accsucccio - cio career secrets

8/2/2019 AccSuccCIO - CIO Career Secrets

1/30

2010 by Dr. Jim Anderson http://www.TheAccidentalSuccessfulCIO.com Page 1

Career Secrets For CIOs:

How To Become One,How To Stay One

Ten Things That You Need To Learn That WillHelp You To Become & Stay A CIO


2/30


3/30


Table Of Contents

INTRODUCTION: HOW I LEARNED WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME A CIO ...........................4

CHAPTER 1: THINKING ABOUT THE BIG PICTURE ....................................................................6

CHAPTER 2: UNDERSTAND WHY YOU WENT TO COLLEGE ....................................................8

CHAPTER 3: DONT JUST BE A PROBLEM FINDER ....................................................................10

CHAPTER 4: SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF ...................................................................................... 12

CHAPTER 5: WATCH YOUR WORDS...............................................................................................14

CHAPTER 6: NEVER FALL IN LOVE WITH YOUR JOB ..............................................................16

CHAPTER 7: BE NICE TO EVERYONE ............................................................................................18

CHAPTER 8: START PROMOTING YOURSELF.............................................................................20

CHAPTER 9: KNOW WHEN (NOT) TO USE EMAIL......................................................................23

CHAPTER 10: LEARN HOW TO MAKE GOOD DECISIONS........................................................26

CHAPTER 11: FINAL THOUGHTS..................................................................................................... 29

IF YOU LIKED WHAT YOU JUST READ......................................................................................30


4/30


Introduction: How I Learned What It Takes To Become A CIO

Why do you want to become a CIO? If you are like most

people who work in IT, you think that you know it all.How many times has a company that you are workingfor rolled out another one of those big IT programs witha lot of fanfare only to see it eventually quietly go away afew months later having had no impact? Surely youcould do better than that

If you've already become a CIO, then you probablyalready know that there are three ugly little secrets that go along with theposition of CIO. The first is that amongst CIOs there a joke that goes like this:What does CIO stand for? Answer: Career Is Over.

The next secret is that CIOs dont last in their position very long. Recruitersreport that the average tenure for a modern CIO is between 2 and 3 years.Considering how long it takes to get to the top spot in IT, this is way too short ofa time to stay there.

The final secret about being a CIO is that it can be a very lonely position.Traditionally the CIO has not been invited to the business-planning table withthe other C-level positions (CEO, CFO, COO, etc.). Whether its because ofdifferences in vocabulary, lack of business knowledge, or just poor networkingskills, CIOs all too often find themselves left out of the game.

Whats that? You're still interested in becoming a CIO (or remaining one)? Ok,but dont come back to me and say that I didnt tell you so. Since it seems likeyou have your mind set on becoming the head of the IT department and stayingthere once your arrive, then perhaps we should have a talk about what you needto be doing right now in order to make this happen.

During my 22+ years of working in IT, I've been able to work my way upthrough the ranks to the CIO position. During my journey I have had theprivilege of working with a collection of different senior IT managers and CIOs.Ive seen them at both their best and at their worst. Ive seen golden haired

wonder-boys step into the CIO position with the rest of the company eagerlyawaiting their insights into how IT can turn a struggling company around onlyto see these new CIOs get fired a few months later for not being up to the task.


5/30


I have been a CIO myself and so I know what it takes to do the job. Im sorry toreport that there are no silver bullets no one thing that you need in order tobe able to do the job of CIO well (sorry to everyone who is half-way through anMBA program because they thought that that was the ticket to the top spot).

Instead, if you want to be an effective CIO, there are 10 things that you need tobe doing today in order to either earn the top spot or to stay in it once you getthere. No, we wont be talking about technologies you need to master, thebusiness skills you need to learn or anything like that. Yes those are important,but what well be covering is much more important and comes first.

This report outlines the lessons that Ive learned and the steps that Ive watchedfuture CIOs take in order to become successful CIOs. It is my hope that byfollowing the career secrets that I will be sharing in this report that you will beable to replicate my success for yourself. With a little luck, youll learn how to

enjoy your current IT job more while preparing yourself to eventually become(or stay!) a CIO.

Good luck and enjoy the journey!

Dr. Jim AndersonBlue Elephant Consultinghttp://www.TheAccidentalSuccessfulCIO.com


6/30


Chapter 1: Thinking About The Big Picture

Lets tackle the big question first becoming a CIO

is going to part of your career, but just what is acareer? For that matter, what is the differencebetween a job and a career? When we areworking at a job we dont really spend a lot of timethinking about this question. However, if youveever gotten laid off or fired from a job thesequestions loom large: what am I doing? Am I anygood at it? Will anyone ever hire me again?

