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Value generation, not technology installation, via my Tumblr

September 19, 2013 By brenda michelson

“Some CIOs, and many other IT professionals, act as if they believe that their jobs are finished when the technology is installed. The problem is that from the point of view of every other executive, the job is finished only when the business achieves the outcomes it wants and has paid for. When IT teams deliver only technology, what they deliver is perceived in the same terms, and not as value.”

– Real Business of IT: How CIOs Create and Communicate Value by Richard Hunter, George Westerman
via Tumblr http://bmichelson.tumblr.com/post/61670584980

Filed Under: business-technology, CIO Tagged With: stream

business-first technology leadership wins

May 10, 2012 By brenda michelson

In 2010, when I wrote the Elemental Links tagline, “Technology Insights for Business Enthusiasts”, some of my trusted associates pushed back, telling me that I need to lead with TECHNOLOGY. But, here’s the thing. In the enterprise, from which I came and continue to serve, a technology-first mindset leads to disdain.

Contrary to the hyperbole of the technology press, analysts, pundits and product marketers, true, enduring, information technology success begins with a business-first mindset, which includes constant context checks.

Now, it would be fair to slap a (micro) pundit label on me, so what follows are snippets from three business-first technology executives, excerpted from this week’s WSJ:

“What directors really value in a CIO is sound strategic thinking and a great ability to execute, says Gambale, a former CIO at Merrill Lynch, Bankers Trust, and Alex Brown, and former partner at Deutsche Bank Capital.”

via Art Langer: Virginia Gambale Says CIOs Should Offer Strategic Advice to Corporate Directors – The CIO Report – WSJ.

“We never start with technologies; we always look at trends in the world that are or may be having an impact on the future of our business. One example is the acceleration of innovation to market. Consumers and users want one-on-one connections to any service or product they interact with, so we have to respond. This is thoroughly changing the way we operate—the always-on, instant nature of interaction today.

We look at those megatrends and forces to see which ones will truly impact our business. Then we go look at what strategies we can devise to take advantage of those trends. The final step is evaluating which technologies can enable those strategies. The value is how we enable this dramatic change through technology.

Every three years or so, we review our strategies. Three years ago we focused on the idea of visualization. We have visualized data across the entire company. Everything we do is visual. This transforms the way the business performs because it creates what I call “information democracy.” There are no more layers. The discussions we are having are much more robust.”

— Filippo Passerini, president of global business services and CIO of Procter & Gamble in WSJ CIO Journal

“We’re truly guided by these big arcs of change [analytics, cloud computing, emerging markets and “smarter planet] that we believe in,” Rometty said. “They lend context and clarity. When you run a big company, context and clarity mean a lot.”

via New IBM CEO Says Will Maintain Longer-Term Strategy

Filed Under: business, business-technology, CIO, leadership Tagged With: entrenchment

Forrester: Forcing A New Role For CIOs & Dragging IT Out Of The Backrooms

April 24, 2012 By brenda michelson

John Brand of Forrester writes on the inevitable shift of CIOs and IT. I strongly agree with the following two points. We are in a systems-of-systems world. Organizations fighting this shift are swimming against the digital tide.

“There is no “big suite” solution. Over the past 30+ years, IT has thrived on the ideals of consolidation and centralisation. One system. One repository. One place to put stuff. If only I had a penny for every time I heard the phrase “we need a single repository”. For years Ive been saying that users dont care about where something lives. They care about how to access it. Its not about a single repository. Its about a seamless repository. Google doesnt hold the worlds information sources. Its merely appears to users like it does. Forget the big suites. The one system. The strategic vendor. Focus on the right tool for the right job. Focus on the fact that the job will change — and so should the tools. The building industry hasnt rested on its laurels because it thinks its found the one perfect set of materials, construction methods and tools to do every job. Why do we think in IT that theres only one vendor, one platform or one language that we need to deal with? Embrace diversity, but still maintain a focus on management. Continuous design will be a capability that every organization will need to learn. Its not about doing it “right” the first time. Its about continually doing it better and better.   

