The Cloud Computing Leadership Challenge - An Introduction

You know the story. CIO buys into Cloud Computing model and the company saves millions. You are carried off on the shoulders of the CFO and forever enshrined in the CIO Hall of Fame. That’s your story right? Dropping the sarcasm for a minute I can guarantee you one thing – that is actually someone’s story. There are real life success stories using the Cloud to increase flexibility, capacity and manage cost. The CIOs and IT VPs leading the charge in the Cloud Computing space are in a position to fundamentally alter the traditional IT approach to value proposition. The interesting aspect of all this is every one of us will end up adopting the fundamental concepts of Cloud Computing regardless of industry or location. How many of you remember the intellectual hallway battles of Token Ring vs. Ethernet or Mainframe vs. Client/Server? Both of the winners were inevitable because they offered opportunities to implement and manage solutions with an emphasis on flexibility, capacity and cost. Cloud Computing concepts are seeping into the fabric of IT for the same reasons. AWS continues to offer Services, APIs and SDKs that make their platform increasingly seamless and straightforward for application development and infrastructure teams to adopt.  Microsoft has recently made significant inroads in deploying service bus and Azure functionality as parts of Windows Server such that migration between on premise and off premise (Hybrid Cloud Computing) is achievable with minimal disruption. Cloud Computing features and concepts are becoming part of what we do and there is no decision to be made – only a course to set.

Now we get to the root of this post. I appreciate we all of have different levels of technical competency and interest. Most Chief Information Officers, even the most technically inclined, have responsibilities that prevent them taking on the mantel of Cloud Architect. I am not suggesting you fight that. Instead I am suggesting you acknowledge the real impact of Cloud Computing on your obligations – the people and how they are organized. Most of the press we read slants Cloud Computing as nothing more than a service bought and used off premise. The Cloud Computing challenges  you really face are how will you turn your internal infrastructure into a Cloud, how will you blend your internal Cloud and external Cloud together seamlessly creating a Hybrid Cloud, how will you expand and contract the Cloud to manage costs, how will you take traditional custom application services and share them as application infrastructure, how will you take traditional infrastructure services and share them as applications and how will you organize, train and lead your people through this evolution?

In my next post I will explore these challenges in more detail and discuss real life organizational, management and leadership skills to transform your organization into one that can leverage and optimize the emergence of Cloud Computing as an inevitable approach for the management of infrastructure and application services in the enterprise.

IT Talent War: Too many free agents not enough draft picks.

Sports analogies can be painful. They are generally delivered with the assumption everybody in the room has a background that relates to the analogy. However, in this case it would be worthy investment for every CIO or IT Director to research the topic because it is simply incredibly applicable – even if sports are not of great interest to you personally.

American sports teams generally build their roster through two methods. Drafting players that have yet to play professionally (rookies) or acquiring free agents (veterans) through contract negotiations.  Depending on the sport and the governing body in place the rules behind drafting players that have yet to sign professional contracts or negotiating a contract with a veteran player are varied, but let’s ignore all of that and boil the whole process down to two options:

1.       Hire people who can perform now (veterans)

Or

2.       Hire people who can perform in the future (rookies).

So, I can already hear the concerns about drafting because every Chief Information Officer needs to deliver results now and drafting rarely drives that outcome. However, do you think the coach of a sports team has a different problem? They have the exact same problem, but they have better answers! These people are doing what we need to learn how to do.

The coach of a successful team has learned how to:

·         Balance the mix of veterans and rookies to create synergy and

·         Screen rookies to get people who can perform beyond their experience level.

This is not an art, but is a science based on your recruiting process, interviewing process, selection process and benefits/compensation strategy.  How much time do you spend looking at these facets of your human resource management plan and how strategic is your approach? Are you hiring to achieve a composite goal or to solve individual problems? Have you acknowledged that trying to hire all veterans is at best going to be an exercise in realizing there isn’t enough elasticity in the workforce to meet your demand and at worst is too expensive? Do you only hire rookies when you consciously or subconsciously have limited interest in the outcome so it is acceptable to take the risk? Are you willing to play great players out of position to create team success when it is more valuable than individual success?

As a CIO you are faced with increasing demand and decreasing resources - it is critical to create an approach that utilizes the best rookies and the best veterans in a manner that raises the bar higher than the competition can, but you won’t stumble on it – you have to engineer it.

So here are some tips:

1.      Recruit early. Engage with local universities and community/tech colleges. Start to find the next generation of workers before anyone else can. Be a scout not just a recruiter.

2.      Establish a personality and behavior testing program baseline off of your existing team. Make the investment to put candidates through the same testing and try to create complimentary outcomes. Myers-Briggs, Birkman and other tests are very valuable if you take their application and use seriously.

