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The CIO Dog Food Wikinomics Experience
They say that dogs eventually start to look like their masters. Would this pertain to CIO’s too? You tend to think so. More than ever, the CIO is reporting to the Chief Financial Officer again. Shocked by the economic downturn and the increasing pressure of regulatory compliance, management seemed to have good reasons for that.
I wouldn’t dare to stigmatise anybody, but we can safely assume that CFO’s have not been selected for their uncontrolled, wildly imaginative and innovative ways. Otherwise, they would have become video clip directors or fashion designers. And it’s easy to see how an understated, restrained view of the world cascades through the chain of command: sooner or later, some CIO’s start to look and act like accountants.
Dreadful indeed.
Especially when recent research proves that boardroom executives once again see the innovative value and growth potential of IT. And they are relying on the CIO to provide the spark of inspiration. In practice, I see many CIO’s struggle to articulate a compelling technology-enabled vision, let alone that they successfully reach out to the business side of the company and convince it of the transformation potential.
No doubt this is partially due to CIO’s being reprogrammed to threat IT as something that doesn’t matter and should be managed on cost and risk mitigation. But then again, we all must become the change we want to see. CIO’s must rediscover the innovative value of technology and demonstrate it to the outside world. And the most effective way to achieve that is to first apply it to their own business – to the IT department - before they roll it out to others.
It is truly a matter of eating your own dog food (or drinking your own champagne, as my French colleagues prefer): it is about using IT to transform yourself and then use it as a highly convincing, street-credible showcase to clients, in- or outside the organisation.
Obviously, this no easy task. So we thought it would be a good idea to mobilise the collective power of the CTO blog reader community to jointly create a top ten list of Things CIO’s Should Do To Themselves First Before Bothering Others. So please, let us have your builds. At the same time we will prove the potential of mass collaboration, or Wikinomics if you like.
What IT application would really, really make the difference in your own IT department? To get you started, here’s three ideas:
- Use portal software to provide an up-to-date, detailed insight of all ongoing IT projects to the business clients
- Use Web 2.0 technologies (wiki’s, social tagging, blogs, etc.) to create a new élan of creating and sharing knowledge within the IT department
- Use embedded, realtime business intelligence to continuously define, monitor and improve the performance of the IT department; also ensure that everybody has a KPI gadget on their desktop.
These are just some initial thoughts. We're sure you can do much better, so we will anxiously be monitoring the comments section. Watch this blog for an updated Top Ten list soon.
Posted by Ron Tolido on June 14, 2007 in
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Comments
# on June 15, 2007 1:22 PM, Brian Murray said:
I think if we are seeking evidence that CIO's tend to 'lack vision' and 'fail to innovate' there are more than a few pointers.
I recently attended the Forrester CIO Forum and was struck by both of these points above most things. I was disappointed to find this wasn't simply a pessimistic perception on my part, with some of the leading CIO's dismissing open source and SaaS (http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39167467,00.htm) perhaps as a visible threat to the status quo - most CxOs hate change, they have reached a position they would prefer not to have rocked or challenged. Hence the defensive reaction to retreat to the reasonably safe ground of cost-cutting and efficiency chasing.
However, most successful CEOs recognise their need to embrace change in order to stay in the game, or even leapfrog competition and are challenging their CIOs, in particular, to inovate and add value (http://www.silicon.com/ciojury/0,3800003161,39166887,00.htm).
I wholehearted support the 'eat your own dog food' approach and believe EVERY company should take a close look in the mirror and ensure they are practicing what they preach, on the innovation front especially.
I also find my thoughts returning to a deliberately provocative view I put across on organisational roles and responsibilities (see the final comment on http://www.capgemini.com/ctoblog/2007/02/cio_chief_infrastructure_offic.php) …. When it comes to CIOs, they are becoming key to value delivery in the modern enterprise. For example, how many key organisations, services or even sciences nowadays depend on IT as their core toolsets? So cannot understand why CEOs continue to manage IT almost as part of their facility cost base. How can a CFO really manage innovative value or strategic change? I very much doubt it.
# on June 20, 2007 10:27 AM, Maarten Engels said:
I believe the true issue is that IT is from a business view point perceived as a necessary evil with high costs, inflexibility, risk and failing projects.
And it's our own fault. We can't blame the business for looking at IT this way as we are still unable to define the true value of IT.
We are able to mitigate risks, usually at the expence of perceived flexibility. We can reduce the number of failing projects by doing less projects.
What we can't tell them is how much of the added value for a product developed or service delivered can be attributed to IT. We need to learn how to quantify the value of IT. A true challenge indeed.
# on June 20, 2007 5:19 PM, Brian Murray said:
The value of IT … a true challenge - I agree
However, I wonder if we are painting ourselves into the wrong corner with this one.
On the one hand - IT delivers business support services - these are usually the areas methodologies/frameworks such as ITIL etc look at. But do we measure 'value' for support services? Are facilities measured on value? Are PAs? Most significantly, are the true sources of corporate value (i.e. the people via HR)? … Not really. Even the latter can only be argued from the perspective of performance-related bonuses etc. … hardly true value (i.e. intellectual capital)!
On the other hand - where does IT truly delivery value? Typically through customer service, business intelligence/integration/agility and innovation. I wonder how many companies measure these and attribute the relevant aspects fairly to IT?
When it comes down to it, it could be argued that the culture within which we measure and attribute business value perhaps needs revised.
# on June 20, 2007 5:31 PM, Ron Tolido said:
@Brian: Thanks for your builds (excellent, as usual). I agree it's eventually a culture change, or transformation if you like, that will really make the difference. It does bring the discussion back to 'eating our dogfood' since the new generation of corporate performance management tools might just help us a bit to trigger that change we want to see. A CIO might want to consider introducing realtime KPI dashboards to define, visualise and monitor the actual value of IT projects and services. Who knows, business might start to develope a taste for it...