The CIO Takes Over Corporate Strategy: An Interview With Chris Laping Of Red Robin

by Peter High, published on Forbes.com

10-06-2014

Chief information officers are playing an increased role in running strategy for their companies. As I mention in my book, Implementing World Class IT Strategy, the reasons for this include that IT now needs to bring to life the strategic imperatives of every part of the company, and it behooves CIOs to become more woven into the fabric of the strategic planning process of all parts of the company. A CIO who finds strategic plans lacking, or where it produces plans that are of differing levels of clarity and granularity (rendering them difficult to compare and contrast) should take matters into his or her own hands, both to ensure that the right priorities are made and for self-preservation.

One of my favorite stories from the book is from Chris Laping, who joined Red Robin as CIO in June of 2007. Laping has the “killer combination” that so many of the people featured in the CIO-Plus and Beyond CIO series have exhibited. He is an engineer with an MBA. He also spent time as a consultant. Therefore, he is a tech savvy problem solver with a mind geared toward developing business ideas that will benefit the entire company and its customers. Laping’s recommendation led to him being named Senior Vice President of Business Transformation, which made him the de facto head of strategy for the company. As someone who personifies the strategic CIO, I reached out to Laping to learn more about how this evolution came about.

(This is the second article in the Strategic CIO series. Read the opening piece in the series, Does IT Strategy Matter?. To read future articles in the series, please click the “Follow” link above.)

Peter High: Chris, talk about the strategy setting process at Red Robin when you originally joined the company.  How was it organized, and who (if any one person) led it?

Chris Laping: When I joined Red Robin, the company was just beginning to build its strategic planning process.  I think the team inherently knew that building alignment for the priorities of the business was important, but since the company was moving 100 miles per hour, it was difficult to push the pause button and refocus the energy inward.  At that time, the teams were also working cooperatively versus collaboratively.  Therefore, to me it felt a little frenetic, disorganized and like 100 Senators in the room representing the needs of their own departments and stakeholders.

High: What challenges did you, as CIO, face in interpreting the disparate plans of the various executives across the company?

Laping: I think an organization’s CIO is often in the position of trying to balance the needs of multiple stakeholders.  If you think about it, the theory of optimization says that one thing usually comes at the expense of another…so the biggest challenge a CIO can face is bringing those stakeholders to the table and facilitating an open (and emotion-free, if possible) discussion about the needs of the business.  In other words, the company will never be more successful than when all team members are in the boat rowing the same direction.  The only other option is to try to make those decisions on your own and on behalf of the business in an ivory tower…and good luck with that.

Additional topics covered in the article include:

• How did you insert yourself into the process to a greater degree?
• What process did you use in those early days in order to insert yourself and to convey the potential value that you could provide?
• When did it occur to you that you might be able to take a leadership role in the strategic planning process more permanently?
• Talk a bit about the process you now use to refresh strategy each year.
• What is the difference between IT’s portion of other division’s strategies versus the strategy that you create for IT itself?
• What is it about the CIO role that has made it logical for you to take on these additional responsibilities?

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