From IT to inspiration - how to become a strategic leader

If anyone doubts that chief information officers (CIOs) still face stiff challenges in being taken seriously at board level, listen to Simon Powell, managing director of security company ServoCell, on how he sees IT people.

‘Years ago people were in awe of IT because they did not understand it. Now most managers see it as just one more element in the business mix. The cat is out of the bag, technology-wise, and it is time to stop playing with your servers in the IT cupboard. Stop talking terabytes and start talking cost-benefit analysis,’ he says.

Strong stuff? Maybe not if your boardroom reads analysis by organisations such as Butler Group, which last month published research suggesting 92 per cent of all IT spending fails to deliver measurable value to the organisation paying for it. Five years on from the millennium bug and the dot com phenomenon, it seems many IT leaders are still struggling to establish their relevance and contribution.

Much of the communication problems seem to stem from the unwillingness of many CIOs to talk the same language as the rest of the team.

‘I am still surprised at the number of times I ask CIOs to tell me how their businesses make money and they cannot tell me,’ says Richard Chiumento, chief executive at business transition and HR consultancy Rialto, who has been coaching senior IT executives for 20 years.

‘Today it is really only the top 10 to 15 per cent of CIOs who can fit the profile of being competent in both IT and business.’

As far back as the 1980s, business gurus talked of the need for hybrid managers. Why are we still having this debate? John Whiting, director of the executive IT practice at recruitment consultant Harvey Nash, says that this picture is a little hard on today’s aspiring IT leaders.

‘Things have moved on, and in the right direction,’ he says. ‘For the past two or three years the senior IT guys we meet have been demonstrably better at displaying strategic leadership skills and better business acumen and commercial knowledge than their predecessors.’

But that does not mean the problem is solved just yet. ‘Hiring organisations will increasingly demand serious evidence of negotiation and contract management skills for these sorts of jobs, thanks to the rise in outsourcing,’ he says.

And Whiting splits the CIO candidate base into three clear streams. The highest level is already helping shape business strategy, but there is an alarmingly large middle-tier of more technology-oriented individuals struggling to break out of their strictly operational roles. Third, there are the talented IT leaders of tomorrow, in the 30-35 age range, who have come up through the outsourcing era and have a wider mix of experience. ‘That is a wake up call to the folks in the middle category, because you are going to get squeezed out,’ says Whiting.

What practical steps can today’s CIO take to progress his cause? For Chiumento, candidates for modern IT-business leadership roles should be investing personal time in training and self-development. ‘I would look for evidence of well-honed personal skills around communication and negotiation, and at least some formal business training. That could be in a particular functional business or management skill, not just Masters or MBA standard. Broadening your capacity is key,’ he says.

But opening a few books will not be enough. ‘Try to get wider line management experience if at all feasible,’ he adds.

The market wants the modern CIO to be an able technologist, a fluent business concept user, have a lawyer’s grasp of contract and negotiation skills, be in possession of top-notch people skills and, if possible, have completed a stint in accounts.

‘Yes, it is tough,’ says Gartner research director Marcus Blosch, who helps run a regular ‘CIO Academy’ course at Oxford’s Templeton College.

‘When we run this past young CIOs they let their jaws drop and say they did not know they had to do all that.’

Are these impossible goals? A hint of the way to get there is provided by a critic, ServoCell’s Powell.

‘The good modern manager of any discipline is “T-shaped”. He has capacity in depth in his specialty, the long arm of the T, but he has widened his viewpoint to have reasonable competence in neighbouring business skills, such as sales or marketing or basic accounting,’ he says.

‘You need to understand enough of what the other people in the room are saying to make a contribution – but you must look like them, too. So lose the ponytail – even if it is just virtual.’

But there are many CIOs who have cracked the problem and who are being taken seriously by their boards and colleagues, and yet do not seem to show signs of any vulnerability.

Chris Dunne, commercial business manager at Voca, the commercial spin-off from the Bacs payments service, trained as a computer scientist but has never worked strictly in IT. Instead he gained financial services expertise in the City and at Reuters.

‘It is important to know that technology understanding is a real asset,’ he says. ‘Everyone has a view on marketing – but then everyone is a football manager on Monday morning. Few finance and marketing people want to get to grips with IT. To be able to talk meaningfully about technology in terms they can understand is powerful – knowledge is power.’

Ken Sawyer, UK IT director at exhibition and publishing company DMG World Media, has become the main interface between IT and all the different businesses he supports.

‘IT had been seen as chaps in a corner who came along to fix the printer when it was broken,’ he says.

‘I turned that around by demonstrating that what seemed low-profile IT moves actually helped the bottom line. Now I spend most of my time sitting on management boards across the group.’

So do not despair – IT leadership is valued by many organisations. But you must articulate what it is you do. ‘When it all works, no one notices,’ says Dunne. ‘But when it is a smoking heap on the ground they all notice. Do not let that happen – but do not forget to communicate the importance of the former, either.’

How to be a business IT leader

Too many of the CIOs we work with say they are not seen by their firms as adding strategic value , but are there to keep the lights on and run the systems. Quantifying your contribution will be helpful. A way forward might be to work on transforming business intelligence from reporting to a key asset and decision support tool.
Marcus Blosch, research director, Gartner

To succeed as a leader in a business change role, get to know the business – and if you haven’t already, start now. Volunteer for work and more responsibility. Think about performance and performance management and metrics. This is a way to start building the perception that you can be a trusted adviser.
Tudor Rees, director, the Leading Edge Forum, a CIO network run by CSC

Move to an organisation that takes IT as a way to innovate and differentiate, even if it means moving business sectors, or you could spend a long time waiting to be noticed. Acquiring accountancy skills will help you in both cases; the MBA is possibly devalued now, whereas accounting qualifications are gaining in market value.
Chris Ingle, consultant, IDC group

Case Study: Myron Hrycyk, Unipart - It is important to detach yourself from IT if you are to relate to the business

Myron Hrycyk, head of IT at Unipart Automotive Logistics, has avoided many of the obstacles to IT leaders being seen as ‘non-players’. He sums up the modern CIO dilemma bluntly: ‘To survive, you have to stop being seen as a technology person, and start being seen as a business person.’

Hrycyk says he has been working on doing just that in his firm since he joined four years ago, after stints as an IT leader in a number of sectors, including publishing and financial services. This may be down to the fact that Hrycyk is not a computer scientist – he classes himself firmly as a ‘businessman who works in IT’, with both BCS qualifications and a business-oriented MBA.

‘I’ve always been fortunate to have one foot in the business and one foot in the IT camps at the firms I have worked for,’ he says.

‘The way I have tried to align IT with business goals has been through a series of steps,’ Hrycyk told Computing Business.

‘First we achieved a base level of robust systems, which we labelled operational excellence, so that users could have confidence that all their IT worked and so project credibility resulted. We achieved this partly through building – based on SAP software – a central logistics platform. Building on that we have moved closer to our business colleagues by moves such as me sitting on the business unit operational board, so I always have a contribution in top-level discussions. I see my role as understanding the business demands and communicating how IT can make them happen, plus hopefully adding extra value to the initiative,’ he says.

‘And finally, we don’t talk “techie”. We have integrated with company frameworks and use the language that the rest of the business uses.’

For Hrycyk, ‘there is no silver bullet for this problem. There is no quick fix about how to be seen as more “relevant” to the rest of the business. But this has to be done or you could find yourself in a lot of trouble.’

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