As technology becomes increasingly integrated with business, companies are demanding better and newer technological products, or solutions, to boost business performance, facilitate smooth operations, improve product delivery and enhance the customer experience. This has also caused the role of CIO to change in recent years, from one of process-centric IT leadership and a focus on cost-cutting to developing innovative, value-creating solutions for their company. However, even today, many CIOs are not invited to sit at the table when future vision for their companies is discussed. This may be due to the perception that IT’s primary role should be to resolve issues with existing technology, rather than the view that IT can be a hub for innovation within the company. Moreover, business executives outside of IT often fail to recognize that IT must balance the priorities of all other divisions in the company, in order to come up with its own prioritization of projects. As such, there is a lot of pressure on IT to deliver solutions in a timely manner and meet business expectations. Furthermore, many companies are better at defining corporate strategy than business unit or divisional strategy, as divisional heads often focus on execution rather than planning. This means that overarching corporate goals may not be translated into divisional goals and are not executed on throughout the company.
In light of the issues above, there are several steps CIOs and/or IT leadership will need to take, to ensure that IT is regarded as a key driver in their companies. First, the CIO needs to develop a strategic vision of how IT can deliver enhanced value to the wider company, as well as lead their departments to execute on this vision. In turn, IT needs to become much more connected with the rest of the company, in order to respond to, as well as understand how changes in the competitive landscape, industry or the company’s business priorities could affect IT’s priorities. However, this is not a miniscule task for any CIO or IT leader. Where should they start?
Metis Strategy’s Strategic Translation, Alignment and Refreshment (STAR) methodology provides an integrated and cascading strategic framework that helps CIOs and IT leadership address questions surrounding IT strategy. For instance, what does IT need to do to empower and enable the execution of corporate and/or divisional strategies? What does IT need to do on its own to generate value? Additionally, what IT projects are being funded and how do they relate to the strategic goals of IT and/or the business? The STAR methodology focuses on all of these questions, while providing a mechanism to align IT’s priorities to value-driven strategic imperatives. Firstly, the methodology suggests that strategic planning and alignment begin with the development or refinement of strategic objectives at the corporate level. The next step in the methodology is to translate corporate objectives into divisional objectives. After that, detailed tactics (i.e. executable actions) are developed for each objective. Then, success measures are developed for both objectives and tactics (referred to as goals and measures, respectively) to ensure effective tracking and monitoring. This framework is referred to as the OGTM (objectives, goals, tactics and measures).
However, it is important to note that the OGTM framework is not an IT-specific strategic framework, even though in our experience, IT strategy has proven to be an excellent use case for it. In fact, the OGTM framework can be applied beyond IT, to other aspects of a company. For instance, OGTMs that are created at the CEO level can be cascaded to, or linked with OGTMs at the divisional level, thereby ensuring that corporate strategy is baked into the entire organization’s strategic planning and executed on in a holistic manner. The methodology also proposes that separately, all of the company’s business and IT projects should be evaluated based on standardized criteria. Next, projects can be grouped into portfolios that are aligned to the corporate and divisional objectives that were identified by OGTM. Finally, portfolios can be prioritized across the organization for budget, resource allocation and decision-making.
Consequently, Metis Strategy’s STAR methodology can better position IT leadership and their departments to become better integrated with the rest of their organization, as well as take on a more influential role in driving company strategy. For both business and IT executives, the STAR methodology can provide a comprehensive and logical framework to address challenges around project and portfolio management, prioritization and resource allocation. Lastly, our STAR methodology assessment is designed so that it can and should be performed on a company multiple times, to ensure that as corporate objectives evolve, divisional objectives, goals, tactics, measures, and projects can be refreshed as well.
Metis Strategy has conducted STAR methodology assessments for clients across a wide variety of maturity levels and industries. For a sample case study on the assessment, please refer to www.metisstrategy.com/what-we-do. For further inquiries, please refer to Implementing World Class IT Strategy by Peter High.
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12/17/2018
By Peter High. Published on Forbes.
Matt Harris has been investing in FinTech companies since before the term was coined. He was initially drawn to the field partially due to the lack of attention it was getting 20 years ago. I recently caught up with him, and we covered the core four segments of FinTech: payments, lending, investing, and insurance. (He also argues in this this interview that real estate is worthy for consideration as a fifth segment.) The broader interview will be published shortly. Of interest in this segment of our interview was his contrarian perspective on blockchain. He is an investor in crypto-currencies, which he personally invests in, and shares the reasons why he believes blockchain is a hammer in search of nails.
