Making the CIO

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In this country the title chief information officer has only come into use in the past decade or less and is still far from common, much less universal, even in large organisations. Yet there is already a sense in which the role it denotes is constantly changing and may well have transformed radically by the time the title becomes widely used. That whole notion of the C-suite with the chief officers of all the key functions is beginning to catch on but there are still many Irish organisations that would not include technology at that level. Information and communications technology (ICT) often reports to the chief operating officer or equivalent and all too frequently still to the financial director.

Five fold
In any event it is probably more a question of ‘the roles’ of the CIO. A workshop in 2005 at the London-based CIO-Connect, a networking organisation for CIOs which included a couple of dozen Irish members, identified at least five roles:

Conductor: as in an orchestra, looking after strategy and leadership towards shared goals, coordination and the motivation of skilled people

Innovator: instigating change, identifying and choosing the technology resources to match the corporate road map

Politician: selling the grand vision to the body corporate and all of the stakeholders

Accountant: because the financial side is very important and the risk management in ICT investment is crucial

Security officer: security must be both set up and enforced and the vast area of regulatory compliance has to be added, plus internal policies for discipline in using information

In general, most CIOs believe that senior business management has come to understand ICT better, while most senior technical people have learned that all ICT projects are actually business projects and vice versa.

More roles
Kevin Cooney of Xilinx would add two more ‘I’ functions to the role, believing firmly that Innovation should have primacy while Integration accompanies Information. He also sees security becoming more and more important as a responsibility. He has been global CIO of Xilinx, the $1.8 billion leader in programmable logic devices, for six years and EMEA managing director based in Dublin for the past two. So he is probably the most senior Irishman in a CIO role worldwide and has some authority for his view that business credibility is the key thing, whoever holds the role and whatever it is called.

“You must have that credibility especially with your fellow chief officers, who are your partners in the business and the key to how ICT is viewed in the organisation. If the leader of ICT has that, the day job, keeping the lights on and all that, will take care of itself for the most part.”

In that context, Cooney is happy to suggest that the CIO need not come from an IT background. “All too often IT managers are wedded to the past and to systems they are familiar with. On the other hand, the sort of IT person who has been involved with applications and immersed in the business functions, as opposed to the infrastructural stuff, can often be one of the few people with a view right across the organisation and its activity. That can certainly give a strong foundation to be able to add strategic value.”

If the CIO is to come from a line of business background, Cooney says, of course it is important to have a solid understanding of ICT. “The company looks to the CIO to have that appreciation and vision of where technology is going and what will be important to the organisation. Then again the ways in which IT managers are developing is changing, becoming more involved with the business, so there is certainly not going to be just one ideal career background for a CIO.”

Project based
Cooney believes in an account management structure for ICT teams, with clear owners for each of the business functions they serve, and he led the establishment of a formal project office in Xilinx. “We have an executive steering team and always a VP from the business. It is critical to keep that disciplined control on projects with the business objectives always in view. Historically, we all know that when a project is going a bit off track the IT team tends to do a diving catch just to deliver something. That is not always the right thing to do. We tend to have about six projects a year supervised by the project office and the important thing is that the business team is part of the project. We are literally all in it together and at an executive level.”

The IT function in the organisation has accountability for infrastructure, ensuring everything the organisation needs is always on. To that has been added security and compliance. The third major element, Cooney says, is making a value contribution to the business, in a word innovation. “The first of those elements, keeping things running, is likely to go to trusted service providers or disappear into the cloud. Security and compliance are key responsibilities but are hardly C level on a day by day basis. That all suggests that the core value of the CIO in the future will be in leading innovation. Chief Innovation Officer? Why not?!”

Close relationship
Another CIO who believes that deep engagement with the business is fundamental to the role is Brendan Healy, Group CIO of Irish Life and Permanent. “After 25 years in IT there are huge changes, as I see it. Entry level programmers have not been needed in-house for a long time and even higher up systems development tends to be led from rather than delivered internally. The focus today, and in fact for some years, tends to be on operational excellence, reviewing and constantly improving business processes, and close engagement with the business management.”

“I would say that 80% of IT management today is about that close relationship with the business and senior IT people are nearly interchangeable with their line of business counterparts. Actually, we recruited an executive from the business side on to the IT team some years ago and his point of view was like a breath of fresh air. So in that sense, the CIO-a title that I suspect is still less than five years old in Ireland-could come from anywhere. I think senior IT people in most larger organisations have in fact been thinking like CIOs, as it were, for years.”

“In many ways all you need to be a CIO is to be a good manager with an understanding of the technology and of the business and your organisation,” Brendan Healy thinks. “Immediately below you will be the expertise you need to rely on, people with perhaps a deeper technical understanding. As for trends and directions, they tend to come from and be presented and championed by the vendors. So the responsibilities are largely for understanding what will fit the organisation’s strategy and in the end for choice.”

CEO vision
Another view comes from Harry Goddard, partner in Deloitte Consulting, who reckons it all starts with what the organisation wants and the vision of the role held by the CEO. “What is all too prevalent is a sort of ‘IT Manager-it is’ that sees IT as a cost centre and a facility. One step up and it becomes a service provider. It only becomes a big issue when something goes wrong, someone can’t get mobile access or e-mail or whatever.” However, Deloitte surveys suggest that just over half of all organisations now recognise IT as a key service, 38% believe it can add value and just 9% still see it primarily as a cost centre.

