Three Steps to Becoming a Strategic CIO
by Peter High, published on CIO Journal
09-23-2014
The chief information officer role historically has been a tactical one. When it emerged in the early 1980s, the title, like the IT function more generally, was tied to accounting and finance—no surprise given that IT’s claim to fame in the early days revolved around automating the general ledger and other financial systems. CIOs most often reported to chief financial officers.
Today, with CIOs increasingly reporting directly to the CEOs and expected to execute imperatives company-wide, strategic excellence has replaced tactical smarts as a job requirement.
With a higher-profile come more challenges. The fact that IT must bring to life the strategic imperatives of all other divisions of the company means that a lack of strategic clarity from those divisions can adversely affect the CIO and his or her team. The members of the marketing team and the HR teams should know a bit about what each is doing, but the fact that one focuses its attention outside of the company exclusively and the other focuses on internal matters means that neither is likely to suggest innovative project ideas to the other. By contrast, IT should be doing just that for each of these divisions and all others.
The extent to which any division’s strategic plans are opaque to IT means that it will not effectively develop ideas to help drive those plans forward. Without sufficient strategic clarity, IT is left guessing, and may leave the impression that the number one priority of multiple divisions of the company are each the number one priority of IT.
To read the full article, please visit CIO Journal
Does IT Strategy Matter?
by Peter High, published on Forbes
09-22-2014
We are fast approaching 2015 strategy-setting season for those companies in which the fiscal and calendar year align. Most companies will contemplate and define strategic objectives around revenue growth, cost reduction, customer satisfaction, mergers and acquisitions, and the like. More strategically mature companies will filter those down into strategic plans for the functional units and business units of the company such as Marketing, Sales, Finance, Operations, Human Resources, and product and service areas of various kinds. The information technology department must bring to life many of the strategic imperatives of the other functional units and business units of the company. As a result, IT needs to weave itself into the narrative of each of those plans.
Increasingly, I have heard CIOs and other IT executives say, “There is no IT strategy; there only business strategy.” This sounds great, especially for a division of the corporate structure that has historically referred to itself as separate from “the business.” The problem is that this would seem to suggest that there is only one strategy: the enterprise strategy. When you extend this logic, it would suggest that there need not be a Marketing strategy, an Operations strategy, product or service strategies, HR strategies, and the like. For instance, if the enterprise strategy suggests that revenue growth is projected to be 15% for the next year, what role will Marketing play in building those revenues, and how will that division go about driving them? The Marketing strategy should provide that additional detail. Likewise, the Sales strategy should do the same, providing its version of the translation.
IT should have its own plan that is a complement to the strategies of the other divisions. As I note in my new book, Implementing World Class IT Strategy: How IT Can Drive Organizational Innovation, IT must develop a means to engage the rest of the units of the company earlier so that they can play a role in shaping the plans of each of those units, and after IT has a better understanding of what is necessary, an IT-specific strategy should be formulated.
To read the full article, please visit Forbes
ATK CIO Says Metrics-Driven IT Paves the Way for Innovation
by John Gallant, published on CIO.com
09-15-2014
As CIO for ATK, Jeff Kubacki has instituted a rigorous benchmarking approach aimed at delivering world-class IT at continually improving cost. Kubacki has built a strong rapport with his CEO and other business leaders because he runs IT operations like a business and speaks the results-centered language of his peers at ATK.
In this installment of the IDG Enterprise CIO Interview Series, Kubacki talked with Chief Content Officer John Gallant about the realities of moving to a metrics-driven IT operation and how it has paved the way to more trust and visibility for IT. Furthermore, this discipline has freed IT to focus more on the innovations that are fueling the $5 billion diversified company’s growth.
To read the full article, please visit CIO.com
Shaygan Kheradpir’s Journey from CIO of Verizon to CEO of Juniper Networks
by Peter High, published on Forbes.com
09-08-2014
At the Wall Street Journal’s CIO Network event, the 120 or so chief information officers who were in attendance were polled to see how many of them had the ambition to become a CEO one day. 70 percent answered that they were, in fact interested. Although the law of averages would suggest that most of those executives will not reach that goal, some will. Thankfully, there are more examples of executives who these CIOs can look to for inspiration and insight. Shaygan Kheradpir is one of them.
