Looking for the Transformational CIO

Can CIOs really change their businesses? In the right setting, the answer is clearly yes, which was evidenced by some of the speakers I heard today at a meeting for the Fairfield/Westchester Chapter of the Society for Information Management (SIM). Many had specific things they did in their companies to help contribute to the growth of the business, but most emphasized IT working as part of the business.

McGuigan listed several "guiding principles" for IT management. These include believing that: innovation is in the eye of the customers; performance is defined (and paid for) by the user; data belongs to the enterprise, not the application. He views all the projects as business projects, and wants every iteration to be faster, better, and cheaper. He also shoots to manage through transparency, not escalation; and to never make the same mistake twice.

He was adamant that IT had a role in business, not just technology, looking for areas where the business can improve. "IT needs to help drive and implement business solutions," McGuigan said.

Linda Sanford, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Transformation at IBM (love that title), talked about "the road to a smarter enterprise," and how IBM changed its businesses. She told the audience they needed to "start a movement" focused around change.

Other items she said were important were to establish clear transformational government; to radically simplify business processes (IBM killed 900 applications); to invest in transformative innovation; and to embrace creative leadership. Sanford concluded, "Leading change is hard, but nothing is more rewarding."

Bob Kueppers, Deputy CEO of Delloitte asked IT Leaders to "Think Boldly" in applying technology to business problems. He said that business in general was having to be reset to deal with the new economic environment, and said we all need to live with the "certainty of uncertainty."

He suggested global thinking, adaptation to regulation, rebuilding trust and confidence, and systems thinking. He urged that maintaining agility, as well as bold thinking, were crucial attributes in business going forward. One thing he and Sanford both agreed on is that IT is always trying to do more with less, saying "nobody's budget is going up."

Lee Congdon, CIO of Red Hat, a company that has 3,500 employees including IT associates, in 30 locations throughout the world, said the goal was to be leading in areas such as cloud, mobility, and collaboration tools, but also enabling your business partners to innovate around that. To do this, you need their confidence that you understand the business and the technology.

He said the first thing to do is understand what you are trying to accomplish and what resources you have. Then you need to earn the trust of the business leaders. He said new IT leaders should "look for the quick wins" -- anything form mobile devices, to a global calendar; and then identify strategic projects. At Red Hat, some of these were internal (like new pricing), and some were external (like a new Web site and portal for partners).

Bill Krivoshik, CIO of Marsh & McLennan, said he was transforming the IT environment itself, by reducing IT by about 15 percent through outsourcing, virtualizations, etc, and using the savings to fund business transformation. He said business partners don't care whether it uses cloud services, but they do care about things like moving from fixed to variable costs.

How the company at one point had 50 general ledgers

He talked about how the company at one point had 50 general ledgers, but was moving to two charts of accounts: one for consulting, and one for the other kinds of businesses. He said it was important to get senior management buy-in, and to use the CEO to push the changes when necessary. When he was with Thomson, he said, they had many subsidiaries that were doing the same things, but in many different ways; there, the company created a Wiki that allowed the content developers to share their processes and then pick areas to improve those.

Brink Tully, VP of IT Strategy, CA Technologies said the company was focused on picking the best technology investments for the business as a whole and taking a multi-year approach. As an example, they just implemented a VOIP system, helping enable telepresence and a more collaborative environment. As CA's "first and best customer," it beta tests 40 to 50 CA software solutions each year, and is now helping to define requirements in some cases.

He also said the company had an enterprise collaboration platform built on SharePoint, with about 500 people actively putting in content; and that has been very successful both on the IT side and in bringing information on the business side.

The strengths

Congdon talked about the strengths and weaknesses of locating IT people within the business groups, saying they wouldn't understand the business as well if they were all centralized; but if they were all decentralized, it was hard to get them to work together on things like business policies and security. As a result, it might need to go back and forth. Tully talked about how it depends on the kind of business, and about how, in some cases, a business manager had to interface both with internal IT and with external providers, such as SaaS companies.

Congdon suggested that IT organizations should "be opportunistic" in finding things that can help the business, and make sure IT gets credit for it. Krivoshik said be sure you're making enough bets on new technologies. Tully suggested that you get in front of your customers.