Sách CIO Survival Guide - The Roles and Responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer - Karl D. Schub

CIO Survival Guide
The Roles and Responsibilities of the Chief Information Officer
Karl D. Schubert


Contents
preface xi
chapter 1 WhatWe Were, Who We Are, and Who We
Are Becoming 1
Brief Genealogy of the IT Profession 1
State of the Profession 5
What CEOs ReallyWant in Their CIOs 10
Ten Questions the CIO Must Ask the CEO 13
Notes 19
chapter 2 A Fork in the Road: Business or Technology? 21
Designing the Work 22
Setting Up Shop 24
The Fork in the Road 25
Creating the IT Internal Partnership Network 26
Maximizing the Partnership Network 32
Evolving CIO Expectations: Technologist
or Businologist? 45
CIO and CTO Relationships 49
Ten Questions the CIO Should Ask
Network Partners 51
Profile of Success 59
Notes 60
chapter 3 A Unified Competency Profile 65
Technical Skills 67
Business Acumen 83
Leadership Competence and Vision 94
Profiles of Success 101
Ten Questions the CIO Should Ask Outsourced
Service Providers 102
Notes 113
chapter 4 Connecting IT to Value Creation 115
The Language of the Industry 116
Embracing the “Perfect” External Customer, or
Managing Customer Relationship Value 118
Enterprisewide Strategic Planning 127
Continuous and Discontinuous Process Improvement 130
VI contents
The CIO and Practical Strategic Planning: More
Than Just IT 135
Planning the Future without Disrupting the Present 138
IT as a Value Center 149
Ten Questions the CIO Should Ask the Entire
Executive Team during Joint Strategic
Planning Activities 150
Notes 170
chapter 5 Focus and Prioritization 173
CIO Risk Profile Assessment 177
Aligning IT Resources to Your Organization’s Strategy 184
Proper Provisioning: Resource Allocation to IT 192
Adaptive Systems: IfWe Haven’t Started It Yet, It Costs
Nothing to Change It! 200
Charting the Journey Milestones: IT Program
Management 202
Ten Questions the CEO Should Ask the CIO
for Successful Alignment 206
Notes 230
chapter 6 Final Preparations 235
The Trek into (Un)Known Territory: Barriers to Success 236
Nirvana Accelerators 245
Decisions a CIO Should Not Make Alone 252
Distant Horizon 263
Creating the Horizon 269
Ten Questions the CIO Must Ask about
Future Horizons 271
Notes 273
glossary 275
index 285
Preface
Their budgets have been cut, their work’s been outsourced, their staff’s been downsized,
and they’ve been pushed off the executive team.Their status within the enterprise
has suffered.That’s dumb.And for CIOs, not fighting back would be
dumber.
—Stephanie Overby1
It is a matter of survival. Survival of the fittest and survival of the prepared. It’s a
jungle out there, and there are a lot of natural and unnatural hazards you’ll encounter
on your path as a CIO or an aspiring CIO. Making your way through the
jungle can be challenging, dangerous, exhilarating, and rewarding—sometimes all
at the same time.A lot depends on how well prepared you are for the endeavor.
Few professions are more challenging and more challenged than that of the
CIO: enabler, peer and partner, business executive with technical know-how, and
technical executive with business know-how. Responsible to everyone; and master
of so little.There’s no other position in the company like it.The CIO is the “goto”
person for all things IT.With all these expectations and responsibilities, how
does a CIO chart a course through the jungle?
The CIO Survival Guide is written to help you do just that.Whether you are
currently a CIO, an aspiring CIO, work for the CIO, or the CIO works for you,
there is much to do to get prepared, succeed, and provision against failure.The
Guide concentrates many people’s years of experience, interactions, and discussions
with people at all levels in the information technology industry—especially with
senior IT operations and product development executives and managers. It integrates
diverse experiences, observations, discussions, and research of many experts
in and about the field. Particularly, the Guide focuses heavily on the role of the
CIO and what it takes to be a successful CIO who also enjoys being a CIO.
It has been incredibly exhilarating being involved in the evolution of information
technology during my professional lifetime. Surprisingly, it has become increasing
more complex to accomplish the bottom-line deliverable of our
professional community: to make things simpler. As a result, a gap of understanding
between those creating the solutions and those needing the solutions (or paying for
them) has been opened and continues to widen dramatically.To the rescue comes
vii
VIII preface
the CIO who translates this complex world of information technology into a readily
understandable set of ideas and solutions in a business context that focuses on
creating value for each person in the company, and thereby for the company itself.
This skill is essential to a CIO’s success relative to the use of technology in the
business world: the ability to translate the complexities of information technology
and information systems into something everyone else can understand. Just because
someone uses IT does not mean he or she is interested in how IT works. Just
because someone depends on IT does not mean that he or she knows IT or will
come to know it if IT is explained in IT terms. In fact, it’s just the opposite.Nontechnicians
either flee in frenzy or develop that blank-eyed, comatose stare before
the technician has completed the first explanatory sentence.While it may be hard
to believe that not everyone is as interested in information technology as you are,
the fact is that (incredibly!) they are not. So the challenge is to translate the technology
and the need into what might be considered a modicum of “coolness”
and a solution for a real problem—or at least a solution that makes life easier or
better for the poor sod.This same person, by the way, can be a great weather vane
for whether or not one of your fascinating ideas is a solution to a real live, actual
problem.