Kheradpir is the CEO of Juniper Networks, but spent a good chunk of his career in IT departments, first at GTE, and then as CIO of Verizon. It is also notable that he lives in an area where university-level education has been deemed by some to be less important than it once was, and yet he has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. Instead of roots in the start-up community or in Silicon Valley, Juniper Networks was his first Silicon Valley experience. After his time at Verizon, Kheradpir moved on to become the Chief Operations and Technology Officer at Barclays PLC. The diversity of roles he has had and industries that he has served highlight how Kheradpir has thought about his career path a little differently. When asked about his path, he suggests that he has always thought a bit beyond the parameters of each role he has had, and thought more broadly about the value that he can provide to others in the company. He also emphasizes the importance of great mentors along the way.
(This is the 18th article in the “Beyond CIO” series. To read past interviews with executives from companies like American Express, HP, Symantec, T.D. Ameritrade, and Aetna, please click this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: You’ve had a very interesting career journey. Recently you were CIO and CTO at Verizon, then Chief Operations and Technology Officer at Barclays, and now you are the CEO at Juniper. Was becoming a CEO always a goal of yours and how actively did you plan for this?
Shaygan Kheradpir: I never think of it that way. It was never a grand plan or a list of career progression check marks to move from manager to director to VP etc. My focus at every job from day one is not to become a CEO, but to make my time impactful. You do that by defining that impact and surrounding yourself with people who also want to make a big difference like you and take it from there to have a great bond with an able team on a rewarding journey.
With the team and ensemble around me that I had at every job stage – be it a few people or a few thousand people, the key was to always take a step back, look at the responsibilities assigned and try to figure out how to make a big difference in the markets and the customers that we serve. Whenever you do this, good things happen – people start asking: “Who did that so well? Let’s give them more responsibility!”
So whatever role I’ve had in my career, I always try to take a step back and define what it could be in terms of contribution.
Additional topics covered in the article include:
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Dell CIO Andi Karaboutis Helps Dell Put The Customer First
09-02-2014
Much has been written about the benefits and risks of the rise of prominence of the CMO to the CIO. Some have pontificated that it will mean the death of or at least the diminution of influence of the CIO, as CMOs have more authority over technology. Dell Global CIO Andi Karaboutis scratches her head at this notion. She describes Dell’s strategy to put the customer first, and the role that each functional and business unit head must bring in order to realize that vision. It means that IT must shape its unique perspective and apply its unique lens to opportunities and issues. It also means that emerging leaders in IT work in other regions and functions to round out their perspectives on Dell’s business to be able to contribute more value to IT, a practice she learned from a successful tenure in the automotive industry. It also requires IT to have an R&D and innovation role, constantly monitoring trends to choose the best ones to bring to life the needs of Dell and of Dell’s customers. Lastly, it means spending time with external customers, as IT must have a role in developing value for them.
(To listen to an unabridged version of this interview, please click this link. To read more stories about innovative IT leaders, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Andi, Dell has been going through quite a transformation in recent months, not the least of which was the organization going private after having been a public company for some time. I wonder, in your time as global CIO how these changes have manifested themselves in the IT department, if at all.
Andi Karaboutis: One of the things that Michael Dell says – and we’ve all held very strongly to his strategy at Dell – is that our focus is on continuing to be a world-class end-to-end solutions company. Similarly, the strategy and goals of IT and our focus continue to be the same, which is: the customer is at the center of everything that we do and developing our roadmaps, plans, strategies, and instrumentation of disruptive technology around that, continues to be core.
I think the big difference is the intensified focus and speed with which we’re actually pursuing those goals and objectives. Obviously as a public company you have different and added burdens around Wall Street, quarterly earnings, focus on sales in shorter time periods, whereas as a private company our focus is on short, medium, and longer term methods and objectives of how we want to execute things. So it just lets us be that much more intense around our strategy.
To listen to a Forum on World Class IT podcast interview with Andi, click here.
