CIO Corner

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Random
Thoughts for CIOs
Tom Costello, UpStreme

n producing articles for this

CIO Corner department, I end
up with a long list of random
topics that never seem to make
it to print. Usually, these never
amount to anything more than
musings or complaints, but here,
I review some of them in an effort
to create a little bubble gum for
the brain.

Update Your Reading List

If you type CIO reading lists
into your favorite search engine,
the returned results reveal some
interesting things. First, not
many of the books are technical in nature. If youre a CIO and
your bookshelf is full of technical
books, youre either in a highly
specialized, technology-laden segment of business, or youre reading the wrong books.
Second, most of the suggested
books will be about teamwork,
efficiency, or your role as a CIO.
The rest of the suggested books
are about business in general.
Although these books can help
educate new executivesbecause
they typically cover a wide range
of topicsthey rarely provide the
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depth necessary to help more experienced executives.

Finally, the most notably absent
category on these lists is communication. If youre not exercising
or improving your ability to sell
your ideas through more effective communication, you wont
be prepared to act as a CIO in the
coming decades. If youre looking
for books that will help you improve how you present material,
consider reading Nancy Duartes
Resonate (Wiley, 2010) or Slide:ology
(OReilly Media, 2008).

Teach What You Learn

My father, who fought in World
War II, taught me many valuable
lessons, but one lesson in particular has served me well over
the years. This is the concept
that people learn best when they
believe that theyll have to turn
around and teach that same material to someone else.
As I work with and coach CIOs
(and CEOs, COOs, and so on) in
various industries, I share this
concept with them. I find that
many have the desire to be better teachers, but few practice this

Published by the IEEE Computer Society

skill. If executives can periodically

act as teachers for their teams
(their internal IT teams, business
teams, customers, and so on) and
reinforce that effective teaching
is a skill to be rewarded in the
organization, the dividends can
be huge, because teams become
more effective when knowledge
and information are accurately
disseminated throughout the
business and IT teams.

Exploit the Big Data Hype

If you talk to a database administrator (DBA) or someone involved
with business intelligence (BI),
that person will probably cringe if
you mention big data. For quite
some time, DBAs and BI staff have
been tackling data problems
typically with too few resources
and too many demands. Most data
experts realize that big data was
initially just a buzzword that some
sales team created for a hardware
or software vendor, and that the
term grossly underdefined the
challenges theyve faced for years.
At the same time, the term now
captures the new o
pportunities,
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CIO Corner

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tools, and techniques necessary

to handle the ever-growing collection of potential data stores available to enterprises.
The good news is that the hype
surrounding big data will probably result in additional budget
allocations, giving data teams the
chance to explore new tools and
techniques and provide value
to their organizations. The bad

something the firm would likely

ever repeat, yet the ongoing program required regular reinforcement and fine-tuning to maximize
any additional benefits over the
coming years.
Watching this effort move
through its life cycle, it was clear
that the materials and approaches this firm had created could be
helpful to other firms in other

The advanced organization will gain a fair amount

of efficiency by using Hofstede datato manage
team interactions and help the team evolve into a
performing team.
news is that the data teams will
have to explain that the additional funding and new tools wont
fix the fact that the multiple data
stores used in their big data
solution have all of the age-old
traps: different data definitions,
gaps in data, and contradictory
business processes that will require even more scrutiny than in
the past.
Nevertheless, given that the last
two big investments in data came
during the 80s (with Case tools)
and late 90s (with BI), it might be
another decade before this type
of data investment comes around
again, so grab it while you can.

Use Copyleft to
Share Best Practices
In mid 2012, I was working with a
firm that was about to undertake a
major paper purging process to
get more documents online and
reduce paper storage (along with
the associated risks). As this paperless project moved forward, the
lofty goals were replaced by the reality of what was actually possible,
but the firm still made huge strides
in reducing the amount of paper
it stored. This initiative wasnt
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industries (that is, to firms that

couldnt gain a competitive advantage from such materials).
There was a brief discussion about
whether the firm would be willing
to allow someone (a nonprofit,
perhaps) to present this information on a website in a copyleft
format, allowing the material to
be distributed, re-used, and improved upon by othersthereby
creating a continuous improvement loop for this paperless project. My client would simply give
the
materials (goals,
planning
documents, time
lines, internal
promotional messages and materials, change-management efforts,
rewards program ideas, and lessons learned) to an outside team
that would share the material
and capture updates, so my client would benefit from the best
practices of others when reviewing
such updates.
There are many fundamental,
noncore, nondifferentiating efforts that organizations undertake,
where the work is too small for a
consulting firm to profitably offer
solutions, and likewise the enterprises lack the time and expertise
to create a solution from scratch.

