What Staff Really Need From The CIO

Much has been said about the role of the CIO in the enterprise and how that role may be changing over time, the need for more innovative ideas, more accountability, better partnership with internal customers and the significant challenges ahead for IT senior leaders.

In the mix of advice for CIOs and senior management, there is less guidance on what the staff, the folks who actually do all the hard work, need from senior IT leadership (usually the CIO or a similar role). What are the traits and behaviors that staff really need in a CIO? Here is a list to start discussion:

[1] – Articulating the Mission and Vision of IT – but perhaps not in the way it is normally done. Along with the standard PowerPoint deck or the coffee cup with a mission statement painted on the side, staff need to hear about the priorities, where you want to take the organization and how their work supports the larger enterprise. Sure, a presentation is nice, but these items are really driven home by informal, day-to-day actions, such as:

• Being vocal in the use of a filtering mechanism for new investments or decision-making. “How will this project support our strategic goal of X this year?” “With the limited budget dollars available, how will we best support our corporate goal of Y?” These filters become internalized over time by staff, and puts them in the role of making these tradeoffs themselves, which is the goal.
• Provide opportunities for staff to hear about the organization’s priorities from other senior leaders in addition to yourself. It is human nature to be doubtful about the importance of a corporate goal until one hears a consistent story from several leaders across the organization.
• Invite internal customers to staff meetings to talk about their individual needs, their partnership with IT and the value provided by your team. This activity connects the dots between abstract IT work and real business results, while providing a huge motivational boost for staff.

These activities, done consistently, drive home the mission and make it real for staff at all levels, trumping anything you happen to have written down on paper.

[2] – Setting the Standards – Whether it is software quality, infrastructure support, SLAs or the quality of analysis completed for new investments, the CIO needs to set the standards within the department. Again, its less about what is on paper than what is done in practice by staff and leadership at all levels. What quality of work is accepted, and what is rejected? What conversations do you have with staff about the success or failure of an initiative and your expectations therein? When do you ask for deliverables to be scrapped and done over? Although its likely that staff will not agree with your quality expectations in every instance, by observing the process they’ll eventually have a very good idea what is to be expected, and might even find themselves asking, either aloud or internally, “…what would the CIO do in this circumstance?”. This is another area where you need to ask yourself if the PowerPoint statements you have created are matching the reality on the ground.

[3] – Showing How the Sausage is Made - Staff need to see in real-time how you go about solving problems, and your own critical thinking process in action. The CIO that takes data inputs from all others and returns a decision without providing any window into the actual thought process used, does little to advance the skills of the staff under his leadership. What factors weighed into your decision making? What factors did you discount? What impact did items such as your organization’s strategic plan have on your decision? A great deal more value is added in a response to a question by using the form of “here’s how I am thinking this through…., and the following items concern me…, so based upon those factors, I’d like us to do the following…” While staff will not agree in all cases with the thought process on display, making that process visible will positively influence the standards of the department, even when you are not in the room, which is when it really counts.

[4] – Authentic Interest and Passion – One of the unique benefits of being a CIO in a larger organization is the great variety of issues one comes across during the course of a typical day, from a detailed technology issue under review one minute, to a high-level Board management discussion the next. Unfortunately for many, one of the first things to get dropped in the inevitable crunch for time is the visible connection of the CIO to the daily work being performed, and any continuing demonstration of his passion for IT.

Staff need to see that the CIO position isn’t a generic management role for you, that you have a real passion and interest for how technology can enable the business goals, that you are genuinely interested in their work and that you continue to keep abreast of the technology. Again, small day-to-day actions can make a difference, such as:

• An open-door policy to encourage staff to stop by and talk about their latest breakthrough, whether its a coding challenge solved or a new tech toy they just bought.
• Making it clear that you are current with industry news and emerging trends, whether in informal discussion or even a technology quiz for staff at larger meetings.
• Following up with a staff member on an item of interest after a technology or vendor presentation, such as “I did a little research on that question we discussed and found the following information I wanted to share with you…”

These small encounters, even if very infrequent, can make all the difference in the world to staff that do not get much face-time with senior leadership.

[5] – Praise and Feedback – This is a difficult item to gauge correctly. In an organization of any size its likely that the CIO will experience a substantial range in staff expectations for praise and positive feedback, from the completely self-driven individual who will appreciate an infrequent “good job” for work that is clearly beyond the call of duty, to the individual who’d like to be personally thanked at the front door for showing up each morning. The challenge therefore becomes dialing-in the right level of feedback and positive praise for each individual, without diluting the value of praise by overuse. With the awareness that authenticity is severely lacking in many organizations, I’d prefer to err on the side of less praise that is more heartfelt. While this will not please everyone, it will result in the majority of staff realizing that good work is the expectation, and that praise is handed out for exceptional efforts.  Its been my experience that staff excel the most when much is expected from them.  People like to be challenged to do their best work at all times, and appreciate those leaders with high expectations of themselves and their teams.

Now, Some Optional Items:

Technical Depth – While it is to be expected that the CIO has a good foundational knowledge of every area of accountability, the pace of change guarantees that it will be impossible for senior leadership to retain expert status for every area under management, or every purchase to be made. Attempting to do so would contradict the very purpose of the talented team you have worked so hard to build. Therefore, a suitable goal for technology depth might be to possess a working understanding of the topic under discussion, but above all, to coach the staff closer to the details on the appropriate process to use in decision-making, including the items listed here such as alignment to goals, quality of analysis, etc.

Killer Speaking Skills – Adequate public speaking skills are certainly part of the expectation for senior leaders, however, personal experience has shown that staff are generally very forgiving of the senior leader with less than stellar formal speaking skills in all cases. Authenticity and passion generally make up for a visible lack of comfort in speaking to large groups. One might even make a joke of his nervousness in speaking to large audiences. This situation is much preferable to the opposite – smooth delivery from an inauthentic leader, something which is immediately identified by most IT professionals, a class of people not easily fooled.

Finally, a list like this wouldn’t be complete without an item not desired by staff in their CIO:

A New Facebook Friend – Staff are not looking for you to be their Facebook friend, or their nightly drinking buddy. They can get those things elsewhere. In a larger organization, a certain amount of distance is required between senior leadership and staff, to limit any potential perception of favoritism or other political issues that will arise. This is a tough realization for many emerging leaders promoted up through the ranks, as they come to grips with the changing role and expectations of a leader. It is not aloofness, but rather a mature understanding of how business is played and the expectations for leaders versus staff. If you want a best friend as a CIO, get a dog.

What traits would you add to this list? What would you disagree with?

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Tagged as: CIO Leadership, CIO Role, Management & Governance