It turns out that a job and a career are related, butthey are two very different things. A job is a position

that you take with a company. You are expected tocomplete tasks that are assigned to you. Generally, this means that you managean IT team or a group of teams and you work very hard to make them a success.A career on the other hand is a series of jobs that you take as you work towardsachieving a higher goal. Like perhaps eventually becoming a CIO.

Just exactly what your career goal may be is a very personal decision. There areno wrong answers here: lots of money, lots of power, lots of vacation time these are all valid career goals. There is no wrong answer. In fact, the onlymistake that you can make is to not have a career goal!

This was my mistake for the first 10 years or so of my IT career my vision wasvery short sighted I couldnt see beyond my current job. I had no sense of acareer. Having the company that I was working for vanish from under my feetgave me a whole new perspective. I spent a lot of time asking myself what it allmeant what was I really working towards?

In my case it turned out that it all had to do with my parents. Both of myparents were teachers and despite the fact that I had chosen a career in IT over alifetime of service as a teacher, I still had a deep desire to teach. Once I realizedthis, I was able to map this love of teaching to my IT career and I realized thatmy true career goal was to be constantly getting better at teaching people

about the IT work that I was doing customers, salespeople, and developers.They were all my students. When I realized that by becoming a CIO I would bein a position to maximize my learning and at the same time I would be able toshare my knowledge with the largest group of people, I then realized what mycareer goal was. Do you know what yours is?


7/30


Although we dont like to think about it too much, we dont have an unlimitedamount of time to reach our career goal(s). Heres a quick question for you:how long will your IT career last? This isnt meant to be a tricky question and no

complex math is required how many years did your parents work?

No need to turn to the back of the book, heres the answer. It takes 20 years forus to become adults (roughly!), we work for about 40 years, and then we spendabout 20 years in retirement. Viewed in these terms, your career easily takes upabout half of your life. Do you have a plan for how that IT career is going to go?Im going to bet that the answer is no.

Look, you can get helpful general career advice from just about anyone;however, nobody seems to have specific CIO career advice to hand out. Howabout if we take some time and talk about how to manage your IT career so that

you become wildly successful and not only become a CIO, but also stay thereonce you get the job?

Ive had the opportunity to work for six great companies including Boeing,Siemens, Alcatel, Verizon, and a handful of start-ups (remember that Internetbubble thing?). Along the way, I have observed bright, smart IT prosaccidentally doing the dumbest things to their careers. It would be a shame ifyou caused your career come to a halt and never became a CIO without realizingwhat you had done wrong.

Instead, lets assume that you want to be successful, win the admiration of your

peers, and feel peace and contentment each and every day. Oh, and eventuallybecome / stay a CIO. What are the real-world things that you need to do inorder to make this happen? Sit down, hold on, and Ill tell you


8/30


Chapter 2: Understand Why You Went To College

For many of you, college is probably a fuzzy memoryby now. What could this possibly have to do with you

becoming or staying a CIO? However, thats whereeverything started and so we need to go back tothose days and make sure that you understand whyyou took the time to go to college in the first place.

Do you knowwhy you went to college? If you arelike the 98% of everyone that goes to college, you didit either because your parents or teachers, etc. toldyou to do it or simply because all of your friendswere doing it and so you went along with it. Peopleget confused and think that they spent those 4, 5, or

6 years that it took to graduate learning a specifictool or methodology so they could get a job this is wrong!

You go to a trade school if you want to learn a skill. Electricians, carpenters,plumbers all do this and they learn what they need to know in order to go outand get a job. Somewhat amazingly, this is not what college is all about. In fact,if it was, then you would have paid way too much to go there! Give it somethought - anyone can go to a bookstore and purchase a thick book and becomereasonably good in any given skill over a weekend.

The information technology field shows this the most clearly: pick a language, a

type of database, or even an operating system and theres a 4 book waiting toteach you everything that you need to know down at your local Bordersbookstore. If this was all that college provided you with, then it wouldnt takenearly as long as it does.

The reason that you spent all that time going to school is, amazingly enough, sothat you could learn how to think. You learned how to learn you wereexposed to a whole range of ideas and topics that you previously knew nothingabout and you had to find ways to understand and apply what you were beingexposed to. Yes, specific tools are good to knowNOW; however, they wontsupport a 40-year career. Your ability to constantly learn and use new ideas will.

Problems that you will encounter when you become a CIO are not easyproblems. Instead, they are very difficult problems that have no clear solution.This means that the problem solving skills that we learned in college which werehow to take difficult problems apart, solve the pieces, and then stick it all back


9/30


together again, are exactly the types of skills that we need in order to be asuccessful CIO.

Electricians, carpenters, and plumbers do a great job of doing basically the same

job over and over again. CIOs dont have this luxury - the learning that we did incollege prepared us to be constantly exposed to new types of problems and to beable to create solutions to them on the fly.

