The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges.

A few months ago, I aksed a question on LinkedIn about the role of the CIO (read the original question & responses):

Will the CIO role change in the next 5 years? If so, how…and why?

Quite a few folks responded with some excellent points. I’ve been ruminating on this question (and the answers) and finally realized that I may have asked the wrong question.   Why?  Because organizations want to be more nimble. Users want to be able to do more with the IT assets.  The ‘cloud’ is growing rapidly.

I think the better question to ask is:

How will IT’s role change in the next 5 years? Can current IT groups and CIO’s provide the value that organizations need?

Find the answer to how IT will change in the coming years and the CIO’s role will be clearer.

The Future of IT

I’m not an expert nor am I a ‘futurist’.  That said, I’m going to make a few wild guesses here on the future if IT.

The big IT group of today goes away.  No longer will we see large IT groups with tons of Developers, Project Managers, Network Security, Database Administrators, IT Operations, Desktop support, etc etc.  The IT group will splinter into much smaller groups more closely aligned with the organization.

Instead, I think we’ll see IT Groups split into multiple smaller groups.  There will still need to be desktop support and database administrators and all the other things that fall within IT operations.   That said, why wouldn’t IT operations move into other ‘operations’ areas.   Is IT operations really that much different than facilities management?  They both have to keep things running don’t they? Should IT to be split into an operational team and project team and have them report into different reporting structures.

Most of the real activity will happen around the business analysts and project management teams.   Will we see the CIO migrate into a Chief Project Officer and manage all aspects of business analysis, projects and technology strategy?  Will the IT operations team be managed just like any other part of an organizations facilities are?

Conjecture and Hyperbole

While the statements above are just wild conjecture during a bought of stream of consciousness writing, I think there are some good things to think about there.  Have you taken a second to think about the future of IT and the role of the CIO in your organization?

The New CIO will need to step back and revisit the IT group to see if the organization is delivering the value it should deliver to the organization. Should IT operations be your focus or should it be on analyzing the business requirements for new IT projects?  Should you continue to pour money into legacy systems or make a clean break and move to more agile systems?

Many of you may not agree with me…but that’s the whole point of this post.  Is the Future of IT and that of the CIO certain?  Do we know that we have a valuable place in the future of organizations in our current form?

The New CIO has to look five to ten years down the road to see where you and your IT staff will be.  If you can’t see a clear picture of yourself and your team helping the organization, perhaps you need to start working to defog that future.

Join me next week for another article in The New CIO series.

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges.

Do you know the full capabilities of your team?

Sure…you know what their resume’s said.  You think you know their backgrounds and their experience…but do you really know your team?

Do you have a developer who, in their free time, is extremely active in the blogosphere and the social media world?  Do you have a project manager who really wants to make a lateral move into service management?

Do you really know your team?  If you don’t, you may be leaving a lot of talent, skills and passion on the table.

Dangers of Hidden Talent

Leaving talent untapped is unforgivable to me and should be unacceptable to you. We live in a world where we’re expected to do more with less and rely more heavily on people’s knowledge & skills to make our businesses work.

Knowing this is the case, why do we hire a person, train them (do you train your people?) and then forget about them?  Why do we ignore the idea of talent management and human capital? Read more of my thoughts on those topics here and here and if you’re looking for a great book on Talent & Competitive Advantage, check out Talent : Making People Your Competitive Advantage (amazon affiliate link) and/or Talent on Demand: Managing Talent in an Age of Uncertainty (amazon affiliate link).  Both of those books are excellent.

Do you have regular meetings with your team?  Do you talk about their careers?  Do you know that your star programmer is a widely read blogger?  Can you use the talent and passion of that programmer to more than just develop the next application?

Hidden talent doesn’t just sit within your front-line teams.  Did you know that your Director of Technical Support is working on her Masters of Fine Art in Creative Writing?  Are there things she can do to provide more value to the organization than just leading the service desk?

Hidden talent is hidden profit, hidden revenue and hidden advantage.  Hidden talent can also be the death of your team if it isn’t uncovered.

