The CIO’s Inner Circle

Executives, such as CIOs, need to surround themselves with plenty of smart and talented people to be successful leaders. Even the greatest of CIOs is not superman and cannot go it alone. He/she needs a diverse workforce with the full spectrum of capabilities to tackle the most challenging problems facing the organization.

In building our teams, leaders need to understand themselves and how they relate to others. Some common instruments that help to do this are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI). Myers-Briggs classifies people according to their preferences for introversion/extroversion, sensing/intuition, thinking/feeling, and judging/perceiving. Similarly, the SDI charts people according to their altruism, assertiveness, and analytic. Both of these give people insight into their own personalities as well as provide a typology for those we work with.

MIT Sloan Management Review, Winter 2009, provides yet a new profile to categorize the support network of leaders in “Profiles of Trust: Who to Turn To, and for What”.

The profiles of people in the CIO’s support (“trust”) network comprise 8 types that “reflect differing combinations of the three facets of trust—ability, integrity, and benevolence.” They are as follows:

1. Harsh truthtellers—“sought out for their honesty…what needs to be said, not necessarily what people want to hear.”
2. Moral compasses—“respected…for their unwavering sense of right and wrong.”
3. Loyal supporters—“values are closely aligned with those of the support-seeker [leader].”
4. Star players—“experts renowned for their talent, but not necessarily for their ‘people skills.’”
5. Average Joes—“moderate levels of ability, benevolence, and integrity.”
6. Dealmakers—they “’get things done,’ often directly and unceremoniously, in a manner reminiscent of, say, a Tony Soprano.”
7. Cheerleaders—“provide unconditional support…willingness to ‘be there’ no questions asked, to lend moral support.”
8. Trustworthy partners—They ‘have it all’…they are capable, have high integrity, and have the support-seeker’s best interests at heart.”

“Executives are likely to build a support network based on different types of relationships with different people (who span the above eight profiles).” For example, when actionable advice is needed, those with high ability and integrity will be called upon. When looking for emotional or political support, those high in benevolence and integrity are especially valuable. And when looking for raw information, the “average Joes” with all three attributes in moderation are there to assist.

Of course, the specific people called upon for their subject matter expertise will vary according to the occasion and the needs of leadership. And regardless of who is called upon, and when, to provide their support, everyone serves a vital purpose.

So to me, what it important here is that everyone in a diverse workforce is infinitely valuable. And while no one person or type of person can do everything, everyone can do something. Those executives who build the breadth and depth of talent around them will have the human capital assets to thrive in any situation.

The CIO’s Inner Circle

It's Not The Systems, Stupid

Being a CIO is not just about information technology—IT is a service. The real job of a CIO is truly understanding the IT needs of their customers (those who actually carry out the mission of the organization) and leading the IT people to fulfill those needs.

In essence, the CIO leads his IT staff to deliver on the mission needs of the organization. So being the CIO is far from being just a technical job; it is very much a people job.

To deliver IT then, the CIO must understand how to effectively lead and motivate his people.

There is a terrific book on this subject called “What People Want” by Terry Bacon that identifies 7 primary needs of people in work relationships and particularly how an effective leader can fulfill those needs and in so doing build a high performing workforce.

Here are the primary people needs in relationships:

TRUST—“the most fundamental relationship need. Without trust, there will not be much of a basis for a relationship at all.”
CHALLENGE/GROWTH—“with rare exception, people are not content in trivial, boring, or stagnant jobs…they need to feel that their work is challenging and that they are developing their skills, capabilities, and possibilities.”
SELF-ESTEEM—"appearance, intelligence, talents, autonomy, integrity, awards, titles, positions, job responsibilities, memberships in special groups, acceptance or recognition.”
COMPETENCE—“people want to be expert at something.”
APPRECIATED—“feel pride in who they are and be genuinely accepted for what they contribute.”
EXCITED—“people want to be energized and enthused…it’s more fun than the alternative.”
RELEVANT—“contributing to something they believe in.”

You’ll notice that monetary compensation and benefits are not mentioned here, because that’s not what this is about. Yes, we all need to be able to pay our bills at the end of the month, but beyond that we have basic human needs (trust, challenge, self-esteem…) that are fundamental to people being effective on the job through their interactions with others.

And indeed, every leader can become a better, more effective leader by understanding these relationship needs and developing their abilities to genuinely help people feel fulfilled on these.