Going to college had one other benefit. Take a moment and think about howmany people you had met in your life by the time that you had graduated fromhigh school. Im referring to those people who you had met, learned their name,and knew a little bit about who they were.

In my life, Id say that by the time that I had graduated from high school I knewmaybe between 200-300 people and that includes all of my extended family.

Im going to bet that your number cant be much larger than that it probablygreatly depends on how big your high school class was!

By going off to college for 4, 5, or 6 years you were suddenly forced to meetseveral times that many people. You met even more people if you lived in thedorms because that was a new experience every year. Each semester or quarteryou ended up in classes with different people and different professors. By thetime college was over, you had probably met between 1,000 3,000 newpeople.

In the small town that I grew up in, before I went off to college most of the

people that I would meet were pretty much like me. They looked like me,thought like me, and had the same outlook on life that I did. Once I went tocollege, this all changed. I met people from countries that I didnt even knowexisted who saw the world completely differently than I did.

Ultimately, this part of your college experience prepared you for the modernworkplace that a CIO lives in. IT department teams are made up of people fromall over who think and act in ways that are completely, dare I say, foreign tomany of us.

Your time in college at least made you understand that the world is a crazy

mixed-up place that has all types of people in it. This is knowledge that helps aCIO work with all of the people that make up a modern company. This is acritical skill that we all need in order to get anything accomplished.


10/30


Chapter 3: Dont Just Be A Problem Finder

Im not sure if there is any sort of CIO gene inour biological makeup, but I really wouldnt beall that surprised if it turned out that there is.The more IT workers that I meet, the more I amstruck by just how similar we all are.

Most of the time this is a good thing. We are allgenerally good at working with other people, wecan become the customer when we have to, weare able to resolve conflicts and issues deftly, etc. However, there is also adownside to the very things that make us good IT managers and future CIOs.

We IT workers have a fatal personality flaw we can quickly identify problems.Im sure that just like me youve both seen and done this a hundred times. Whenother people start talking and presenting new ideas or solutions to problems,our minds start to race ahead at 90 mph. Before they are done talking wevealready projected their solution six months out into the future and discovered50 ways that its not going to work out.

By itself, this skill is almost completely useless. If you step back a minute andgive it some thought, youll realize that back in the stone age its people like usthat probably caused fire to not be invented for years and years because we kept

telling the other cave people that it could cause caves to burn down.

Businesses exist to move forward and they can only do this by having andimplementing new ideas. Having a smart aleck IT worker who is alwaysshooting down ideas does nobody any good.

Some of my best friends have had very successful careers as softwareproduct testers. Their very job is to be a problem finder.

When they are given a new version of software they get right to worktrying out every bell and whistle, every user interface button and textbox, trying to find ways to make the software fail. When they find aproblem, they document it and go on to find the next problem.


11/30


The downside to this job is that if the company needs to cut costs, itsalways the software testers who get let go first. This is because they onlyfind problems they dont solve them. The company keeps those peoplewho can solve problems because it views them as being much more

valuable than problem finders.

A good way to kill your career path to becoming a CIO is to become known asthe person who always shows what is wrong with every new idea. Heres a newsflash: CIOs make problems go away!

Your career can take off like a rocket if you can learn to anticipate and solveproblems before they happen instead of just pointing them out when they showup. Too few wanna-be CIOs realize this. Just finding the problem doesnt do

anyone any good. Become a problem fixer, not a problem finder.


12/30


Chapter 4: Sweat The Small Stuff

Once upon a time when I was interviewing fora job with a start-up firm that everyone in

town was falling all over themselves to join,the HR director asked me what kind of salary Iwas looking for. I told her and she said Wow you must think very highly of yourself. Yes Idid and yes I got the job and salary that I wasasking for.

Hopefully you have a good opinion of yourself this is an important tool inorder to make sure that you have a successful CIO career. However, youve gotto ask yourself if perhaps you think just a bit too highly of yourself.

Assuming that you are not self employed, your company employs more peoplethan just you. What you might consider small stuff like time reporting,expense reports, security precautions, badge rules, etc. is the responsibility ofone or more other people in some other department. Even when you become theCIO, you still have to play by the same rules that everyone else is following.

If you decide to skip doing something, or try to shortcut the little rulesbecause you are too important to be bothered to do it the right way, then you arebasically showing disrespect to a lot of people. So what? you say, well let metell you a story

While working for a large firm I had a close friend who went on abusiness trip and ended up eating out at a very expensive restaurant oneevening. When he submitted his expense report for that trip, hisrestaurant bill exceeded what the company would pay for a meal and sothey rejected it. This really made my friend angry the way that he sawit, he was traveling for the company and so they owed it to him to pay forhis meals. He ended up having to pay for that meal out of his own pocket.