Yves Béhar Is The Most Influential Industrial Designer In The World
08-25-2014
Yves Béhar is an unusually busy executive, even by Silicon Valley standards. He is the founder and principal designer of fuseproject, an award-winning industrial design and brand development firm. Béhar is also Chief Creative Officer of the wearable technology company Jawbone, and Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of August, creators of the first Smart Lock. He is perhaps the most decorated industrial designer of the past 15 years, and his clients (past and present) include Apple, Google, GE, Samsung, Herman Miller, and Prada. Since 2005, Béhar has also been the chief industrial designer of One Laptop per Child, and he is also the Creative Co-Founder of OUYA, an open sourced gaming platform. Additionally, he has long-term partnerships with various other companies.
When I met Béhar in his office in San Francisco, I wondered how he found the time to be involved in so many meaningful projects and enterprises. He indicated that it is a combination of having wonderful partners across all of his work streams coupled with a joyful feeling of always being open to inspiration that can fuel his creative process. He indicates that it is his life experiences, and being in the milieu of creative people wherever he goes that allows him to be involved in so many creative ventures without feeling either overburdened or tapped of good ideas.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please click this link. This is the eighth article in the “IT Influencers” series. To read the prior seven, featuring the likes of Salman Khan, Jim Goodnight, Walt Mossberg, and David Pogue, please click this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: I thought we’d begin on a bit of the chronology of your development professionally. Who has influenced you in your career?
Yves Béhar: As a designer, there were influences that came very early on. So when I started studying design, maybe I was probably 19 years old, there were certainly people who were so impressive and who had really changed culture in some ways –you looked at Charles Eames, for example, and when you looked at people in Italy, like Joe Colombo and others, you really saw that intersection of design and culture change and those were people I was very impressed with.
To explore the full collection of IT Influencers Series articles, please click here.
To listen to a Forum on World Class IT podcast interview with Yves, click here.
Forbes Publisher Rich Karlgaard On How Great Companies Find Lasting Success
08-18-2014
Rich Karlgaard is widely known as the publisher of this magazine. What may be lesser known is how diverse and entrepreneurial his career has been. He started two magazines, Upside and ASAP within the Forbes banner. He has founded a venture capital firm, Garage Technology Ventures, and is an advisor to multiple other VCs. He also founded Silicon Valley’s premier business and technology forum, a 7,500-member strong organization called the Churchill Club. Is there a thread that runs through all of those things? As such, he has become one of the most influential figures in technology and business more generally.
Having had the pleasure to get to know Rich, one of his primary gifts is storytelling, and identifying what is interesting and special in others. This strength is in full-blossom in his new book, The Soft Edge: Where Great Companies Find Lasting Success. Rich has long had a curiosity to determine the factors that have led some companies to endure during good times and bad. Especially in this day-and-age when analytics rule, he focuses on “softer” factors, chief among them being culture. Though he lives and works in the heart of Silicon Valley, he left the bubble of that region to profile companies in places like Milwaukee, Wisconsin (Northwestern Mutual), Rochester, Minnesota (The Mayo Clinic), and Memphis, Tennessee (FedEx). I spoke with him to find out more about what he learned that other companies should institute to develop a more lasting success.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the seventh article in the “IT Influencers” series. To read past articles with Salman Khan, Jim Goodnight, and Walt Mossberg among others, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: First of all, I want congratulate you on a terrific book. Can you describe what the Soft Edge is and maybe a bit about how the notion came to mind?
Rich Karlgaard: Next month there is an anniversary related to the economy that nobody is going to take note of: the fifth year of the end of the Great Recession. The US companies went into recovery in June 2009 and yet 70% of Americans still think we are in recession. Now ask yourself why that’s the case? Number one, the economic growth overall hasn’t been that robust, with an average of 2% GDP growth on an annual basis over the last five years. We have seen fits and starts in the economy; there is no growth at all in the first quarter of 2014. We’re looking at 3% growth, if we’re lucky, for the rest of the year and this is just not good. From the end of World War II through the present, the American economy has averaged 3% annual growth, inclusive of 11 recessions including the nasty one we just went through and an equally nasty one in 1973 and 1974, as well as some really sharp ones such as the one in 1982. There have also been some mostly regional recessions, such as the one that Los Angeles went through from 1988 through 1994. The fact that the US economies has grown 3% despite all of those recessions means the 2% growth now is just not robust. But there is another story behind the reason why 70% of the people think we’re still in a recession and that is this economic recovery is incredibly uneven. It’s as if post-recession the entire economy has been put into the centrifuge which is spinning faster and faster, and only 30% of the people are winding up in a pretty good place. So the 70% that say we are still in recession, one of three things is possible:
1) They don’t have a job.