Uncovering Hidden Talent

Do you know what drives each of your team members? What really gets them excited in the morning?  I’d bet there are a few people on your team that aren’t that happy in their current role and who are looking for something else to do.  Rather than lose them to another company, why not help them find something more interesting within your team and/or organization?

What can you do to help them become happier and more engaged? Could you get your programmer / blogger to work on more projects where he can use his writing skills?  What could your Tech Support Director provide to the organization now that you know she’s extremely interested in creative writing?

Of course you can’t make everyone 100% happy all the time.  People still have jobs to do…but if you take some time to talk with your team about the career ambitions and do what you can to help them reach their goals, you’ll be amazed at the response you’ll receive from them.

What can you do to uncover hidden talent?  Simple…talk to your team.  I mean really talk.  Try to understand their aspirations and what drives them.  Look for their hidden passions & skills.  Work with your team to uncover the hidden talents and you’ll see new vigor from your team.

Finding the Talent – A New CIO skill

So…time to add one more skillset to The New CIO’s job requirements…that of Talent Miner.  Of course, this role can be fulfilled by any member of the IT staff (and anyone else in the organization), but as the top dog in IT you’ve got to lead people in this area.

The New CIO needs to get things done with the resources given to them…but those resources might be able to provide  more value than originally thought…if you look for the hidden talent. “Doing more with less” is the mantra these days…find those folks on your team who are passionate about something and find ways to let them bring that passion to their job.

Uncover the hidden talent within your team/organization and watch the growth that occurs.  Fail to uncover that talent and you’ll fail to reach the potential of your people and your team.

Join me next week for another article in The New CIO series.

Social change takes more than social media by Ivan Booth on the Rootwork Blog (via Beth Kanter’s Blog)

KISS: The Difference Between Strategy and Tactics – and Why It Matters by B.L. Ochman’s blog on B.L. Ochman’s WhatsNextBlog

Whom to Pay is More Important than How Much or How by Claudio Fernández-Aráoz on HarvardBusiness.org

The Freemium Company LifeCycle Challenge by Mark Cuban on blog maverick

Why You Need to Fail Peter Bregman on HarvardBusiness.org

Agile or Not Agile by Ed Gaeta on UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley

Writing Complete User Stories on Tyner Blain

Open Source is Infiltrating the Enterprise by James Turner on O’Reilly Radar – Insight

Forget Social Media ROI, What About Marketing Accountability? by Jacob Morgan: on Marketing Profs Daily Fix

Think like a general manager by Tim Walker on Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

Community is a Characteristic of a Great Working Environment by Wally Bock on Three Star Leadership Blog

The Pendulum Swings (Slowly): An IT Tuesday CCrit by Steve Levy on No Secret

Can “Best In Class” Culture Make HR a Revenue Center? by Kris Dunn on The HR Capitalist

“Don’t Try” – Charles Bukowski’s Advice to Creators by AMy Harrison on Lateral Action

Ten Questions Every Leader Ought to Be Asking by Lisa Haneberg on Management Craft

The Impact of Social Media on Branding by John Moore on Random Thoughts of a Boston-based CTO: John Moore’s Weblog

Enterprise 2.0: Culture Is as Culture Does by Hutch Carpenter on I’m Not Actually a Geek

Empowering Leaders: Hand Over Your Keys on Mountain State University LeaderTalk

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges.

Today’s CIO is having a tough time. They’re being asked to do more with less.  Budgets are being slashed.  Projects are being canceled.  Tough times indeed.

What can the CIO do to make it through?  Well…many are working their staffs harder and longer.  Because, you know its time to do more with less, right?

Wrong.  Well…actually it is right…but Doing More with Less doesn’t mean you’ve got to cut your staff to the core, work them to death and ignore their personal development.

So what can The New CIO do to keep the IT staff happy, engaged and working hard?

First, understand the type of people that seek out careers in IT. Then understand what drives them.  Once you understand what drives them, give them the opportunity to work on those things that excite them.  Maybe your IT Operations guru really wants to be developer…find a way to make that happen. If your technical support lead wants to move into project management, find a way to let her work her way into a new role.

Keep focusing on personal development, listen to your team and lead your team. Do these things and you’ll have a happy & engaged IT staff who will work hard for you in good times and harder for you in the bad times.

