in training courses and offer knowledge, exchange of experience, FAQs, contact persons, consultation hours, "IT clinics", etc. via all available communication channels. The procedure must be designed in such a way that if someone still does not follow suit despite constant media fire, their role as an outsider becomes visible and their colleagues can support them independently by setting an example and speaking up.

The power of the factual

• Ensure that alternatives in the IT application- and IT service portfolio are only available for a short time and communicate the deadline (set by you) early and repeatedly

The power of rules

• Agree Group company agreements on the new tools with the group works council and implement associated new company guidelines. Also focus on secondary guidelines, e.g. data protection, information security or industry regulations. This allows to make it easier thanks to the right to issue directives

II. If you're wading through mud, aim for altitude

If the discussions on a larger draft become increasingly bogged down in the small details, but the positions of the people do not really change, then it is not worth increasing the level of precision, even if demanded. Then you should raise the problem to the next level of abstraction, tackle the major points with all those involved and then clarify the remaining details at the level back below.

If you are dealing with a draft that there is no rational reason against, but which is unlikely to find a consensus, then the only option is usually to put your word of authority, which only really satisfies a few people and is therefore only partially sustainable and tied to the individual. It is better if you help to look at the same problem from a macro perspective: Impact on the environment, meta-influences, megatrends, best practices, subject matter expert opinion, experiences from other industries, etc. This helps to see the same problem less as the only important and all-decisive one.

III. Understand the challenge, look for existing expertise and take responsibility together

1. Fast recipient-appropriate information is (initially) everything The first priority in the event of a serious critical system failure is not to call in all the experts who can contribute to the recovery, but to inform the affected parts of the business and the hierarchy. Immediate initial assumptions about the effects and causes are more important than later confirmed findings. In a moment of great uncertainty, this creates a sense of certainty that the problem is being tackled with the necessary priority and initially sets the subsequent collaboration. In addition to informing all stakeholders of the status change, operate a fast communication channel for all stakeholders, which shows the status of the information for situation evaluation, cause identification and recovery in quick succession, so that those less affected do not get a spam problem and those directly affected do not want to make expensive desperate decisions.
2. Make low hanging fruit immediately pickable In your discussions with the relevant employees and managers, find out what would immediately mitigate the tendency to fail and tackle it together. Don't waste time on lengthy technical analyses for this step. Valuable employees usually know where to start immediately and often just need your prioritisation, encouragement - and permission to engage
3. Combating complexity with targeted comprehensive interventions

• In short meetings with your people, find the biggest problem areas (problem clusters) and structure them in a causality chain according to the time it takes for an intervention to be effective
• Identify the underlying causes (root causes) for each problem area in workshops moderated by yourself
• Find an action field for each cause in the workshops conducted in the IT departments, summarise them and prioritise them according to stability increase (= benefit) and one-off + repetitive budget burdens (= costs). There should be at least one action field that addresses the emergence of this harmful complexity
• Create changes and projects from the task areas with the lowest costs / greatest benefits and the areas with high costs / much higher benefits, depending on the effort involved, and assign them to specialist departments. Obtain the budget for this, assign project managers if necessary and monitor the kick-offs

IV. Draw a red line between still ok and no longer ok

1. Determine for yourself whether the collaboration with your stakeholder and your peer group is value-adding, meaningful and sustainable for the company - or at least will be in the foreseeable future
2. Make sure that you don't react harshly to a frustrating, angry or stressful individual case and make high-impact decisions out of base motives. This is especially true if you are actually just exhausted, and you are putting yourself under the most pressure

However, if a situation that is unbearable for you is threatening to become pathological and you are increasingly asking yourself what you are actually doing here, what you actually wanted to become and do originally, then you should ask yourself the cardinal question - even if the house is not yet paid off, the children are still at school age or the divorce is becoming expensive. Don't wait for your health to finally get back to you. Involve trustworthy people who have no vested interests in this matter to gain a better overview of the situation.