For the CIO, I think it is very easy—too much so—to focus on technology. The field is technically intriguing, quickly changing, futuristic, and fundamental to mission. Intentionally or not, the CIO can easily overlook the people that are behind the technical solutions—those that he/she depends on to really tech-enable the organization (it’s not the systems, stupid).

CIOs, take care of your hard-working and talented people—develop their trust, provide challenging work, grow their self-esteem, help them to mature their competences, appreciate them, inspire and excite, and show them they are contributing to something important. And you and they will be more than the sum of the parts and deliver IT solutions to the organization that will truly amaze!

It's Not The Systems, Stupid

Micromanagers and Enterprise Architecture

Human capital is such a critical aspect of our enterprises, yet in typical enterprise architectures (traditionally focused on IT and if we’re lucky maybe some business), it’s not seriously addressed.

Here’s an example of a major human capital issue and one that if dealt with sensitively and humanly could make a big difference in our organizations and toward productivity and innovation.

This issue that I am referring to is micromanagement.

How many people like to be micromanaged?

Of course, that’s a rhetorical question! Yet, micromanagement is a pervasive problem in our organizations. Twice this past month alone, articles have appeared in mainstream publications on this issue.

Here’s the first one. The October 20, 2008 issue of Federal Computer Week had an article entitled, “Are you a Micromanager?”

This piece recounted an FCW Insider Blog the prior month that asked “How could your agency or manager make you happier and more successful on your job?” To which, the first comments from a DoD employee was the following:

“We have no trust, therefore, we have micromanagement. Of course, there can be no empowerment for employees in this culture. Innovation and creativity are the enemies of senior management.”

Another read wrote:

“Because of the micromanagement, we spend up to 50 percent of our time proving that we are accountable by writing justifications and filling in data sheets showing that we are working!”

Here’s one more to think about:

“I resent being micromanaged as if I am a child, not a professional.”

Then on November 3, 2008, The Wall Street Journal reported “Micromanager Miss Bull’s-Eye.”

“Leadership experts say micromanagers…share an unwillingness to trust subordinates.”

Here’s what the authorities recommend:

“Clearly articulate expectations

Focus on hiring and placement of subordinates

Give employees decision-making power [as appropriate, of course]

Encourage questions and suggestions

Offer constructive feedback

Don’t grab the reins at the first sign of trouble”

The best managers provide meaningful and challenging work to their employees; facilitate the work, but do not actually do it for them; explain to employees what to do, but not how to do it; and let employees make mistakes and learn and grow from them.

To do this, managers needs to learn to have faith in people, listen to their employees, understand that employees are not only working on the project, but on their careers as well, make people feel safe to make honest mistakes, and of course, recognize and reward performance and promote diversity.

Mike Lisagor, a management consultant, put it well when he said: “Every manager can make a difference and the more enlightened the manager is, the more enlightened the organization will be.”

I agree with Mike. We need to change how we manage our human capital. As managers, and as organizations, we can and must do better. And I would suggest that we include this as part of our enterprise architecture efforts. The sooner, the better!

Micromanagers and Enterprise Architecture

Brand and The Total CIO

David F. D’Allesandro, the CEO of John Hancock insurance group has a bunch of wonderful books on building brand and career, such as “Brand Warfare”, “Career Warfare” and “Executive Warfare”.

All the books have three things in common. One, they are about the importance of brand. Two, they are about moving ahead in the corporate world. And three, they all end in “warfare.”

Brand is critical for building value. Brand is our reputation. It’s how we are known to others. It’s what people think and say about us. It’s a representation of our values and integrity.

We all know corporate brands such as those from consumer product companies and fashion designers. Those that have a “good” brand, tend to convey a higher status and cost a premium. We trust those brands and many people wear the brand labels as a status symbol.

We all carry a brand. Like a mark of “Grade A” or “Prime Beef” seared on a side of a hide of cattle, a brand is mark of distinction for us.

At work, we are branded as honest or not, fair or not, hard working or not, team players or not and so on and so forth.

As the CIO, it is imperative to have a brand that synthesizes the best of business and technology for the organization.

On one hand, many view the CIO as the technical leader for the organization; the wang-bang guru that leads the enterprise through the often confusing and fast-changing technology landscape. In this role, the CIO can make or break the future of the organization with wise or poor technical decisions that can put the enterprise on the cutting-edge, build competitive advantage, and increase revenue/profits, market share, and customer satisfaction. Or the CIO can lead the organization down a technical sinkhole with failed IT projects that jeopardize mission, alienate customers, drive out good employees out, and waste millions of dollars.