Let’s take a look at what drives IT professionals (and perhaps many other non-IT folk).

Dreams

Many IT professionals are inquisitive and love the idea of their job.  They got into IT because they love technology and they love finding creative ways to solve problems.

Then…they get a job in ‘the real world’ where they are asked to ‘do more with less’ and worked harder then ever.  For the most part, these IT pro’s are happy working hard. They like their jobs.  They like a challenge so they do whatever it takes.  Until they realize that they aren’t appreciated.

The IT employee (and group) takes a beating from the organization when things go wrong.   The email server crashes?  You hear things like ‘those IT guys can’t do anything right’. People within the organization can’t understand why it takes so long to get anything done in IT.  They don’t realize that the IT staff is way understaffed and overworked…those things don’t cross their mind.

The IT Pro wants to do the best they can but for various reasons (overworked, stressed out, disengaged, etc) they can’t.

Disappointment

IT folk are a fickle lot.   When they feel under-appreciated (or not at all), they can get defensive and morose.  It doesn’t take long for a happy IT professional to be disappointed.

The dreams of the ‘fun’ they thought they’d have while doing what they love soon turns into a nightmare of disappointment.  They don’t feel as though they get to have any ‘fun’ because they’re so busy doing more with less.

The IT Pro is disappointed.  They are struggling to keep up with current technology.  They have to sneak some time to try to pick up new technology.  They buy books at the bookstore and try to learn new programming languages.  They try to keep up…but without a strong focus on personal development from IT leadership, the IT Pro is left alone to toil on their own.

Disengagement

Disappointment inevitably leads to Disengagement.

The IT professional has worked themselves till they are bone tired.  They don’t feel appreciated by the organization.  They feel overworked and underpaid (even though they make decent money). The IT professional has put their heart and soul into their job and, in their eyes, they’ve received nothing for their effort other than a big ol’ shiny turd landing on their desk.

Now…you’ve got a highly trained & extremely technical IT professional who’s heart isn’t in their work. They don’t feel loved.     They feel overlooked, overworked and tired.  They are on the verge of disengaging from their job…and that isn’t good.

What can The New CIO do to make a difference?

First, understand your staff.  Understand what drives them and what excites them.  Then, let them spend some time doing just that.  Push personal development & training as a top priority. Follow Google’s example of letting their folks work on personal projects for a percentage of the time.  Let your team pick up new technologies and see what they can do.  Don’t be afraid to sniff around the open source world for your next big platform or project.   If you’ve got to cut costs and projects, look at the open source world as a way to cut platform costs and let your team loose on the challenge of integrating open source into the enterprise.

Second, communicate, communicate, communicate. Oh…and don’t stop communicating. Communicate to the top of the pyramid and communicate even more to the individual contributors.    Talk about what’s being worked now and what’s being planned.  Talk about the successes and failures. Discuss your plans for the short- and long-term.  In other words…talk to your team and the organization constantly. Tell them what you are thinking…be open and honest and you’ll get some great feedback…if you listen.

On that note, the Third thing The New CIO has to do is Listen.   I capitalized that on purpose BTW.  Listening is a skill that must live within The New CIO.  You’ve got to listen to your team’s needs and to the organization’s needs.   Work on your listening skills and not just the skill to hear what people are saying…you’ve got to listen intently to what your team members & the organization are not saying.  You’ve got to understand the real issues at hand…not just what comes out of someone’s mouth.

Fourth, The New CIO must understand the business.  Truly understand the business.  What does this have to do with keeping your team engaged?  Lots.  It’s hard to provide technology for an organization if you don’t understand what the organization does.  Understanding the business, and communicating that understanding to your team, will help you craft your vision and strategy for technology services.   By understanding the business and building the information technology strategy for the organization, you and your team will have a full understanding of why things are being done and where you are headed.

Lastly, The New CIO has to lead. Leadership is a key factor for keeping your team engaged. There’s nothing worse than a CIO (or any manager) who can’t make a decision and/or back their team up.  Leadership is more than ‘being in charge’…it means standing up for your staff when things are tough.  It also means that The New CIO is the person in the organization leading the charge to find better, cheaper and faster ways to get things done.