Systems are no longer isolated — and neither are we. Over the last decade and a half, the world has connected — and interconnected — an amazing array of technologies. We are now all completely dependent on each other. And so are our systems. Our newer systems are not built on batch uploaded data sets that we can control and cleanse — but on masses of big data that we need to extract meaning and structure from. We cant have the luxury of first defining a structure and populating data into it. We must work with what we have or what we can get. Fast.”

via The Empowered BT Era Will Force Yes, Force A New Role For CIOs – And Drag IT Out Of The Backrooms | Forrester Blogs.

I’m attending Forrester’s co-located CIO and EA Forums next week in Vegas. Will blog and tweet what I hear. Look me up if you are there.

Filed Under: business-technology, CIO

CIOs Continue Being Held in Low Esteem – The CIO Report – WSJ

April 17, 2012 By brenda michelson

Wow. Can the CIO escape the chief infrastructure officer corner? Or, has that ship sailed?

“New research suggests chief executives don’t consider CIOs of their companies as partners in managing either strategy or innovation. This data could go a long way towards explaining why so many CIO jobs are advertised as strategic, but end up being largely operational.

According to Gartner, which conducts an annual survey of CEO attitudes towards technology, only 4% of the chief executives of some of the world’s largest companies consider their CIOs as leaders of innovation management within their organizations, or as supporting them in making strategic changes to the business.

Mark Raskino, who conducted the survey, added that 35% of CEOs named the CFO as their main strategic partner in the company, but didn’t mention CFOs at all when it comes to managing innovation either. “In this world of digital disruption, this overall equation is almost a systemic map for creating a blind spot… Strategy and innovation are held separately, and the CIO is held nowhere near any of them,” he told CIO Journal.”

…

“It reflects the extent to which CIOs are under-appreciated by the rest of the executive suite, in large part because “too often, IT leaders see themselves, and CEOs see them, as custodians of the tools” used to drive innovation. High says CIOs can change this perception by leading conversations about how IT can support initiatives for human resources, legal and compliance and marketing departments.

Gartner surveyed 381 companies for this report, 16% of which generate revenues of $50 billion or more, 23% of which earn between $5 billion and $25 billion, and 36% of which earn between $1 billion and $5 billion. Seventy percent of respondents were CEOs, president or board members, and 30% were CFOs. More than half employed more than 10,000 workers.“

via CIOs Continue Being Held in Low Esteem – The CIO Report – WSJ.

Another article on the survey result points to short CIO tenures as a detriment:

“CIOs are seen as employees that move from company to company, never rising to a more senior role and never staying longer than their next job offer, added Lopez.“

Regardless of the cause, the impact is significant. I’m not advocating that the “I” in CIO becomes “Innovation”, but in the now (and forever) digital business world, the CIO needs to press the innovation agenda. Directly, or via a strategic hire.

Filed Under: CIO, innovation

A Framework for Evaluating the Modern CIO – The CIO Report – WSJ

April 6, 2012 By brenda michelson

The WSJ has a new CIO Journal. The first few days were predictable, but this guest article by Irving WB has me looking forward to true CIO level content.

Try plotting your CIO and/or IT org in the 2 x 2 matrix that Wladawsky-Berger describes: Internal & Operational, Internal & Strategic, External & Operational, External & Strategic.

“To discuss something as complex as the evolving role of the CIO, I would like to offer a simple and hopefully comprehensive framework based primarily on my own experience working with CIOs over the past several decades, as well as on various excellent studies on the future of the CIO.

Two major dimensions stand out along which to develop such a framework. One dimension focuses on whether the activities are more operational versus strategic, that is, oriented more toward the near term or the longer term. The second dimension focuses on whether the activities are more internal versus external, that is, primarily aimed at supporting the business functions or at growing the business in the marketplace.

While each of these dimensions is more of a continuous spectrum than just two discrete roles, it is helpful to discuss each of the four roles resulting from such a 2 x 2 framework.”

keep reading: A Framework for Evaluating the Modern CIO – The CIO Report – WSJ.

Filed Under: business-technology, CIO

Brenda M. Michelson

Brenda Michelson

Technology Architect.

Trusted Advisor.

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