(To listen to an unabridged podcast version of this interview, please click this link. This is the 30th interview in the Tech Influencers series. To listen to past interviews with the likes of former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Sal Khan, Sebastian Thrun, Steve Case, Craig Newmark, Stewart Butterfield, and Meg Whitman, please visit this link. To read future articles in this series, please follow me on on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: You are on the investment committee of a digital currency group, which you have referred to as a firm that provides a front-row seat to cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Cryptocurrencies, specifically Bitcoin, have been in the news quite a bit over the past few years as fortunes have been made and lost because of cryptocurrencies’ extraordinary volatility. What is your thought process on the evolution of cryptocurrencies, and how bullish are you in that space?
Matt Harris: I have been referred to as a Bitcoin maximalist because as it relates to crypto assets, I tend to be dramatically more bullish on Bitcoin than any of the other currencies or assets that have been developed. While I believe fixing prices is all inherently speculative, I get the use case for Bitcoin, and I have spent hundreds of hours speaking to owners of Bitcoin. While there are unfortunately no users of Bitcoin, the owners of Bitcoin tend to believe in it the same way people have believed in gold as a store of value for millennia. This store of value is not necessarily seen as stable on a short-term basis, but it is seen as a store of value that is divorced from the whims of governments and the inflationary tendencies of fiat currencies. It is instinct, rather than universal. Similar to many people, I have never owned gold in my life, but roughly five percent of people with means end up owning gold, and they view it as a hedge against inflation and chaos. For this new generation of mostly young people, the idea that gold has inherent value makes little sense. Frankly, other than the fact that gold has been valued that way for hundreds of years, there is no inherent logic in gold being valuable, so Bitcoin is far more appealing to this demographic.
To read the full article, please visit Forbes.
12/10/2018
By Peter High. Published in Forbes.
It has been eight and a half years since General Stanley McChrystal retired from the United States Army. Since then, he has been busy. He has built a thriving consulting firm, The McChrystal Group, which focuses on leadership consulting. He has lectured at Yale University. He has spoken at conferences around the world, and he has written three books, including the best seller, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World.
His most recent book is Leaders: Myth and Reality. General McChrystal and his co-authors, Jeff Eggers and Jay Mangone, explore a variety of different genres of leaders from geniuses, founders, politicians, reformers, heroes, and zealots. While he asserts that a group’s performance is less about the leaders ability and more about the surrounding factors, General McChrystal claims that the best leaders are those who are empathetic to the group’s position at a given time and are able to constantly adapt. Throughout our conversation, we also discuss General McChrystal’s evolving opinions on Robert E. Lee, his experience with his nemesis in Al Qaeda Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and why he dedicated his book to John McCain and John Lewis.
(To listen to an unabridged podcast version of this article, please visit this link. To read future stories like this one, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
12/03/2018
In 2017, John Chambers retired from Cisco Systems, a company he had run for more than two decades. During his time with the company, it had grown from $70 million in annual revenue to $47 billion. Once he retired, he had a chance to reflect on his career, as well as to plot his next move. The former led to his authoring a new book Connecting The Dots: Lessons For Leadership In A Startup World. The latter would have him starting his own venture capital firm, JC2 Ventures.
Chambers now offers capital and advice for start-ups who wish to follow the path toward the scale and the success that he achieved. He also has become an advisor to heads of states, as he consults to both India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and to France’s President Emmanuel Macron.
As Chambers contemplates where his success comes from, he returns to his roots in West Virginia. Born the son of two physicians, he was taught to value education from a young age. Chambers is a dyslexic, a detail that he kept hidden until well after he had ascended the CEO role at Cisco Systems. Through help from caring educators in his youth, he learned to turn his weakness into a strength. He now tells everyone about his dyslexia to inspire other dyslexics, but also to inspire anyone who feels they have an impediment that is holding them back. His refusal to let a weakness define him was, itself, a key to his success. He notes, “We all have setbacks, and your character is more of a product of how you handle these setbacks than your successes are.”
Chambers’ aims to help his home state and others learn the key lessons of Silicon Valley, and imitate the dramatic change that has transpired in France, a country he once vowed not to do business in due to its antiquated and often bureaucratic business practices. He hopes that the same combination of good government and ambitious entrepreneurs may lead to positive change in West Virginia and beyond. We cover all of this and more in this interview.
(To listen to an unabridged podcast version of this interview, please click this link. This is the 29th interview in the IT Influencers series. To listen to past interviews with the likes of former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Sal Khan, Sebastian Thrun, Steve Case, Craig Newmark, Stewart Butterfield, and Meg Whitman, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: You began your terrific book, Connecting The Dots: Lessons For Leadership In A Startup World, by discussing your roots in West Virginia. Could you reflect on the lessons you learned from your youth?