The next time that he traveled for the company, he realized that he could

pad his travel expense report just a bit an extra taxi ride, a little extrameal expense, etc. Since he felt that the company owed him for themeal from the last trip, he did this and was amazed at how easy it was todo. Since that didnt quite earn him enough money to make up for therestaurant bill, he did the same thing on his next expense report. Once


13/30


again it went undetected and he walked away with extra money in hispocket.

Im sure that you can see where this story is going my friend kept doing

this. It was easy to do and it was almost like the company had given hima raise like he felt that they should have done years ago. His padding gotlarger and larger because he kept getting away with it until the day that asharp eyed travel expense auditor caught him red-handed and he waspromptly fired.

He lost his $100,000+ / year job over the theft of what had to be no morethan a few hundred dollars. Clearly his gain wasn't worth what he endedup paying for it.

What I hope that you take away from this story is that nobody ever gets up inthe morning and says Im going to screw up my life today. Instead, we allmake a series of 1,000 small decisions each day that can lead us down a paththat we never intended to go down. Taking the time to follow the rules is oneway that you can prevent this from happening to you.

Listen to the voice of experience on this issue: taking a shortcut is never a goodidea. When you are CIO, cutting corners can potentially cause you to break lawsand you really don't want to do that. Save yourself a lot of grief and do it the

right way your CIO career will thank you for it later on.


14/30


Chapter 5: Watch Your Words

For some amazing reason, whenever you talk tosomeone about the time that they spent in high

school, they always have a strong opinion about oneor more of their English teachers. Clearly theseteachers in particular have a way of making animpression on us. Perhaps this is because we findlearning how to clearly communicate so hard to do.

Somehow after we got out of high school, we seem tohave decided that since we no longer had to spendtime diagramming sentences this meant that thingslike spelling and grammar didnt matter either.Turns out that we were wrong.

Each CIO job is different. However, at the heart of the job is the requirementthat you act as an information hub. Whether its working with the lines ofbusiness to incorporate new technologies, creating an IT strategy presentation,or simply launching a new set of internal IT tools at the next sales meeting, youspend most of your time communicating with other people in one fashion oranother.

How effectively we communicate goes a long way in determining how othersview us. Our ability to spell correctly (or perhaps to simply remember to use aspell checker) goes a long way in reassuring the people who read our material

that we know what we are talking about. Add to this mix the need to use correctgrammar and all of a sudden youve got a lot of reviewing to do before you sendthat next email or instant message.

In the 21st Century most IT teams are now spread out and there will be manypeople that you interact with that you may either never (or at least rarely) everget to see in person. Your written (and spoken) words will be all that they haveto go on as they form an impression of you. Careful attention to your spellingand grammar will be important in making sure that they are left with a positiveimpression.

Once upon a time I worked for a CIO who was a great boss, but who washorrible at communicating clearly using the written word. My heartwould drop into my shoes every time he sent me an Instant Message(IM). It would pop up on my screen and I would just stare at it unable to


15/30


understand what he was asking for because of misspelled words andatrocious grammar.

When I got one of these messages I would call my office colleagues to

come over to my cube to help me out. Wed stand around looking at themessage and taking guesses at what it could possibly mean.

Once a consensus had been reached as to what he was probably trying toask me to do, Id hesitantly type an IM message back to him that startedout If I understand what youd like me to do, then and then wait forhis response.

Id quickly get one of two replies: it could be a short yes that indicatedthat I (we) had correctly decoded his original message, or a no, thats notwhat I said reply followed by another slightly more intelligible set of

instructions.

When things ever got too confusing, Id end up having to walk down tohis office to sort things out.

Once you get your spelling and grammar usage under control, you will be readyto move on to learning how to correctly use email in order to enhance (and notdestroy) your CIO career.

One more career-saving tip is to never just press the send key when you aredone typing an email. Sit back and pretend for a moment that you are theperson who is going to receive the email and take the time to reread it. Makesure that it reads clearly and, this is important, that it gets to the point quickly!How you used to send emails (quickly) before you became CIO needs to bedifferent from how you send emails (slowly) once you are CIO.

As though making sure that you communicate clearly was not enough, it turnsout that how wordy you are is also important. I personally get between 200-300emails a day. Do you really think that I have any time to spend on an email fromyou if its too long? Too boring? Too confusing? If you make people work to

understand you (even though you are the CIO), then you are out of luck theyjust dont have the time. Keep it short and get to the point. Everyone will loveyou for doing so.


16/30


Chapter 6: Never Fall In Love With Your Job

We all seem to have some sort of love / haterelationship with our IT jobs. When things are good,

we think that its the best job in the world and whenthings arent so good, we think that wed reallyrather be doing any other job out there. This isactually a pretty normal state of affairs. However, ifthis balance gets thrown out of whack for somereason, all sorts of problems can pop up.