When it comes to the role of a CIO, there is inevitably some subtle tension between the role as a key business leader and as the leader of IT in the organisation. Once again, Goddard believes, it can come down to the CEO’s belief about what the organisation needs. “There is possible demand for perhaps five types of CIO depending on the organisation, starting with the traditional IT director managing an internal service. But it could also be the Evangelist CIO, visionary and confident and forward looking. Then there is the Innovator CIO, understanding both the business and the technology and driving strategic innovation. The Facilitator CIO is all about changing the culture in the organisation and empowering managers and users.”

Silicon ceiling
But in more advanced organisations, Goddard suggests, the role of the CIO has mutated past ICT while retaining the technology leadership role. In this view information and technology are so much part of the DNA of any enterprise that separating the ICT strand is meaningless. What a Deloitte report (“Realising Value from a CIO: Navigating the Silicon Ceiling”, 2008) calls ‘The CxO’ can be seen as a cross-enterprise role bringing leadership and an understanding of change programmes and their management and measurement.

Another Irish CIO who sees the role as changing and evolving is Conor O’Brien of Friends First, who is actually chief operating officer but has taken on the CIO mantle as well. He compares it to health services and the medical profession. “As Gerry Robinson pointed out in that television series on the NHS, a lot of hospitals are run by doctors but in fact just because you are a good doctor does not mean you will be a good hospital manager! I think in the same way a very good IT person may not necessarily be right as head of IT much less the CIO. I am certainly not convinced that the CIO has to be from an IT background.”

On the other hand, O’Brien accepts, if not from IT that a CIO will have to spend a lot of time listening to technical discussions and trying to grasp and understand the real issues. “Detachment is critical, not wasting time on the nitty-gritty. Exactly how something works is not that important.” So he believes that it is the qualities of the person that matter more than the career background for a CIO.

“I moved from pure IT into line of business, which is still probably a bit unusual. But in most organisations today it has become important to be flexible, to become functionally mobile. It is actually very good for careers and good for the enterprise because it builds a core of managers who have what I would call ‘coverage’ over a wider range of the business and its activities. In that context, IT can be an excellent background because it develops a good project delivery mentality.”

Friends First is somewhat unusual as an organisation because it has combined business executives and IT people in all projects for most of the decade. “That joint involvement means we do not have the divide between them that I know is all too common. Big projects, long projects and no choice but to work closely together have all combined to stand us in good stead.”

Cheap shot
O’Brien admits to some annoyance when he goes to conferences or other business gatherings and hears a derogatory crack at IT from the platform that raises a snigger in the audience. “I can’t help thinking ‘With an attitude like that, boy are you putting yourself and your business at a disadvantage’!” He admits also to having found something of a different style of working and management between IT and general business. “I think IT people tend to be a bit more self-sufficient and self aware in their work while others are used to being told what to do or look regularly for guidance. But of course, IT people can be head down and uncommunicative, so it’s all a question of people and styles and reinforces again the idea that breadth of experience and understanding is most important.”

There is arguably no difference between a CIO role in the public sector and the enterprise, but that gap between the understanding of the IT person or the general line of business staff is common. That is a point emphasised by Philip O’Reilly, who recently took early retirement after a decade as CIO and Assistant Secretary in the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (DAFF). He has been in nine jobs in four of the biggest departments (DAFF, Revenue, Welfare and Industry & Commerce), mostly but not always in an IT role.

“As an IT person, it certainly helps your credibility with the rest of the staff if you have actually faced an angry customer as an inspector with Revenue or Industry & Commerce!” said O’Reilly. He is keen to emphasise that movement through an organisation and different jobs, an appreciation of the rich diversity of people and the ability to rapidly assimilate a new culture are all valuable elements in the make-up- of an effective CIO. “Apart from the technical side, IT is very good in that it gives you a wonderful helicopter view across your organisation. That is a good foundation for any senior manager.”

Leader of change
O’Reilly is very much an advocate of the CIO as an innovator and leader of change. “There is always a ‘Head of ICT’ job to be done, which is minding the infrastructure, but I don’t think that is part of the CIO’s role although it may report to him or her. A clear vision of what is going to be of lasting or strategic importance is what informs a CIO’s leadership and decision making. On a daily basis that involves constant innovation to keep the organisation flexible and add value to its work and the changing user and customer requirements. What any technology strategy must do is anticipate and prepare for change, for capability that will be needed and for needs that will change. The days of long projects and long lead times are gone, so that is going to be all about building systems that are flexible.”

It is O’Reilly’s firm view that the leadership part of the CIO role means that “You really don’t wait to be asked. The job is to anticipate and to innovate, to come up with answers to the questions that have yet to be asked or that might be asked.” But a key part of doing that, he adds, is close collaboration with other leaders and the users. “People respond to ownership, to having a part in designing things and to having systems tweaked just for them. Technically, that is possible when the architecture is flexible and designed for processes that are generic and the software components are re-usable. It is then comparatively easy to tailor for the specific instance, for ease of use and happy users.”

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