11/26/2018
By Peter High. Published on Forbes
Reinsurance Group of America (RGA) is a $13 billion dollar global life and health reinsurance entity based in St Louis, Missouri. A few years ago, the company developed a subsidiary called RGAX that is part innovation lab and part venture arm, focused on transformative initiatives. On its own site, RGAX is noted as “embracing the talent, resources, and more than 40 years of insight and innovation experience. RGAX partners with carriers and entrepreneurs to fuse industry expertise and outside capabilities.”
Two years ago, when RGA sought a leader of this function, they elected to elevate the chief information officer of the company, Mark Showers. He led RGA’s IT team for more than seven years, and, as such, knew the business inside and out. As RGAX would require defining areas ripe for transformation and build an ecosystem in the start-up and venture world to help deliver that. In this interview, he shares insights from his current role, how his time as CIO helped provide him the wherewithal to take it on, and as well as a variety of other topics.
(This is the 41st article in the “Beyond CIO” series. To read through past interviews with executives from companies like Waste Management, Biogen, Allstate, Aetna, Marsh & McLennan, and BMO Financial Group, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: You work for a group called RGAX, a wholly owned subsidiary and a transformation engine of Reinsurance Group of America. Could you describe the mission of RGAX?
Mark Showers: RGAX was established roughly three and a half years ago. At a core business level, the fundamental driver was to create a new and diversified set of earning streams for RGA. Specifically, it was designed to create earning streams within the health and life sectors that are outside of our core reinsurance business. We see ourselves as a mission-driven organization, and the mission we established at RGAX is to help people live longer, healthier, and more financially secure lives. While this broadens our base beyond the typical business of RGA, it is still targeted at the areas of life and health.
High: How do you think about the topic of innovation, and how do you direct the team to focus on the various areas in which it is involved?
Showers: RGA is built on innovation so we want to make it clear that RGAX is not the only place where innovation occurs. Because of this, we use the term ‘transformation’ to describe the work of RGAX. There are four pillars or lines of business where we focus our efforts: data analytics, digital distribution of life insurance, consumer engagement, and insurance services. We pursue each of these in three different ways:
Next month, Sasan Goodarzi will become the Chief Executive Officer of Intuit. He once made his ambition to rise to the CEO role clear to his superiors, and as they cottoned to the idea and more officially put in him the succession path for CEO, he was exposed to each business unit of the company. He notes in my interview with him that, though it was important for him to make his hopes clear, he also gained even more mightily when he focused on more on enjoying the jobs he took on for the opportunity and learning that each offered.
His three most recent roles have been Executive Vice President of Small Business, Executive Vice President and General Manager of TurboTax, and Chief Information Officer. Interestingly, he counts the CIO role as his most exciting. The reasons include the expansive view of the business that the CIO role offers, but also ability to influence the next generation of technology change that will position the company for growth.
Among the special attributes that Goodarzi holds dear, and will remain areas of emphasis in his administration will be the company’s culture and its focus on customers. He believes strongly that a fulfilling work environment yields better results for customers.
In this interview, we cover his preparations for the CEO role, how he sees the company growing in his tenure, the role that artificial intelligence will play, and a variety of other topics.
(To listen to an unabridged podcast version of this interview, please visit this link. This is the 40th article in the “Beyond CIO” series. To read through past interviews with executives from companies like Waste Management, Biogen, Allstate, Aetna, Marsh & McLennan, and BMO Financial Group, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: In early 2019, you will ascend to the Chief Executive Officer role of Intuit. Congratulations. Can you talk about the point at which you found out about this news?
Sasan Goodarzi: I found out about the news several days before it went public. Intuit is an incredible company, and to have the opportunity to move into [outgoing CEO] Brad Smith’s role is truly an honor. Over the past eleven years, Brad has done a remarkable job of positioning the company for an incredible next chapter, so he deserves a great deal of credit for his leadership. Building leadership capabilities and mobility are core competencies for Intuit. Although this announcement is a visible one, we are extremely deliberate about ensuring that we have successors for key roles across the company. In his eighth year, Brad notified the board that he would be stepping down at some point in the future. The board and Brad agreed to the rigorous process of hiring an outside firm to look at external leaders, assess leaders within the company, and determine what the company needed in its next chapter. While that was taking place, Brad chose to do what we do across the company. Several leaders, including myself, switched businesses a few years ago. I have had the privilege of being in all of the company’s businesses, including the CIO role. The point of this switch was to ensure that we had strong internal candidates who could take over when Brad was ready to step down.