The output from these kinds of

projects can appear in copyleft
kits, which reside in online repositories and provide a win-win
situation for everyone involved.

Manage Teams
with Hofstede Data
Years ago, my good friend Phil
Laplante introduced me to a rather
interesting model from Geert Hofstede that focused on national and
organizational cultures (see http://
geert-hofstede.com). The national
culture model examines the typical behavior of groups in a given
nation across four dimensions:
power distancehow strictly
people will follow instructions
and orders from superiors,
individualism versus collectivism,
masculinity versus femininity,
and
uncertainty avoidance (comfort
with ambiguity).
Hofstedes data has been collected across various studies in more
than 75 countries over the past
20 years. Certain tools can then
use this data to show how people
across various nations (cultures)
compare across these dimensions.
As with all models, you must accept that individuals can differ
from the national score, but
these national numbers can give a
leader running a global team some
clues about potential challenges
as the team members come together and are tasked with various
activities.
Organizations often incorrectly
assume theyve completed their
transition to a global organization
when they create an organizational chart with roles and titles that
that include the word global.
Organizations move a step closer
to their globalization goal when
they attempt to perform global
team building by hosting events
and meetings that cause people to

interact or cross-pollinate within

functional teams. Occasionally,
firms will spend some time on
Bruce Tuckmans model, focusing on forming, storming, norming,
and performing to maximize output (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Tuckman%27s_stages_of_group_
development). However, the advanced organization will gain a fair
amount of efficiency by using Hofstede datato manage team interactions and help the team evolve into
a performing team.

Own the ChangeManagement Process

Why do so few organizations have
a formal change-management
team, and why doesnt IT own this
capability? So much of what IT
executes has a user-facing component. Simply providing good
training on tools isnt enough.
Experienced change-management
experts will point out the complexity of moving people through
all of the changes that come with
project rollouts (well beyond software, including process changes,
governance and rules, organization
structure changes, and the unintended consequences).
Any person who has ever done
an IT project can look back at the
impact and repercussions of project implementation. Yet budgets
rarely account for change management and grossly underestimate
the benefits (which include reduced costs by avoiding incorrect
tool use, inadequate adjustments
to business processes, and poor
benefits realization). Furthermore,
in most organizations, the IT team
is ideally suited to own this process, because of its repetitive exposure to and understanding of the
expansive effects of change.

Elevate the CIO Role

Most CIOs want to help set the

strategy that leverages t echnology to
make their company a powerhouse

in their industry, and they seek

praise from their technology peers
and admiration for their prowess.
They might not admit it, but the
role most CIOs envision is really a
modified CEO role for a company of
the future.
After more than 40 years of
IT expanding within our business culture, the biggest challenge isnt the technology; rather,

ever increasing
prediction that
the role of CIO wont even exist
in the enterprise of the future.
To achieve the dream, the CIO of
the future must be a communications g urua business whisperer who can adapt to constraints
and mold the environment to
maximize business efficiency and
readiness. In doing so, the CIO
role will become a true peer slot

The CIO of the future must be a communications

gurua business whisperer who can adapt
to constraints and mold the environment to
maximize business efficiency.
its the slow absorption of IT into
organizations as technologies
move from being misunderstood
to becoming commonplace. Unfortunately, the frustration level
of CIOs regarding their career is
directly proportional to the gap in
the understanding of technology
benefits between tech and nontech executives.
The CIO dream role is in
stark contrast to the position
in which most CIOs find themselvesthat is, typically reporting to a CFO and definitely not
on track to becoming a CEO.
Adding insult to injury is the

(alongside that of the CFO) as a

trusted advisor to the CEO.

f you have any thoughts or counterviews on the topics discussed

here, or if you would like to see
one of them (or any other topic)
expanded into a full CIO Corner

article, feel free to email me.

Tom Costello is CEO of UpStreme, a
business and technology management
consultancy with practice specialties in
enterprise strategies and software logistics. Contact him at tcostello@upstreme.
com or www.upstreme.com.

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