Conclusion

The New CIO has a lot on their plate.  In addition to the old standards of running technology teams, setting strategy and keeping the lights on, The New CIO has to focus on the softer skills.  Selecting the right people and keeping those people engaged in their work is a difficult job but must be at the top of the list of priorities for The New CIO.

The mantra today is ‘do more with less’…..don’t let that creep into your mind when it comes to your people.  Keep developing them, keep them happy and you’ll be amazed at how much an engaged IT team can do even in the tough times.  Keeping them engaged during the times of ‘less’ will provide an amazing advantage when the ‘good’ times come back around…you keep your team happy today and watch the exponential increase in output when the budgets come back.

Join me next Thursday for a new edition of The New CIO where I’ll be talking about the chasm between Strategy & Tactics and what we can do to close the gap.

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The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges.

Ahhh…Social Media.  THE hot topic these days (and for some time to come I think).

There’s no arguing that the use of social media is a valid and necessary way to reach out and engage your community, but how does the use of these tools affect the IT organization, IT leadership and the CIO?

Social Media can cause a lot of headache’s for IT but with The New CIO in place, those headaches can be lessened by embracing the community (externally and internally).  Embracing the community is actually much easier than keeping that community at arms length or worse…ignore the communities.

Why is Social Media important to The New CIO?

Simple…it’s another tool to step into the conversation.  If you don’t know what that statement means, go read The Cluetrain Manifesto.  If you aren’t in the conversation, you can’t hear what people are saying. Helping an organization listen should be one of the top priorities for The New CIO.

To listen, the organization has to have their ears open and must be fully engaged with their community.  In order to engage, The New CIO must provide a means to allow the organization to embrace the community…that might mean rethinking security regulations to provide more access for employees or building velvet rope social networks to draw in the community.

Social Media in the Enterprise requires a mindshift from one of closed architecture to a bit more of an open one.  Gone are the days of closed systems and keeping your clients and community at arms length….today you’ve got to reach out and embrace those communities.  To do that, you’ve got allow Social media platforms into your organization while also keeping an eye on security….but more importantly, The New CIO has to understand the power of social tools to embrace both external and internal communities.

Challenges of Social Media in the Enterprise

There are many stands to take against Social Media in the Enterprise.  There’s the IT security argument and the personal information protection arguments…but are these really viable arguments? I don’t think they are…as long as your IT security team are doing their jobs in the first place.

Of course, there are real challenges to overcome for The New CIO. Topics like personal information protection and protecting intellectual property are valid but can be overcome with reasonable controls and guidance.  That said, you’ve got to allow people to be themselves too…don’t lock down security on your IT systems so much that it hampers your users’ abilities to use Social Media tools.

Integration is a key challenge for IT groups. How do you securely integrate a SaaS platform for social networking?  Companies like Ripple6 are doing some great things in this space but I’m not sure how far into the enterprise these systems really can go.   Some organizations are providing internal platforms that provide internal communities to organizations.  An example of this type of technology is Newsgator’s Social Sites which turns Sharepoint into a Facebook-like platform that makes it easy for people across the enterprise to find others with similar interests and share knowledge.

Systems that allow your organization to connect internally and externally will be the smart play. Are there any systems that seamlessly provide internal communities & external communities together?  I’m not sure…but if not, there should be.

Don’t just embrace – connect

How cool would it be to have a fully secured platform that provided similar functionality as Facebook and provides your internal users with the ability to connect with each other and with external users.  Today this is possible by using separate tools like Facebook & Twitter…but what if you could bring the conversation to your website directly?  What if your ‘corporate’ website changes from being a place to yell about your products to being a place where discussions happen.  Jeremiah Owyang has a great post on this very topic.

Gone are the days of static websites with marketing material…we’re moving into the days of interaction and engagement directly on the corporate web presence.  The New CIO will need to play a key role in this move toward the mixture of internal and external audiences by understanding the technology, security, marketing and social implications.

Engaging your customers is here to stay…whether you call it ‘using social media’, marketing or PR, you’ll need to find a way to embrace your customers and your employees. The New CIO must find a way to allow internal and external communities to co-exist while also keeping IT security as high as possible.