11/19/2018
Shaleen Devgun is a remarkable innovator in the chief information officer community. For the past three years, he has been the CIO of $4 billion Schneider National, a trucking and logistics company based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. You might suspect that running IT for a trucking company based in Green Bay might be an enormous challenge. His burden is a shade lighter inasmuch as two other members of the executive committee at Schneider National are former CIOs, including the company’s CEO Chris Lofgren. (In the past, I interviewed Lofgren about his rise from CIO to CEO.)
Moreover, he has taken a creative approach toward recruiting to his his humble city: he and his team work on tough problems. The logistics business has endless opportunities for greater efficiency and for revenue gains. Devgun’s Forbes CIO Innovation award was based upon his team’s work on a multivendor transportation marketplace with consumer grade tablets, Internet-of-Things devices, and apps. This is just one of several examples of the ideas that have led Devgun and others in the company to think of Schneider National as a technology company masquerading as a trucking company.
(To listen to an unabridged podcast version of this interview, please click this link. To read future articles like this one, please follow me on Twitter @PeterAHigh.)
Peter High: Please describe Schneider National’s business and your role as their Chief Information Officer.
Shaleen Devgun: Schneider National is one of the nation’s largest truckload carriers, and we are a leader in the transportation and logistics space. The breadth of our business is large as we serve our customers through a diverse set of offerings, from over-the-road [OTR] to intermodal, and we also have a healthy logistics business. I have been with the company for around a decade, and I am three years into the CIO role. As part of the executive team, I report to our President and CEO. In addition to my traditional CIO responsibilities, I have accountability for the business transformation, our logistics engineering efforts, and the corporate venturing around our technology.
11/13/2018
Dinu Parel has been named the new Chief Information Officer of Parker Hannifin Corporation, a Mayfield Heights, Ohio-based maker of motion and control technology products. Parel succeeds William Eline, who had been with the company for 40 years.
Prior to this role, Parel was CIO of Downers Grove, Illinois-based Dover Corporation, where he was the industrial conglomerate’s first ever CIO. I interviewed Parel earlier this year, in which he spoke about transforming IT from a traditional, back-office support function to an advisory function that helps drive business growth and innovative technologies such as Blockchain.
To read the full article, please visit Forbes
11/12/2018
Ralph Loura joined Lumentum on October 22 as the company’s new chief information officer. Lumentum is a $1 billion revenue manufacturer of optical and photonic products enabling optical networking and commercial laser customers worldwide. Until recently he was the Chief Technology Officer of Rodan + Fields.
“Ralph brings unparalleled information technology experience from premier companies to Lumentum,” said Alan Lowe, President and CEO, Lumentum. “He has a true passion for problem solving and innovation and is an industry-recognized IT leader. I’m sure he will be a great fit at Lumentum, and I am pleased to have him join our leadership team.”
Seth Goldman was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, and throughout his life, he dreamed of ideas to pursue. That tendency was enhanced when he crossed paths with Yale School of Management Professor Barry Nalebuff while pursuing his graduate degree in business administration. The student impressed the professor with his insights, and his willingness to productively debate ideas in class. A couple of years after business school, Goldman went for a run in New York City, entered a convenience store, and despite his thirst, was not impressed by the usual suspect beverages on offer. He viewed this as an idea to explore. As it happened, Nalebuff was returning from India, where he had participated in a tea auction. The process had led him to think of how best to brand tea. The name Honest Tea came to him.
These dual epiphanies proved fortuitous, and eventually they went into business together. In this interview, Goldman tells his side of the story, including a bottling issue that brought the company to the brink of failure, the value the company derived out of using game theory when engaging with investors in the business, and how they maintained so much creative control even after Coca-Cola purchased the business.
Peter High: Can you talk about your relationship with Honest Tea co-founder Barry Nalebuff, who was your professor at the Yale School of Management? How did your relationship move from student-professor to start-up co-founders?
Seth Goldman: Because both my parents are professors, my family had rigorous academic discussions at the table when I was growing up. To many students, Barry was an intimidating presence, and there were stories of students who were brought to tears in his classroom. I was fortunate that the first course I took with Barry was on political and economic marketing, and having previously worked on presidential campaigns, that was in my wheelhouse. My first interactions with Barry came from a position of strength, and I had strong insights that gave him a positive impression. The next course I took with Barry was on competitive strategy, and similar to the first class, I had some creative ideas. In this course, I put together a business plan for something related to urinary tract infections [UTIs], which is obviously substantially different than my idea for Honest Tea. Barry thought my idea showed bright and creative thinking, and he appreciated the fact that I was not a pushover in the classroom. I believe having that strong presence and pushing back in the right way can make a strong impression, which it did for Barry.
