In my years as a chief information officer (CIO), I've developed a reputation as a fixer. You're more likely to hear about chief executives being brought into companies as turnaround artists, but CIOs can fill that role too. After all, if the statistics about CIO tenure are true, it's unlikely that CIOs leave after three years because all the problems have been solved. It's more likely that the board decides to find someone—a change agent—to fix what it sees as problems.
I don't want to cast aspersions on the IT installations at the companies I've worked for—and especially not Champion Technologies. A system doesn't necessarily have to be broken to need a fixer. More often, it's just not supporting the business as efficiently as it could. For instance, I came into one company knowing that it had essential in-housesoftware, some packaged applications, and some client-server software that the company needed to integrate. In another situation, I found myself in charge of older infrastructure that had to be upgraded to accommodate Microsoft's Active Directory services.
So how does a CIO become an agent of change (and preferably one for positive change)? Here are some tips that I practice:
Be Hands Off
I've learned that I do my best management around things that I'm least competent in. As a result, my fixing tactics involve keeping my hands off my people and letting them use their specialized skills to solve the problem. To do this, you have to identify your staff's strengths and deploy them accordingly. When I come into a new situation, I interview everyone as quickly as I can to find out their strengths and weaknesses. (In fact, I've been faulted for not getting involved with the people outside of IT quickly enough). Where I find they have weaknesses, I fix those areas through training. And I'm not afraid to replace the ones who can't contribute.
This isn't easy for most CIOs. It's important to know what you don't know. If you think you know everything, you're going to force your technological limitations on a staff that's more capable than you are. Good CIOs should hire people who are better than they are. If my staff knows only as much as I do, I've got a problem.
Become Better at Business
For a CIO to be brought in as a change agent, a predecessor has to leave, usually in frustration. Why? I believe it's because the business frequently does not attach enough value to IT. But I also believe that IT people are not particularly good at business. This may sound like a chicken-and-egg problem, but the fact is that it's more incumbent on the CIO to learn the business than it is for the business units to learn IT. The better I understand the business, the better IT person I become. Among my peer group of vice presidents, I strive always to be aware of what they're doing and thinking. It's not always easy. As a change agent, you're not necessarily welcomed, especially when people like the old ways. When I understand the business innately, I can make decisions about technology based on its appropriateness from a business perspective.
Strive for Stability
One of the other problems with the revolving-door effect in companies is that it contributes to instability within IT. Most executives don't really understand the importance of stability in their IT department. When a CIO departs, it has repercussions throughout the IT department, and IT runs on the back of its people. As a change agent, you have to recognize that. If you don't retain good people, you won't get to where you want to be.
Avoid Techno-lust
A primary part of fixing is to use mainstream technology, not the most avant-garde inventions. In one of my previous positions, the IT division was always looking toward new technologies. The problem was that the department spent more time thinking about how it would integrate new technologies than about what it should have been doing in the present. You can't ignore the future, but you should build toward it gradually—don't jump into it.
To that end, I highly recommend standardization and consolidation. If you standardize, there's less variability and more stability. At one job, I discovered I had instances of 15 different database engines. We eventually simplified to three instances of the same brand of database. We were able to reduce maintenance time and licensing costs, and make the IT staff more efficient because it wasn't mired in rote activities.
Being a change agent is not for everyone. It's hard to be a fixer if you haven't had a lot of IT experience, been through a number of deployments, and—frankly—made some mistakes. It's easy to know where you want to be, but the tough part is figuring out the path to take that will disrupt the business the least. It helps considerably if you have experience not only going down the wrong path a few times, but also having made some successful trips.