When you accept your CIO job, you will be enteringinto a very peculiar type of relationship. With a littleluck, you will grow to like your job the people, the place, the challenges. Ifnothing else, it will become the environment in which you live 8, 10, or 12 hours

every day and so you may feel more at home when you are at work than whenyou are actually at home!

The reason that this relationship is so weird is that its a one-way relationship -your company cannot, and will not, grow to love you -- because it cant.Sometimes you see CIOs going overboard and trying to show their companiesjust how much they love them (80 hour weeks anyone?) and yet they aremissing the point no matter how much you put into the relationship, itsalways going to be a one-way relationship.

As with relationships between people, things change over time. Some day you

may decide that you want a new relationship or the company may decide thesame thing this is the real world. Remember that all too often companies shedtheir CIOs (you!) after just a couple of years. If youve fallen in love with yourcompany or job then this breakup is going to be really rough on you.

If you need an example of how silly this can look, just think back to when one ofyour friends was in a relationship in which the other person broke up withthem. Did your friend understand that the relationship was over? Or did theythink that if they just worked at it a little bit harder they could patch things up?That never works and now you get my point.

I had a friend who went to work for a company that was making a newtype of compact off-road dirt bike. He had met some people who werealready working for this company and they told him how much fun they


17/30


were having and asked him to join them. He did and he absolutely fell inlove with both the company and his job.

It had that start-up atmosphere where everyone acts like they are part

of one big family and he kept sharing with me stories about how everyonewould pitch in to solve whatever problem popped up. It sure sounded likea big party to me. My friend was convinced that he would rise to the topof the IT department in this firm because all of his hard work would berecognized and he would be rewarded.

Well, things didnt go as planned. The company had problems makingtheir product and they missed their market window. The money slowlystarted to dry up. The day came that they needed to make some cutbacksin order to keep the company going and my friend was let go.

He didnt see this coming he was blindsided. How could the companythat he loved so much do this to him? He had given his all to thecompany, didnt it love him back?

My friend had been so dedicated to this job that he had stoppednetworking and keeping his IT skills up-to-date. When the end came, hewas caught flat-footed. He spent the next eight months out looking forhis next job.

Im not saying that you shouldnt enjoy being the CIO for a given firm. However,while you are in the relationship you need to understand that it is a one-wayrelationship.

This means that, while maybe you cant see other people (jobs), you do need tostay active on the dating scene (networking). As with most relationships, yourcurrent job will eventually come to an end. If youve spent your time wiselywhile you were in the relationship, then you will be better off for having done sowhen its over.


18/30


Chapter 7: Be Nice To Everyone

You dont have enough time each day toget everything that you need to get done

taken care of. What this means is that asCIO it is going to be all too easy tobecome angry with the people that youwork with. They are always asking youfor information, waiting for you to tellthem what to do, or holding out onproviding you with the information thatyou need.

If only there was some way that you could identify those people that you workwith who will become important in the future. If you knew this, then you could

forget about everyone else and just focus on being nice to the people who aregoing to matter to your career and your ability to get work done.

However, there is a problem there is no reliable way to determine just who theimportant people are. What this means is that you need to be nice to everyone.Yes, this is an effort and at times it can be very, very frustrating. It can seem asthough being nice to everyone is just not worth the effort. If you think this, thenyoure wrong.

I was working for a large European equipment manufacturer that hadtwo executives who were both racing up the corporate ladder. One hadbecome the Sales VP, and the other had become the Marketing VP. Whatmade this so fascinating to watch was the simple fact that they couldntstand each other. One day it became time to pick a new CEO for the firmand the VP of Sales got the position.

One of the first things that he did was to go to the marketing VP and sayHey look, this Internet thing looks like its really going to take off.Would you be willing to lead the team that will tackle this new market?Of course the Marketing VP was thrilled and said yes.

The only thing that the new CEO asked from the Marketing VP was thathe commit to the sales numbers that he would bring in. The MarketingVP quickly read some articles on how fast the Internet was growing and


19/30


he committed to capturing 2% of the total market within a year howhard could that be to do?

The CEO gave the Marketing VP a blank check to get started and he spent

like there was no tomorrow. Everyone in the firm who had sided with theMarketing VP during his rise in the firm flocked to his side in order to bepart of this new team. They got beautiful new office furniture, got tocreate their very own processes (because of course they were operatingon Internet time), etc.

A year came and went and this new Internet team completely missedtheir sales numbers. It turns out that selling Internet equipment wasunlike the companys core business and nobody had figured out how todo it well.