On the other hand, many like to say that the CIO is not and should not be tech-focused, but should be about the business—understanding the business strategy, operations, and requirements and then driving an IT organization that is responsive to it. Taken to an extreme, the CIO may not be required to have a technology background, an IT degree or even a technical certificate. This person may be from the business side of the house and could almost alien to the CIO organization and therefore, may not easily garner the respect of his more technical people.

The true successful CIO melds business and technology together. Their brand is one where business drives technology and where strategy is paramount, but operations is a given! This CIO is someone who can be relied on to make wise technical decisions today that will enhance the strategic success of the organization tomorrow. The CIO is a leader who manages not only upward, but who reaches across the organization to build partnership and understanding; who inspires, motivates, trains, recognizes, and rewards his people; and who conducts outreach and brings in best practices from beyond the strict organizational boundaries. This CIO is loyal, dedicated, hard-working, smart, and has the trust and confidence to get the job done!

So what with the “warfare” part in the books?

Well, unfortunately not everyone wants us to succeed. So, we must work on our brand to build it and make it shine, but at the same time, there are others inside and outside the organization who for various reasons would like to tarnish our brand: perhaps, they are jealous, competitive, nay-sayers, change resistant, oppositional, confrontational, troubled, or just plain crooked.

What D’Allesandro says is that to be successful, what sets us apart, is our ability to build relationship with others, even when it is challenging.

To be a successful CIO, we need a terrific personal brand, but more than that we need to have courage and conviction to stand by our beliefs and the vision and the ability to articulate it to guide and influence others to advance the organization’s long-term business and technical success.

Brand and The Total CIO

Big Brother and Enterprise Architecture

When people work from home, should their employers simply set performance goals for them and then evaluate them based on whether or not they met these or should employers monitor employees work at home to ensure that employers are where they say they are and doing what they say there are doing?

The Wall Street Journal, 30 July 2008, reports that “companies are stepping up electronic monitoring and oversight of tens of thousands of home-based independent contractors.”

Home-based workers have been increasing steadily over the years, with over 16 million home-based workers now in the U.S. That is huge!

But work is not care-free for these home workers. They can’t be sitting around working in their underwear, watching YouTube, or playing Sudoku. Employers are more often monitoring their employees by “taking photos of workers’ computer screens at random, counting keystrokes and mouse clicks, and snapping photos of them at their computers.”

That’s the visual inspection going on; then there is the audio piece. Companies are “plying sophisticated technology to instantaneously detect anger, raised voices, or children crying in the background on workers’ home-office calls. Others are using Darwinian routing systems to keep calls coming so fast workers have no time to go the bathroom.”

Is this big brother watching mentality too invasive or is it appropriate when we’re on the clock?

Well even well intentioned monitoring of home employees can certainly be taken to an extreme. One company, Arise-com “keeps its 8,000 at home agents so tightly tethered to their phones that they have to go schedule unpaid time off to go to the bathroom.”

From an enterprise architecture perspective, I believe it’s important to consider not only the performance aspect to the organization in terms of productivity and cost-effectiveness of these workers, but also to look at from a human-capital perspective with respect to treating the employees with trust, respect, and integrity.

I believe that people should be given the benefit of the doubt and treated kindly and humanly and not subjected to undue and invasive monitoring like photographing them on a webcam. Instead, let’s set ambitious, but realistic performance goals for our employees. Most the time, work at home employees end up exceeding performance expectations. For those that don’t meet their goals, then additional monitoring is appropriate to further assess their performance and to decide whether the privilege of working at home should be continued or not.

Trust but verify. Let’s start off with a core dose of trust, but have the verify ready to go for those that abuse it.

Big Brother and Enterprise Architecture

Leadership, Change, and Enterprise Architecture

Enterprise architecture is about planning, managing, and measuring change in an organization. To effect change requires true leadership, and this requires multiple skills.

In the book, The Leadership Triad by Dale Zand, three essential forces of leadership are presented—knowledge, trust, and power. These leadership forces guide constructive organizational change.

“Like three horses pulling a chariot, these forces, if coordinated and working together, provide a swift and exhilarating ride. But if one force is mismanaged or pulls against the others, the ride is bumpy and can end in disaster.”

