The New CIO Leader: Setting the Agenda and Delivering Results

296 Pages·2004·1.76 MB·English

by  Marianne Broadbent

Copyright
Copyright 2005 by Gartner, Inc.
All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or
introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form, or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the
prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to
[email protected], or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business
School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.
First eBook Edition: December 2004
ISBN: 978-1-5913-9577-5
For all the CIOs
we’ve worked with
over many years
Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Crossroads
1 Laying the Foundation: Leadership
PART ONE: Demand-Side Leadership
2 Understand the Fundamentals of Your Environment
3 Create Your Vision
4 Shape and Inform Expectations for an IT-Enabled Enterprise
5 Create Clear and Appropriate IT Governance
6 Weave Business and IT Strategies Together
PART TWO: Supply-Side Leadership
7 Build a New IS Organization
8 Develop a High-Performing IS Team
9 Manage Enterprise and IT Risks
10 Communicate Your Performance
Conclusion: Bring It All Together
Appendix A: A Short Assessment of Personality Type Preferences
Appendix B: Identifying Strategies and Synergies to Create Maxims
Appendix C: IT Services
Appendix D: The New CIO Leader Self-Assessment
Notes
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
For helping us get the research done …
First, we thank the hundreds of executives who have worked with us over
many years—especially CIOs, their executive colleagues, and their teams. All
these people have taken us into their confidence, sharing their achievements,
their challenges, and their frustrations and worked with us by challenging our
thinking and by implementing our suggestions—in essence, testing our ideas
into reality. Many are named in the pages of this book, but many more are not
named. We particularly thank Paul Coby (British Airways), Joe Locandro
(Yallourn Energy), and Tom Sanzone (Citigroup Global Transaction Services)
for working with us on extended case examples.
Second, The New CIO Leader draws on the work of many people, especially
that of our Gartner colleagues as well as some business-school thought leaders
and authors.
For just about every month since the late 1990s, Gartner Executive
Programs (Gartner EXP, a membership-based organization of more than two
thousand CIOs worldwide) has released a report prepared exclusively for its
members. This work has been led by members of Gartner’s CIO research team
who work closely with program delivery teams from across the globe. This book
has drawn on those reports, as well as the thinking and the case examples that
went into them—or in some cases the examples that did not go into them! On the
research side, we thank particularly Mark McDonald, Dave Aron, Dr. Marcus
Blosch, Jeannette Kieruj, Patrick Meehan, Andrew Rowsell-Jones, Richard
Hunter, Chuck Tucker, Roger Woolfe, and adjunct researcher Barbara McNurlin.
On the program delivery side, we thank regional leaders Nick Kirkland (EMEA)
and José Ruggero (AsiaPacific) and the many program team members who
assisted us in working with CIOs they partner with and who alerted us to
additional new CIO leaders.
In the area of managing by maxims, this book extends and updates work
Marianne previously completed with our good friend and colleague Professor
Peter Weill, from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. Peter Weill’s
groundbreaking work on IT governance at MIT in 2002 stimulated extensive
research with Gartner EXP members.
We thank other thought and practice leaders who have variously coauthored
EXP reports, provided substantial input at EXP member forums and symposia, or
shared with us their perspective. These include Professor David Feeny (Said
Business School, Oxford University), Peter Keen, Don Laurie, Professor John
Henderson (Boston University), Bruce Rogow, Dr. Jeanne Ross (MIT Sloan
School of Management), Dr. Jeff Sampler (previously London Business School,
now Templeton College, University of Oxford), Dr. Mani Subramani (Carlson
School of Management, University of Minnesota), and Professor Mike Vitale
(AGSM, Sydney).
Among many Gartner research analysts and consultants, we particularly
thank Audrey Apfel, Jackie Fenn, David Flint, Chris Ganly, Rob Gout, Mike
Gerrard, Bob Hayward, Nick Jones, Andy Kyte, Al Lill, John Mahoney, Ken
McGee, Simon Mingay, Diane Morello, Daryl Plummer, John Roberts, and
Michael Smart.
For helping us give birth to the book …
Although the idea for this book was in our heads and hearts for some time, it
was the experience of creating Gartner’s first CIO Academy in 2002 and then
leading it many times that really illustrated the possibilities and need for this
book. At the Academies, we saw that new CIO leaders were out there, that many
wanted a guide on how to be a great CIO, and that we could help them. The
hardworking Diana Cirillo deserves special mention as CIO Academy
coordinator for extraordinary efforts in the Academy’s birth.
On both a professional and a personal level, we especially thank Robin
Kranich, Gartner’s very gutsy Senior Vice President for Executive Programs,
whose roles variously as a friend, colleague, boss, encourager, and advocate
resulted in a very stimulating and rewarding work environment. Her complete
support and enthusiasm for The New CIO Leader made our jobs much easier.
The work of a number of key professionals then nurtured the passage of the
book. Heather Levy and Tim Ogden, Gartner Press’s publisher and editor,
respectively, worked with agent Susan Barry and Harvard Business School Press
editor Jacque Murphy on the scope of the book. The very patient and focused
Kent Lineback helped us find the right focus and tone. Kent worked with us on
identifying our key messages among literally hundreds of thousands of words we