When the end of the year was up, the CEO came to the VP and told himthat since he had not been able to meet the sales figures that he hadpromised that he could, he was fired. In fact, the CEO fired the entireInternet product team that the VP had set up.

The rest of us were stunned at the brilliance of what had just happened:in one clever move, the CEO had allowed everyone who had ever opposedhim during his rise to the top to gather together into a single group andthen he had allowed them to position themselves to fail, and when theydid he got rid of the entire group. Now thats holding a grudge!

A final note. I have worked for two companies in which the person whoeventually became the CIO started out in a lab and worked his way up to thetop. Needless to say, when he became CIO there were many people who werekicking themselves for not treating him with more respect before he became theCIO...


20/30


Chapter 8: Start Promoting Yourself

What motivates a CIO the most? I canalmost hear you saying money, and,

yeah, money is something that we all like.The problem with money (as though therecould be a problem with money), is thatthe kick that we get from getting it fadesquickly. Basically we spend it and thenforget it!

If you take the time to dig a little deeper,then youll discover that what all ITworkers really want is recognition for all of the good work that they do. CIOs areno different. The problem with getting what we really want is that we all suffer

from a fatal personality flaw when it comes to talking about the work that we do.

Our thinking goes something like this: if I create really clever IT designs,project implementations, and beautiful customer presentations, etc, everyonewill realize how important I am and will love me for it. Sorry, life does notwork this way.

The flaw in our thinking is that it turns out that if we do good work and donttell anyone about it, then everyone else is just going to walk all over us even ifwe're the CIO. How many Hollywood movies have you seen where the big bossis supported by the hard working (but overlooked) administrative assistant who

does amazing things in order to make sure that his / her boss always has whatthey need, when they need it?

We in IT are that assistant we do good work, but all too often we just dont getrecognized for it. When you become CIO, the same thing is going to happen toyou if you let it.

A few years ago I was working in a small, innovative part of a very largefirm. We had been working on launching a novel new IT service offering

product and had just about landed our first customer a whopping$100M multi-year opportunity.

As is the case in all large firms, a deal of this size needed to be takenupstairs in order to get approval. When this was done, the folks upstairs


21/30


suddenly became very aware of my little remote team. They took a closelook at what we were trying to do and the deal that we had almost landed.They decided that the liability risk that this new product posed to thecompany far outweighed any potential profit and so not only did they

squash the deal, but they also notified us that our department was goingaway. This meant that I had 30 days to find another job in the companyor I was out the door.

Just to set the scene for you: this was at the tail end of the dot.comimplosion and there really werent a lot of other jobs out there. Bothmyself and one of my IT manager colleagues were stunned when weheard the news that we were being shut down. My friend immediatelywent into a deep blue funk. I was upset, but I also knew that I needed toget moving if I wanted to have any chance of finding another position inthe company.

Over the next 30 days I worked the phones like a day-trader trying totrack down a hot tip. I came to know just about everyone in thecompanys HR department by first name. My friend on the other hand,moped around for awhile and then spent day after day working on hisresume to get it just perfect.

I had just about reached the end of my 30-day grace period (the companyhad a hiring freeze going on at the same time, wouldnt you know it!)when I got a lucky break. I pretty much forced my way into an IT vicepresidents office when I found out that he was responsible for staffing a

new project. It turns out that he had heard of me because my team hadpresented our new product to his old group as we were trying to line upthe internal departments to support the rollout of the new IT product.

I had taken the time to send him a copy of the slides that I had createdfor that presentation and I had even customized them for him so that hecould use them to ask for more headcount in order to support theproduct that he was getting ready to launch.

Since he had had an opportunity to see me present my ideas and becauseI had followed up with customized material to help him out, he not only

remembered me, but he also knew that I did good work.

In the end I got the job on the 31st day after I was notified that I wasbeing let go how I got to stick around for that last day is a whole storyby itself. My friend who just couldnt get motivated ended up having to


22/30


pack up his stuff and leave. Last I had heard he was working at a callcenter and was thinking about going back to school definitely not thecareer path that he had wanted.

What saved me was that I had taken the time to communicate to others that Idid good work and was a valuable resource. This is a very tricky thing to do dotoo much of it and youll be seen as bragging, do too little and you just wont beseen. Even as a CIO this is going to be an important thing for you to be doing.

So what are we to do about this problem? You need to be able to communicateyour ideas and solutions in order for people to realize your unique value. Thisrequires high quality writing, drawing, and speaking skills.

Heres a quiz for you: what are the three most valuable workplace tools for CIO?Answer: Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft Excel!

Presenting the work that youve done is a critical career skill. If you dont feel asthough you are comfortable standing up in front of a group of people andspeaking to them, then you need to develop this skill.

Getting started on fixing this problem is actually pretty easy: visit aToastmasters meeting in your area (they are everywhere http://www.toastmasters.org) and learn the ability to do a good job of speakingin public. This one action can really help your career.


