Management

This month in the forum, we look at the chief information officer as an agent of change. Although this is a new role for many, it is widely viewed as a necessary one, as you can see in some of the articles for which we've provided links, both here in the CIO Forum, and elsewhere. There was a time when the main functions of a CIO were to introduce and manage technology in order to decrease expenses or increase efficiency. But as your baseline activity increases, there's a limit to how much you can actually reduce costs. As Dr. Jim Metzler of Ashton, Metzler and Associates, an IT technology consultancy, points out, "Data traffic doubles every two or three years, so it's a fool's game to try to reduce the bottom line. You can improve unit metrics, like cost per minute for VoIP [voice over IP], but you're not going to see a huge improvement—certainly not an order of magnitude." The same goes for improvements in infrastructure efficiency: the more you deliver, the more the business will demand.

The problem is, in today's business environment, the CIO won't be around for long if he can't deliver the equivalent of an order of magnitude improvement in the value of IT to the business. And the only way to do that is to harness IT to change the way the business works—to make possible more effective ways of succeeding in an increasingly competitive global business environment. Some of the other articles you'll find on this site show what this might mean. For instance, in a News@Cisco interview this month, Mark Reyer discusses the data consolidation project he spearheaded for the state of Oregon. It started as an effort aimed at containing costs and increasing efficiency, and it is delivering on those promises. But it is also making it possible for the state to enhance its services to its citizens; for instance, it enables small business owners to take advantage of "one-stop-shopping" when trying to comply with licensing and regulatory requirements administered by many different departments. In another article, Dirk Schlesinger of Cisco talks about how new integration technologies are changing supply relationships from a chain to a web.

You Can't Change What You Can't See

The ancient Greek Archimedes famously said, "Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I will move the earth." For a CIO, the information that percolates up from farther down in IT establishes that place to stand. You have to know how things are actually working. Without good information, you've no chance of being an agent of change—at least, not of any change that will promote your career. "I spoke to one CIO," says Metzler, "who said that the fact that they couldn't tell that an application was degrading before the end-user did made IT look like bumbling idiots." It erodes confidence in IT in general. You could be on top of everything else, reining in costs and delivering projects on time, but under such circumstances, the CEO or board is likely to say, "You're not doing a very good job on this. How do I know you're doing a good job elsewhere?"

Peter Sevcik, president of NetForecast, an application performance consultancy, notes two areas where CIOs need to get better information: service-level agreements (SLAs), and network management tools. "Too many CIOs just accept the SLAs offered by service providers," he says. "And the tools their staff works with are generally only good at drilling down from a red light to the problem. What CIOs need are tools that sum up." These two areas can become even more important when outsourcing is involved, since you've got another layer between you and the metrics about internal and external customer satisfaction.

Of course, as a CIO you should not be spending time on the details of SLAs and management tools. Instead, you should work to develop a management data framework that everyone in the organization can apply to their particular area. For SLAs, Sevcik recommends that you work with business managers to find out what's important to them in terms of the services they use, whether network or software as a service (SaaS), and then develop a general SLA framework based on this input that your staff can use when dealing with vendors. This will help ensure that the SLAs meet your stakeholders' needs, and you aren't exposed to being blindsided when complaints come in about application or network performance despite the fact that the SLAs are being met.

The CIO as Earthquake

Ensuring the flow of the information you need to be an agent of change can be both a technical and a political challenge. And sometimes a CIO has to shake things up on both fronts to prepare the IT organization to support the changes he or she wants to make. The problem with SLAs, for instance, often starts with a tendency noted by Nick Lippis, president of Lippis Enterprises, an IT industry analysis firm. "Individuals in charge of a particular area will get comfortable with a particular technology or a particular vendor. So where a CIO has delegated responsibility for a particular technology or service, as is necessary and wise, he or she has to guard against the tendency for people to take the path of least resistance." That path often involves a cozier-than-wise relationship with vendors, not because of malfeasance, but because the help of a trusted vendor can save time needed for other, more pressing tasks, especially in an IT environment where the emphasis is on doing more with fewer people.

What Lippis sees many CIOs do—even if they don't intend to outsource a given area—is to bring in outside consultants just to shake up what he calls the "organizational lock-in" to a particular way of thinking or of doing things. Arranging a series of interactive strategy or planning meetings under such outsiders can re-engage the creativity of your team by knocking them out of their comfort zone. And the implied possibility of outsourcing does tend to concentrate people's minds.

The CIO as Gardener

Shaking things up dramatically is just one way for a CIO to be a change agent. There's plenty of need for nurturing and weeding, too, as you seek to ensure that IT creates paths to success rather than roadblocks. Metzler believes that CIOs need to spend more time helping the IT organization increase its skill base while automating mundane tasks. He feels that automation can frequently pay off better than outsourcing, at least as far as monitoring performance and gathering information goes. "If you can find the right tools, they're more efficient than people," he says. He adds that the closer connection you gain by keeping the information-gathering task in house is worth the effort.

As for weeding, Metzler feels that one of a CIO's central tasks should be to reduce complexity. The more complexity you face, of course, the more difficult it is to get the information you need to be an agent of change—you'll be drowning in details, and you don't have time for that. Metzler remembers walking into a CIO's office and seeing the number 513 posted on the wall. "You know what that is?" the CIO asked. Of course, he didn't. "That's the number of things I have in my infrastructure—various versions of operating systems, types of devices, etc. I don't know what the right number should be, but I know that's too high."

Make Time for Face Time

Finally, keep in mind that the political aspects of your job are as important as the technological ones, and remember that all politics are personal. To be a successful agent of change, you need the backing of other decision makers—both on the executive team and among influential business line managers—and you can't get that just by attending business meetings. "A lot of your success depends on your ability to network and take advantage of other venues," says Lippis. "From socializing at coffee breaks to after-hour activities, you need personal relationships with the other major stakeholders." As an agent of change, challenging assumptions about the usefulness of how things have always been done, you'll find that your suggestions won't always be completely welcome. But if your fellow decision makers know you in roles other than your official business, it's only natural that they'll be more willing to listen.