Enter June,my wife of more than 25 years and mother of our two children. June
has been surrounded by technology and computers the entire time we have been
together, and she is fairly proficient using them. At the same time, she has absolutely
zero interest in knowing how they work.The two best ways I know to induce
sleep is to start talking “letters and numbers” to her or to turn on sci-fi or a
science program.That said, she is a daily user of e-mail and an avid researcher of information
on the Web. She pays our bills online, buys things online, and recently
has even begun to use online instant messaging to communicate with our son at
college. (Turns out she also uses it to communicate with my daughter and me
when we’re in different rooms and she wants to ask or tell us something.)
Because of June’s technology profile, I have sometimes called her a Luddite or
technophobe; she regularly corrects me on the latter. She is not afraid of technology;
so she says she is a “technogynist,” because when it comes to technology she
just doesn’t like it.Why should she have to understand the technology behind an
automobile engine to drive it? Fact is, she shouldn’t have to, but that is the way that
most companies and senior executives feel about IT—both the information technology
and the IT organization.That’s also why it is so important for the CIO to
be able to translate the technobabble into something that has meaning to those
who can benefit from it.
Beyond how information technology works, in order to be able to actually create
value, you have to know what needs to be done and then convince those who
will benefit and those who will pay for it. At times, I have used my own personal
sounding board,my resident Luddite, as a reality test of my own beliefs and ability
preface IX
to communicate them. For example, back when interactive TV was the rage, there
seemed to be one major sticking point: the cost of the set-top box.At the time, it
looked as though it was going to require a computer workstation dressed-up to
look like a set-top box to do the job. Consequently, this set-top box would run
about $5,000, maybe more.While I thought this would be a cool thing to have at
home (being able to decide what to watch and when to watch it), something told
me I’d better get a second opinion.
The verdict was in well before I got to the $5,000 punch line: Given a choice,
she wouldn’t even fool around with a set-top box, let alone an expensive and (she
was intuitively certain) a more complex one. Fast-forward nearly 10 years and my
question comes up again, this time in terms of a personal digital video recorder
(e.g.,TiVo or Replay).Again, no interest, even though the $300 price tag made it
less staggering. Circumstances, however, intervened and I was able to rationalize (a
true rationalization) the purchase of one for my commuting apartment, and within
two days of a family visit they were hooked on it. No amount of description ahead
of time could convince, but actually seeing it and using it made the difference.
Again, absolutely zero interest in how it worked, why it worked, or anything like
that. But once they saw it in use, the value became visible. It freed everyone from
being slaves of TV schedules (and from watching as many mediocre programs just
because they were next on the station).
This is not to say that your nontechnical peers and partners are Luddites, but it
does illustrate that your success as a CIO is tied to your ability to translate and
demonstrate the information technology world of possibilities into meaningful
value creation for them and for your company. Just because something seems
“cool” does not mean it’s of any practical use or benefit.
The subject of the Guide came up recently with an acquaintance who works as
a BusinessWeek correspondent. I told him that it was about the roles, responsibilities,
needs, and challenges for CIOs. He asked if the main message was how to
make a quick exit or if it was prescriptive. I told him it was prescriptive.On reflection,
it was most interesting that his first thought reflected how difficult a role he
obviously saw it to be. Perhaps because my career in this arena started in IT, I have
always felt an affinity to the employees, managers, and executives in IT and the incredible
tactical and strategic challenges before them—trying to hang on with
both hands as their customers (internal and external) take them in one direction
and then another. For instance, consider the anarchy created by personal digital assistants
(PDAs).This problem rivals the initial problems companies had trying to
keep people from bringing their own coffeepots into the office.What do you do
when all levels of your employees get them as gifts or buy them under the firm belief
that they need to do so to survive (productivity improvement).You can’t manage
what you can’t control and there is no way to control the ownership and use
of PDAs.As the old saying goes,“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
X preface
I have spent the majority of my professional life building and leading groups
and building solutions to help CIOs solve problems and create value for their companies.
A guiding principle has been could I see myself using or needing the particular
solution for IT—and bouncing that off the many CIOs, senior technology
executives, and managers and architects I know, the objective being to avoid producing
a solution that is looking for a problem, or producing a solution that is
ahead of its time.
Being the senior information technology executive is not a job for everybody,
and it is not a job that is anywhere near as generalized as the other “C”-level positions
in the company (CEO or CFO, for instance). It is a real jungle, and no intelligent
person would go into the jungle without a guide. So for you CIOs, aspiring
CIOs, or those of you who are challenged with managing a CIO, here’s yours: the
CIO Survival Guide.
Karl D. Schubert
Austin,Texas
February 2004