23/30


Chapter 9: Know When (Not) To Use Email

I believe that the #1 skill that every CIOmust have is the ability to communicate

well. This all stems from my belief thatthe heart of being a CIO is being a goodcommunications hub. The better thatyou are at taking in information andthen rapidly and clearly delivering it tothe correct other parties, the better CIOyoull be.

These days I see too many CIOs who live and die by email. They love the stuff:you can send the same email to multiple people at the same time, you can saveevery email that youve ever gotten, search it, and even whip it out years later in

order to make some obscure point. However, its just a tool and when its usedbadly, bad things can happen.

During one of my IT jobs I pretty much had everyone at the companyconvinced that I could walk on water because of my amazingcommunication skills.

Case in point: one Friday afternoon I was talking with my developmentteam and checking with them in order to make sure that theyd be

working over the weekend in order to deliver the updated version of thesoftware product that a Senior Vice President had asked for.

You can imagine my shock when I learned that they werent going to beworking over the weekend (who did they think they were?) because theyhad not yet received the requirements that they needed for the newfeature that was the sole reason for the new version of the product.

I asked them why they didnt have the requirements and they said thatthey had no idea they had sent countless emails to the requirementsteam and nothing had happened. I told them that I would use my IT

manager skills and see what I could do.

I went back to my office and picked up my phone and made a call to thehead of the requirements team. Where are my requirements? I asked.She said that her team couldnt create the requirements because they had


24/30


no funding to do so. They had been sending emails requesting thefunding to the finance department, but had not heard anything back. Iasked her if she got funding if she could get the requirements done beforethe weekend, she said yes.

I picked up my phone once again and called the head of the financedepartment. I explained that I needed some requirements, but that therequirements team needed funding to complete the requirements. Hetold me that nobody had asked him for funding and that it would be noproblem. I asked if he could send out an email to the requirements teamtelling them this and he agreed.

To make a long story just a bit shorter, the requirements team got theirfunding, the development team got their requirements, and the SeniorVice President got his updated product on time. When all was said and

done my boss came to me and said, I didnt think that this was evergoing to happen, how did you do it? I looked at him straight in the eyesand said I have magical powers.

In the end, email is a very 21st Century curse. Its value has almost beenoverwhelmed by abuse. Im not even talking about spam; rather Im referring tothe volume of workplace email that you have to pick your way through just touncover the important stuff. Use it when you have to, but dont over use it.

What too many CIOs forget is that these days you have 5 different ways to get incontact with people: (1) phone, (2) voicemail, (3) email, (4) Instant Messaging,and (5) an in-person visit. Different techniques are appropriate for differentsituations. When you become the CIO, learn to pick the right method for themessage.

Oh, and one more career tip: emails live forever! There are a bunch of folks atEnron who forgot this and now all of their emails are available on the web.Never, ever, send an email when you are angry at someone. It will haunt yourcareer forever.

Yes, you can write the email when you are angry, but dont fill in the To: line this way if you accidentally hit the send button it wont go anywhere. Instead,write the email and then file it. Later on, preferably the next day, re-read it witha cool head and make a decision as to if you are willing to be associated with thisemail forever.


25/30


Just in case you think that you think that can side-step this whole emails liveforever thing by firing off your angry messages using an Instant Messagingtool, dont. Instant Messages now gets recorded and they can live forever also.

Think before you click Send.


26/30


Chapter 10: Learn How To Make Good Decisions

CIOs hate to be wrong. This is one

reason that we are often slow tomake the big decisions that willhave a major impact on our ITdepartment. We convince ourselvesthat we arent really putting offmaking a decision, were justwaiting for all of the informationthat we need in order to make thedecision to become available. Ofcourse, all of this information willnever be available and so we are

really just fooling ourselves.

It turns out that the ability to make decisions without having all of the facts is acritical CIO skill. This is exactly the type of executive skill that will get yourecognized and, with a little luck, promoted. However, you have to be carefulbecause you need to be able to make therightdecision quickly making awrong decision is of no help to anyone.

It turns out that the folks who work in the financial markets have been facingthis very problem for years. They want to invest in stocks that are going toincrease in value and avoid sinking their money into stocks whose value is going

to decrease. How did they solve their rapid decision making problem?

Simple, they created something called options that allow investors to purchasethe right, but not the obligation, to either buy or sell a stock at a given price atsome time in the future. This concept is exactly what CIOs need in order to helpto hedge our bets.

CIOs have a similar tool that we can use. The fancy name for it is realoptions analysis. This approach to decision making allows us to value our ITdecisions in a new way.

The key to real options is to divide every decision up into multiple smallerdecisions. This way allows you to analyze the implications to your department ateach step along the way.