The challenge for The New CIO is to find a way to provide the engagement that Social Media platforms and tools provide while also protecting intellectual property, personal information and the IT infrastructure.

What can The New CIO do today?

Not many organizations are ready to move full-bore into the world of Social Media and very few are ready to step in as far as I think they should.  Many organizations don’t understand what it means to engage and listen to their communities…even after 10 years of talking about joining the conversation.

One way The New CIO can help organizations move closer to the community by providing leadership and guidance on embracing the internal community first.  This is a much less risky move for most organizations because it removes many of the security and intellectual property arguments from the table.  Taking this first step into the world of social media can open up a lot of avenues for collaboration and communication within the organization and can help make people more comfortable with the idea.

This doesn’t have to be an expensive proposition either.   If your organization is comfortable with LAMP, Grab Wordpress MU and setup an internal blogging network. Let every employee have a blog…let them talk and help the organization listen to them. I’d be the HR group would love to have the ability to hear what the people are saying.  Even better…put BuddyPress on that same box and start building an internal social network.  If you are a Sharepoint shop, you’ve already got some functionality for blogging and collaboration in the MOSS 2007 system.

Do the internal pilot and help people understand the power of community…then you’ll start seeing people clamoring for a way to embrace the external community.  Once that happens, you’ll be on a fun ride trying to connect your internal and external communities.  It will be a challenge…but one worth hitting head on.

Check back next week when I talk about The New CIO and the challenge of keeping IT employees engaged and employed.

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The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges.

It’s fitting that my 400th post is my first The New CIO article. I’ve been ruminating on writing a weekly post/article but hadn’t really sat down to plan it out. I think I’ve got a good plan now and am going to jump in and see where it leads.

The New CIO

What do I mean by The New CIO?  The role of Chief Information Officer today is much different than it was just a few years ago and the role in the coming years will change even more.

No longer is the CIO just the main technologist for the organization.  The CIO is a leader who has a strong technology background but also understands the worlds of marketing, finance, social media, sales and everything else an organization does.

The New CIO must be as comfortable talking about building the brand as they are talking bits and bytes.  The New CIO must be able to help craft strategy as well as tactical plans for implementing that strategy.

Strengths of The New CIO

The idea that The New CIO needs to be business savvy isn’t a new one.  People have been screaming about this for years.  The CIO and IT group must get closer to the business. The New CIO must be much more than just a technology person who’s business ’savvy’ though.  She must be able to sit down and discuss marketing strategy with the marketing group, sales strategy with the sales group and then keep on top of all things technology withing the organization.

The New CIO must understand the new world of technology. Forget the old days of closed systems.  Tomorrow’s systems and platforms will be open and transparent.  The New CIO will need to understand Social Media and its implications to the Enterprise. Enterprise 2.0, 3.0 and beyond will be the future of IT shops and the CIO must be in front of this.

Tomorrow’s organizations need a strong leader in the CIO role to help integrate technology and processes from many different vendors to do many different things.  Gone are the days when a CIO can choose to be fully ‘.NET shop’ or ‘java shop’ and close their mind to all other systems/platforms.

To provide the requisite service to tomorrow’s organization, The New CIO has to be a strong leader, great communicator, excellent thinker and strategist. Above all else, tomorrow’s CIO must understand that their role is to help the organization execute on their strategy. It can no longer be about implementing and managing the ‘cool’ technology..the role of IT is about helping the organization grow.

Who is The New CIO?

The New CIO will come from the people who have successfully integrated technology and business in their career. I think we’ll see people moving into the CIO role who’ve worked in many different areas of the organization but who strong IT backgrounds.   That person with the very broad background will be The New CIO.

What’s Next in this series?

As mentioned, this is first article in a weekly series of articles that I’ll be releasing every Thursday.    Check back next week when I talk about Social Media, The Enterprise and the role of the CIO.

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I’ve been thinking about writing a weekly article and finally found a topic that I think lends itself well to this approach.

I’m planning on writing about ‘The New CIO” and covering topics that CIO’s today (and tomorrow) need to be thinking about, planning for, and doing to meet the needs of the organization in the coming months and years.