3.      Prepare the people on your team for the challenges associated with onboarding rookies and veterans. If the people in place value the additions and understand how to leverage their arrival the results will be accelerated and dependable.

4.      Never, ever, ever stop recruiting. Have an internal recruiter or strong relationships with external recruiters that always keep candidates moving in front of the organization.

5.      Get to know the veterans well before you get serious about an offer. This is partially covered in the previous point, but the veterans are more likely to be found in settings (conferences, user groups, vendor events) where you can get to know them personally and professionally which is more difficult with rookies.

6.      Be aggressive at skill assessment. Workout the candidates and always inspect what you expect from them.

7.      Don’t be afraid to create evaluation, reward and benefits plan that are out of the ordinary. The issue isn’t how to give more away; rather, I suggest you be creative to create a gap in perception between the ordinary and the extraordinary. Be creative.

8.      Don’t make excuses. I know these things are hard. I know they take money and time. I also know that the companies with the best people produce the best results and no one can afford to sit back and take their chances anymore. Every senior IT leader, CIO, CTO or director needs to get more serious and more committed to their strategic human resource initiatives.

Attacking Complexity: A CIO built it, but can a CIO fix it?

Several weeks ago I was having a conversation with another CIO and the topic of change and the perils of unaddressed complexity inside the IT bubble surfaced. To clarify, I define unaddressed complexity as complexity that exists for any reason other than as a requirement to solve a problem. It is a weed in our technical garden. 

The Chief Information Officer I was speaking with phrased his personal and corporate initiatives on this risk as “attacking complexity.” I love this type of phrasing because it genuinely focuses my thinking on the challenges I face every day and my approach to solving them.  

I started to develop a short list of concepts we should all put into our tool belt as we tackle the complexity issue:

1.       The problem will not solve itself. Simplification and the attack on complexity must be supported by dedicated resources. It is, at the core, an exercise in managing change. Managing change is as much about people as it is about technology and process - boots on the ground will be a requirement.

2.       A value proposition has to be developed that explains and measures the benefits of simplification in the context of those who will be affected. Remember, this is all about managing complexity as it relates to systems and technologies under the IT umbrella. As a result it is easy for us to quantify the benefits to IT when we simplify, but it is less clear how those benefits bleed into the lines of business the systems support.  Additionally, while the “what helps me, helps you” argument is real – I think every VP, SVP and CIO reading this knows a better cornerstone to your argument will be to clarify direct financial, productivity or customer benefits to the users of the platforms that will be simplified.

3.       Set targets, manage progress and report results. You can’t really attack complexity if you are afraid to shine a bright light on the problem. I am appreciative of the politics and risks that often creep into these types of exercises. Also, I understand that regardless of how “simple” we want the results there are many instances where complicated solutions make the most sense, but short term goals can be met by over complicated, poorly architected application/platform infrastructures. Long term success requires and mandates the attack on complexity. To reasonable and successfully manage to long term goals a plan that puts the task and deliverables in play is critical – even if it puts you or me at risk.

4.       Work hard, roll your sleeves up and don’t be afraid to engage directly. It is easy to try and stare at something long enough in the hopes it will go away, but getting traction on the most difficult problems may not require much more than an example. You, sitting in a room learning, partnering and contributing to the process.  Being a bridge from the safety of the systems in place, even if it is too complex, to the benefits of a simplified world is a worthy task for every CIO.

I am certain the ideas and approaches you all have developed are varied and equally worth mentioning. This is just my short list not “the” short list. Feel free to comment and share your ideas.

Post Technical Stress Disorder: Don’t be the CIO unable to run IT

Every day I see two clear goals: lead the team of IT professionals responsible for technology, process and collaboration in a manner that maximizes the contribution towards corporate objectives and cooperate with other senior executives to influence and understand the objectives.

Working with other senior executives as a partner, translator and leader has been the focus of my post technical endeavors. Post technical simply being the time in my career where checking source out of team foundation server and rolling up my sleeves to make some ASP.net changes is no longer part of my daily routine. It is very rare to find a Chief Information Officer or SVP of some critical IT service participating in daily stand-ups, backlog grooming sessions or taking coding assignments with their team in a sprint to meet the objectives of a user story. As a matter of fact, most of the executives we work for or with would probably frown on this type of endeavor as a distraction from your primary responsibilities and concerns.  I agree with them. A CIO has a much broader set of opportunities and objectives than to be the super-coder of the team or the only person who knows how to update the firmware on that one router you should have replaced 5 years ago.

However, the paradox we face is intriguing. A post technical focus is critical to many CIO’s ongoing success; the teams we manage respond better to our leadership when the post technical mindset is skewed by as much detail on how IT works and how the people in IT perform their job as possible.