already had available to us. Tim Ogden did an amazing job as editor for Gartner
Press, constantly challenging us about what was really important. Then Jacque
Murphy came into the picture, again poking and prodding the manuscript to
make sure our thoughts and words flowed as well as they could. We believe that
Jacque’s keen feel for structure and flow has made it considerably easier to pick
up our messages.
For helping us to get on with doing what we do …
Each of our lives required quite a bit of coordination—especially since this
book was written while we were trying to just “get stuff done.” To that, we owe
a big debt to the duo of Tim Ogden and Kent Lineback, who worked with us to
form a very harmonious and productive quartet. But other people helped hold
things together or took on extra loads at critical times. For Marianne, this
support came from members of the EXP research team, especially the calm,
organized, and truly dedicated Jeannette Kieruj, who was then our team
coordinator. For Ellen, this support came from Brendan Conway, Mark Deacon,
Chris Goodhue, Ione deAlameida Coco, and Judy Perugini, who gave extra of
themselves so that she could focus on the book, knowing that our EXP members
and team would be well looked after.
Finally, we each want to thank our husbands and families and close friends
for understanding and accepting the kinds of things we like to do. The
opportunity to work with executives in many parts of the world means that
you’re away from home quite a bit, that your family becomes adept at self-help,
that your calendar always has to be consulted, and that your husband has to
answer the often-asked question, “So, where is she now?” We know that Robert
Broadbent and Larry Stevens are pretty special people—at least everyone else
tells us they are, and we have to agree. Thanks, guys, for always being willing to
explain to the kids, the grandkids, or the cat “where she is now,” even if
sometimes you are not too sure. It is hugely appreciated.
Introduction:
The Crossroads
Two paths diverged in a wood …
and I took the one less traveled.
—ROBERT FROST
Chief information officers today stand at a crossroads. The role of each CIO is
inevitably changing, because of two perspectives on information technology
(IT). On the one hand, there is the lingering disaffection with IT from the
Internet bust, the overexpenditure on technology capacity, the popular press’s
assertion that IT is now irrelevant in discussions of competitive advantage, and
the hysteria about IT jobs moving overseas. On the other hand, IT is gaining
renewed interest for several reasons. The global economy seems to be finally
escaping the doldrums, and business executives are desperate for innovation.
Additionally, the regulatory environment has put far more emphasis on the
timeliness, completeness, and accuracy of corporate information. Finally,
technology is playing a foundational, if not a central, role in virtually every
product and service.
Standing still is not an option—every CIO will follow one of two paths
based on these perspectives. The path influenced by the view that IT is irrelevant
to competitive advantage leads to a role that might be called chief technology
mechanic, a role that, while valuable, is far from being part of the executive
team. The other path, influenced by the view that IT is at the heart of every
significant business process and is crucial to innovation and enterprise success,
leads to a role we call the new CIO leader. The new CIO leader bears all the
prestige, respect, and responsibility of other senior executive positions (in fact,
the position will be a not infrequent stepping-stone to COO and CEO positions).
As CIOs examine these paths, there is good news and bad news. The good
news is that each CIO largely controls what path he or she will follow—
becoming a new CIO leader is within the reach of every CIO who aspires to it.
The bad news is that each CIO largely controls what path he or she will follow—
the responsibility for the outcome rests on the individual’s shoulders alone.
Becoming a new CIO leader requires changes to the skills, approach, and
priorities that CIOs have traditionally had. For the most part, these changes are
evolutionary, not revolutionary; you will see no “everything is different now”
statements here. Although these changes may lack the glamour of revolution, a
CIO who does not make these changes will almost inevitably face extinction as
an executive. To be clear, CIOs who consciously or unconsciously fail to make
the shifts we discuss in this book and who become mere technology mechanics
will not eliminate the role of new CIO leader in their organization—they simply
won’t have the job themselves. They will be working for someone who has
embraced these changes.
If you think you are a new CIO leader, then the challenge for you is to
continue to be one. If you’re not changing and growing as your enterprise
changes, then you’re not keeping up. If you don’t think like a constantly “re-
new-ing” CIO, you may be on your way to becoming an ex-CIO. The demands
on CIOs are changing that much and that fast.
This book is the culmination of years of research and hundreds of in-depth
interactions we’ve had with CIOs and their executive colleagues. This research
also includes Gartner’s annual CIO survey, which captures the priorities and
agenda of CIOs from organizations all around the world. In 2004, more than 950
CIOs took part. The largest survey of its kind, it examines the balance between
business, strategic, technical, and management priorities. Statistical data on
CIOs throughout the book are drawn from these annual surveys.
The New CIO Leader explains why CIOs are at this crossroads, what a new
CIO leader is, and what it takes to be one. Our goal, our passion, is to help CIOs
in these most interesting times as they look down the two paths. We firmly
believe that those who embrace the challenge of these changes can become new