2) They are stuck in their job
3) They’re working for a company that is stuck.
I decided, after seeing these statistics and hearing these stories, that I wanted to get out there and find out what the 30% is doing, what the companies that are unstuck are doing. I lived my whole adult life in Silicon Valley after I arrived here to go to school in the mid-70s. I’ve seen multiple generations of Silicon Valley’s history from personal computers to network computing in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, from Internet 1.0 in the late 90s to everything we have today. I wanted to get outside of Silicon Valley to do the research for the book. I wanted to talk to companies, large and small, publicly traded and privately held across a broad range of industries to see if there were extractable principles from these high-performing companies and what they were doing that was different. I particularly wanted to look at companies that had faced trouble before and made recoveries. I wasn’t looking at superstar companies like Google that have yet to be tested, in my opinion. I looked at companies that have been around for decades such as FedEx, Northwestern Mutual, Mayo Clinic, Specialized and also a couple of Silicon Valley companies such as Nest Labs and NetApp.
To listen to a Forum on World Class IT podcast interview with Rich, click here.
The unpenetrated internet user market in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia is mind blowing. Many companies are entering new markets with third party partners, which may be easier, and even necessary, but is not a sustainable strategy. From day one of being in a market, you should be thinking about how to develop an owned, direct channel. Companies cannot afford to “wait and see how things pan out”; mass markets will come online through various digital media and it is your best interest to be a proactive leader in the market rather than abdicating your future growth to third party partners. One major caveat is: do not just copy and paste your North American or EU strategy into the market, but rather devise a locally relevant, targeted approach that will shift consumers to your direct and owned digital channels.
What This Data Tells You:
Please contact me at chris.davis@metisstrategy.com to discuss more
Source: Internet World Stats, data accessed on August 15, 2014.
Peter High
08-13-2014
Except from the article:
Gary Marshall, CIO of SunGard Availability Services, believes the CIOs of technology companies should be their company’s first customers. These CIOs may seem to be in the unenviable position of being surrounded by people who think they can do the CIO’s job better than he or she can. However, Marshall makes the point that the savvy CIO is well positioned to shape the products and services of their company by using them, offering critical and timely feedback, and then by becoming an advocate with the company’s customers, especially if those customers are also CIOs. Marshall spoke with CIO Insight contributor Peter High about why every company today should act like a technology company, IT’s value proposition, the CIO’s evolving role and more.
CIO Insight: You’ve long been a believer that the CIO of a tech-centric company should be the company’s first customer. Why?
Gary Marshall: From the CIO’s perspective, being the first customer and a partner with the internal group means that you’ll be their best and worst customer. Best, because you are committed to the product’s success and won’t walk away. Worst, because you know the product well and will test it to its limit and try to break it. Therefore, CIOs come at it from the perspective of the customer advocate; this is useful feedback before putting the product in front of actual customers.
As a customer advocate, you can bring a sense of production to a product and service. Things in development are usually functionally tested, but not scale or stress tested. CIOs and IT members spend many hours per day with the infrastructure and product portfolio in one way or another and, therefore, are uniquely poised to really test upcoming products and services.
To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO Insight.
Five Smart Cybersecurity Moves From Top Security CEOs
08-04-2014
There is much that is written about cybersecurity threats to companies. Prominent examples of security breaches like the one that Target announced on December 19, 2013 have led myriad companies to re-evaluate their security posture, and investments in new security processes and technologies have increased in many companies as a result.
The complexity of security threats to individuals has also increased, but no individual cybersecurity issue will receive the headlines that corporate breach will, so one can be lulled into a false sense of security. I sought the counsel of four CEOs of major information security companies to ask them what steps they take personally to secure their information and their computing devices. They offered the following five recommendations.