Effective leaders integrate the three forces of knowledge, trust, and power to drive effective change and maintain efficient operations in their organizations: “They know what should be done, they have the trust of their people, and they use power appropriately:

1. Knowledge—“leaders know or can find out what should be done…they have vision and they know how to fulfill that vision. They set clear, challenging goals, and they know what needs to be done to reach the goals…they know how to gain access to the knowledge of others, and they know how to work with people to convert that knowledge into action.”
2. Trust—“people trust effective...leaders, giving them loyalty and commitment… [They] earn trust by disclosing relevant information, sharing influence, and competently using knowledge. They earn trust by fairness in their dealings with others—fulfilling the spirit of their agreements, sharing rewards and hard times and not abusing their power.”
3. Power—“leaders use their power appropriately. They know how to be directive or to delegate. They know how to review and evaluate constructively. They know how to be consultants, providing guidance rather than issuing commands.”

Why not just lead in a command and control fashion like in the military or law enforcement organization?

“The heroic fantasy of one person at the head of a column and followers shouting ‘charge’ as they mount the battlements is outdated. Instead leaders need to learn to use the sensing, searching, and thinking ability of all people within the organization.”

How are these leadership skills similar to those necessary for implementing enterprise architecture?

Knowledge, trust, and power are the cornerstones of an enterprise architecture program.

1. EA makes information transparent and provides information products to distribute knowledge and enable better decision-making. EA information is critical to decision-making, particularly in terms of ensuring sound IT investment management decisions, IT planning, analysis of problem areas—uncovering gaps, redundancies, inefficiencies, and opportunities--driving business process improvement, reengineering, and the introduction of new technologies to the organization.

“In the twentieth century society crossed…into the information age, marked by the emergence of the knowledge organization.”

“Competitive advantage in the information age is in constant jeopardy—knowledge is fluid, and creative thinkers leapfrog over existing knowledge.”

“Knowledge travels with the speed of thought, but can be blocked by the smallest emotional barrier. It can enlighten the entire organization’s operation, yet it can easily be concealed if people do not want leaders to see it. People throughout organizations continually acquire and create important, critical knowledge about customers, [suppliers], products, technology, costs, and competitors. But that knowledge can remain hidden and inaccessible to leaders. In the new world leaders need to liberate knowledge and creative thinking at all levels and in all corners of the organization. To compete, leaders need to move knowledge from where it is to where it can be used to define and achieve appropriate goals.”

EA helps to synthesize information and liberate knowledge to meet strategic goals.

2. EA is based on the trust of business and technical leaders and staff across the enterprise. EA synthesizes business and technology information. It relies on the trust of divisions, departments, and subject matter experts (SMEs) throughout the organization to share (and not hoard) information and build a results-driven, process-oriented, interoperable, standardized, cost-effective organization, rather than a siloed, ineffective one. In an EA-directed organization, siloed functions and management relinquish their own personal interests and perhaps, selfish motives and instead plan for the good of the overall organization. For example, decisions on IT investments are made based on enterprise priorities and cost-benefit-risk-architecture considerations, rather than who has the money to spend.

“Trust regulates the disclosure of information—how open people are with relevant information…trust regulates mutual influence—how receptive people are to each other’s goals and concerns, and trust regulates control—the intention to fulfill the spirit of a decision and willingness to rely on another person to implement her part of the decision.”

“Mistrust causes people to censor, delay, and distort relevant information. Social uncertainty compounds ambiguity, masks difficulties and deprives leaders of the opportunity to make high-quality decisions

3. The EA Board (chaired by the chief enterprise architect) ensures that proposed new IT projects, products, and standards align to and comply with the enterprise architecture. EA must have the power to mandate and enforce alignment and compliance or else the target architecture and transition plan is just a sham that will not yield enterprise results and achieve stated goals. Additionally, EA must have the ability to require SMEs to contribute regularly to the development, maintenance, and use of the EA. The business and technical SMEs are the owners of the EA content and must be partners with the EA team in ensuring that the architecture is kept current, accurate, and complete.

“Power is the ability to influence others so that they do or do not do something.”

“Leaders have legitimate power to determine the process by which decisions will be made.”

Knowledge, trust, and power are three dimensions of leadership that are the foundation for an effective EA program. EA ensures that the information needs of the organization are met in terms of business and technical baseline and target architectures and transition plans. EA relies on the trust of its organizational partners in the business and technical domains to share information and adhere to architectural decision and standards that are in the best interests of the overall organization, rather than any one individual, group, or function. And finally, EA requires the power to ensure alignment to and compliance with the architecture and the decisions of the architecture board or else EA is just a paper tiger and will fail.

Leadership, Change, and Enterprise Architecture