The New CIO not only has to focus on technology issues but must also focus on business strategy and marketing.  All areas of the business using technology extensively these days…and with Social Media getting bigger and bigger, The New CIO has to figure out how to allow the business to move into the bold new world of transparency while also providing security and usefulness.

I’m working on the first real “The New CIO” article to be published later this week…look for more.  If you have any ideas that you think need to be covered in this new series, or if you’d like to write an artcile yourself, let me know!

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Tracie and I spent Good Friday at the Dallas Arboretum (jump over to my photoblog – OneFour Photography – for some photos).  The trip was enjoyable and relaxing….we spent a few hours roaming around taking photos and enjoying the scenery.

While there, I noticed quite a few other folks taking photos….some were composing their shots well while others were pointing and shooting.  Two gentleman caught my attention more than most.

One gentleman had all the right tools.  He was walking around with a nice tripod, Canon EOS 40D DSLR and a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L lens.  With this setup, I would automatically assume that this gentleman would set the tripod up, find a nice flower or scene to shoot, compose the shot and then shoot.  Instead, he would move the tripod, look through the camera eyepiece, take a shot, move the tripod to another area, look through the eyepiece, shoot, etc etc.

The second gentleman had a Canon Powershot G10 (a point-and-shoot).  He would spend minutes looking at the flowers and picking out ‘just the right one’ and then spend a few more minutes composing and taking the photograph.

Both men continued their shooting throughout the arboretum.  The first man never stopped to think about his shot or take the time to compose a shot.  The second man took minutes to compose and take his photographs.

I talk about these two approaches to photography in a post tilted “Leadership Lessons learned from Photography“.  In that post, I said:

To take a great photograph, you have to see the photograph before you take it.  You have to be able to frame the images to achieve the final product.  If you’re taking a photograph of a person, you have to communicate your vision to that person to turn your vision into reality.

To take an average photograph, you hold your camera and push the button.  No vision, no framing and no communication.  You just push the button and hope you got the picture.

I continued on to equate photography to leadership:

A great leader does the same things required to take a great photograph…they see where you want to go, frame that vision and communicate that vision to their team.

A not-so-great leader follows the steps to take a snapshot…they see something ‘out there’ but they never really capture what’s in their head nor can they frame it and communicate their vision to their teams.

I still believe that….and the gentlemen at the Arboretum made me think about that post and the subject again. While pondering the topic, I started thinking about organization’s using tools to reach an objective….but many of these organizations never really develop a strategy to reach the objective…they think that the tool will do that for them.

Back to the two gentlemen in the Arboretum.  We ran into both men at the cafe inside the park.   The man with the tripod was talking to everyone around him about his wonderful camera setup and the amazing pictures he just took.  The second man listened closely and nodded and said all the right words but never boasted about his shots.

Me being me, I decided to go up and talk to both men and see if I could get a sample photograph out of each to compare…and I was successful.  Both men shared a few images with me and, as I expected, the gentleman with the tripod had some nice snapshots while the man with the point-and-shoot had some outstanding photographs.

So…the moral of this story? You aren’t guaranteed success with the ‘right’ tools…you’ve got to have a vision and be able to realize the vision with any set of tools.

Let’s look at an example of how this applies to organizations:

Social Media is a tool…and a great one.  Using Social Media can help organizations embrace the community and their clients but without a strategy and a vision, most organizations fail with their Social Media initiatives.

Just because an organization CAN use Social Media tools and systems, SHOULD they (I believe most organizations should)? Before stepping into something like Social Media, an organization should think about where they want to go and then make sure they have a strategy to get there…don’t rely on the tools to get you there.

Don’t expect the tools to do all the work…you’ve got to know how to use them and know what you’re trying to do with them before they’ll be of any real use. If you let the tools do all the work, you’ll wind up spending a lot of money for mediocre results.

Tom Parish has interviewed Nathan Langston, Chief Information Officer (CIO), of the Boy Scouts of America on Enterprise Leadership Online.   The interview, titled Nathan Langston, CIO for Boy Scouts of America:Achieving Business Impact, provides an interesting interview of a senior leader of the Boy Scouts.