27/30


This will allow you to avoid committing to something before you absolutely haveto. What this means is that youll actually have more (and better) information atevery step so that youll have a much better chance of making the right decisionevery time.

In the late 1990s I was working as an IT manager for a very smallsoftware startup company. We found ourselves in a bind. Our existingproduct had been very successful; however, it had just about run itscourse.

It was time to create a new product the issue was what to create? Wewere faced with trying to decide between two different directions.

We could create a product that would simplify the configuration of theDSL equipment that telephone companies were installing to handle therising number of people who wanted to access the Internet or we couldsimplify the configuration of the wireless gear that was being installed tohandle the growing number of cell phones that were being used.

Sure I had market studies for both areas; however, they pretty much saidthe same thing they had the potential for unlimited growth. A decisionneeded to be made soon because the big industry trade show was comingup and we needed to roll out whatever product we selected at that show.

I was stuck I needed to make a bet-the-company decision and I had noclear way to tell which direction we should go. I had recently heard aboutthe real options approach to decision making and so I sat down andbroke down what the company was going to have to do in order to createa new product.

It turned out that the no matter which direction we decided to go in, thenew product would have a common set of features. I had the designersstart to work on those features first. In all honesty, I was just buyingmyself some more time.

While they were doing that and I was running around tearing my hairout, one of our existing customers came to us and said that they wererunning into problems trying to configure the wireless equipment thatthey had bought from two different vendors. Could we help them out by


28/30


creating a product that would make all of their wireless gear look thesame to them?

Needless to say, we said yes. We decided to create the wireless product

and we never looked back. Two firms that we were competing with madethe other decision and went after the DSL market. They did very well fora short time and then faded away forever as that market dried up. Wewent on to have yet another successful product.

The ability to quickly make good decisions is a skill that will serve every CIOwell. Getting over the paralysis that strikes so many of us and prevents us frommaking a decision when we dont have all of the information is the key. Knowinghow to use the real options technique can help you get recognized for your

ability to quickly make good decisions.


29/30


Chapter 11: Final Thoughts

Every CIO wants the samething: for all of the time and

effort that they spend on theirIT department to really meansomething. This can bemeasured in a number ofdifferent ways, but it all comesdown to one thing: they want tohave a winning department thathelps the company to movefaster and become more successful.

In order for this to happen, you need to be there to guide your department as it

grows up. This means that you are going have to find ways to make sure thatyou have a successful CIO career. The responsibility for your success does not liein the hands of the CEO, the board of directors, lady luck or any one of a dozenother out of your hands forces. Instead, you are in control of how things turnout.

Going forward, your value will be determined by how well you can help yourcompany solve its problems. In order to do this you have a lot of learning to doas you grow to understand how it runs its business both today and tomorrow.

I have shared a few ways that you can make sure that your career is a success.

The choice is yours: how do you want your CIO career to turn out? If you takemy advice and you decide that you want to have a great CIO career, then youwill need to continue to study and learn, seek new work challenges, meet andhelp new people, and look for tough problems to solve. Everything changes never, ever, stand still!

Good Luck!

- Dr. Jim AndersonThe Accidental Successful CIO Blog

http://www.TheAccidentalSuccessfulCIO.com


30/30

If You Liked What You Just Read

Do you feel that your IT department could be more successful if only you knewhow to find out more about what your internal customers wanted or what your

IT staff need? Or are your IT processes a mess: wrong products, missedschedules, and unhappy or (even worse) disinterested customers?

In the past, the Information Technology (IT) department was left along and wasonly noticed if something stopped working (like email!) However, in the 21stCentury IT has become a critical part of how every business competes. Theproblem is that very few firms have figured out how to evolve from treating ITas a simple cost center to using it as a competitive advantage.

Dr. Jim Anderson has spent over 20 years consulting with a wide variety ofIT firms from start-ups to large multinationals. His insights into the IT

leadership needed to combine the separate worlds of business and IT strategyoffers hope to IT management teams everywhere who are struggling with thischallenge. Dr. Anderson offers his insights and guidance to Blue ElephantConsulting customers on how to get business and the IT groups to worktogether in the following programs:

Discovering The Secret Of How To Align Business & IT Knowing Where You Are Going: Using Balanced Scorecards For IT Staying On Track: How To Successfully Execute Your IT Strategy Getting A Seat At The Table: Integrating IT Into Business Processes

Contact Blue Elephant Consulting today for a free consultation call in order tofind out how our IT consulting services can help to make your IT departmentmore effective.

Blue Elephant Consulting:Better Business Communication Skills For IT People & Products

Providing Consulting, Coaching, and Training ForCIOs & Their Teamshttp://www.BlueElephantConsulting.com

accsucccio - cio career secrets

Documents