Tag CIO Leadership

Entries 3 Total

What Staff Really Need From The CIO

Aug 11, ’09 1:41 PM

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:

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Flying At The Right Level As An IT Leader

Aug 5, ’09 3:23 PM

Like many other professions, the career path of an IT leader, VP, CTO or CIO usually starts out at a lower level within an organizational hierarchy, and may take many routes. A business analyst fresh out of college moves through the project management ranks, leading larger teams and programs until he is responsible for an enterprise-wide technology portfolio. A developer writes quality code for a few years, then leads a team of developers, and eventually finds herself as CTO for a software company managing hundreds.

The road to greater responsibility requires constant adjustment, from being an individual contributor to a manager, from being self-directed to a motivator of a large team. Many have correctly noted that organizations don’t usually provide much in the way of support resources for these transitions – they just happen, summed up well by the line “Poof, you’re a boss.”

Many of the challenges described by IT leaders as they move up the ladder can be categorized as changes of scale – how managing 100 people will differ from managing 5, the volume and types of HR issues to be encountered with a larger group, etc… and are all valid concerns.

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Culture Wars

Apr 16, ’09 11:18 AM

No, not of the political variety.  Beyond the mission, vision and values statements, the coffee mugs and the pot-luck lunches, how would your describe your IT Culture?  Who is driving it?

IT Culture Graph

  • Leadership (you):  If staff were asked, would they say that you are actively building a culture around a specific vision you have for the team and the organization?  Would they be able to describe that vision?  Do you have followers within leadership/staff that understand your cultural vision and support you in this effort?  Are you on your own?
  • Rank & File: Is the rank & file culture a blank canvas waiting for you to begin painting, or are you fighting an institutionalized culture that doesn’t match your vision?  Are there so many staff modeling old/negative behaviors that they are overrunning your efforts at the top (tail wagging dog)?  Should you be actively enlisting more followers to assist in this task?
  • Few Specific Individuals: Are there a few specific “informal culture leaders” that staff look to to determine the overall reaction to every new policy or program you roll out?  Are these individuals supporting you, or are they working against you?  How much damage might they be doing?
  • Outside Threats: Is your culture defined primarily by you, and with an appropriate weighing of the outside world?  A little paranoia is normally considered good practice in a competitive marketplace, but has that outside focus become the de-facto culture?   If staff cannot articulate your vision for the type of organization you’d like to build, but can speak at length about negative external reviews or business partner ratings for services provided by IT, you might be in this category.

In my discussions with IT leaders from smaller organizations, one of the most attractive benefits they point to is the ability to build the type of culture they have always wanted to work within.  This is often an etherial thing and hard to quantify, but may include working with individuals with similar levels of passion/energy, personal accountability, challenge, new learnings, work flexibility, and of course the fun quotient.

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