Fortunately, the people you are managing and leading every day probably have low expectations. Let’s be honest with each other – how many network admins and developers expect you to have relevant technical skills at this point in your career?

So, you are starting to wonder, if my peers don’t expect me to have retained deeply  technical skills, my team doesn’t expect me to have retained deeply technical skills and my primary objective as CIO probably doesn’t depend on deeply technical skills – why do I care? You care because as the senior IT executive in your business you want to be able to manage and interface with your domain. You care because at some level you want to validate the information you are given about projects, technology choices and procedures. You care because you want to be connected to every person put in your care.

If none of those reasons work I will give you one more that should matter to every single person in IT – self preservation.

The next generation of CIOs, CTOs and senior IT leaders are going to retain significantly more technical expertise deeper into their career than the current crop of senior IT executives. These up and coming leaders have grown up with more complicated technology, process and capability than the people currently running the show. They are and will be well versed in agile practices, collaborative styles and tools, social computing and exposure to scripting and source code models as a hobby not a profession.

Many of today’s IT leaders are feeling the stress and pain of not being able to comprehend the practices and technologies of their team. When I see this start to set in I always envision a condition I call “Post Technology Stress Disorder”. A condition where you start to feel disconnected and unable to deeply manage your area of responsibilities due to the natural and relevant focus of your career versus the area you lead. You are managing with a post technical emphasis while the teams are pushing further and further into technologies and practices you have no direct experience applying. Eventually this disconnect puts you into a situation where your ability to directly manage the IT function starts to attrite and you are only able to manage the people who manage IT.

You might find this to be a natural part of a progressive senior IT career, but I would challenge that thinking and ask you to instead see the counterpoint – what could be better for an organization than a CIO able to perform well as a post technical leader and an inspirational technologist for the IT enterprise?

So, assuming you have an interest in maintaining or refreshing your technology management skills you will find the remedy for Post Technical Stress Disorder is simple. Don’t be afraid to start at the beginning. Learn the basics of mark up languages, scripting environments and modern operating systems. Spend time one on one with your team mates. Ask them to show you what they do and how. Go to meetings where technical decisions get made. Learn. You don’t have to be and shouldn’t be the expert, but you will be a better CIO and a better executive if you know how your team members perform their jobs.

Are you the CIO or Chief Problem Solver? Boardroom vs. War Room Part 3 of 3

If you have been following the trilogy of “Boardroom vs. War Room” you already know where we are. In Part 1 I discussed the importance of being valuable within your organization and reaching a position of importance should have nothing to do with a fixation on title. Getting to the Boardroom has everything to do with the company you work for and the value proposition you bring to life. It has little, and perhaps nothing, to do with your title. Part 2 was a deep dive into the value of the War Room and how a Senior Information Technology leader or Chief Information Officer can be relevant and critical in the trenches too. In the last part I want to walk you through how you can be the bridge between the strategic nature of the Boardroom and the tactical nature of the War Room.

It is often good enough to be a great strategist and help the senior leadership of your company push towards and capture their goals. It is often good enough, in a specific type of organization, to be the default hands on tactician that keeps the lights on and the systems churning. Different companies need different outputs from their CIOs and CTOs.

My experiences indicate it is easier to find one or the other. It is much more difficult to find someone who can do both. Furthermore, it is often not even a consideration to put someone in the position of Chief Information Officer and expect both. However, it is clearly an emerging trend to expect senior IT strategists and leaders to be capable of interfacing and bringing value across the spectrum. Perhaps it is the increasing technical sophistication of the emerging work force or maybe the increasing complexity of the systems and platforms that support business objectives and it is possibly nothing more complicated than every day we do this thing – bring technology to bear on complicated problems – we are simply expected to be better through experience. Regardless, I have one simple piece of advice for everyone who desires to make the greatest impact possible on their organization by being the bridge between the Boardroom and the War Room: start each day out as the Chief Problem Solver not the Chief Information Officer.

The Chief Problem Solver is a mental state where the challenges of the organization become your personal challenges. The struggles of your peers become your struggles. The tools and skills you command are used purely in the interest of the people who derive value from your organizations outputs. It is an apolitical state of mind that fuels trust and generates momentum out of the Board Room and into the War Room.

Let’s break it down into two parts.

Part 1 – Who else has as much capacity to affect change the moment they leave the Board Room? Most of your peers in finance, marketing, operations and sales have diminutive staff and budget allocations compared to you. Few have the tools and expertise to make – yes “make” – solutions out of what appears to be thin air. Consequently, you the CIO turned Chief Problem Solver have enormous collateral to walk out of the Board Room and make the strategy jump to life in the War Room.

Part 2 – Who else has the process, infrastructure, nomenclature and training to instantly support strategy turned into tactics in the form of a service? ITIL is an excellent example of how we can shrink wrap and manage change like a commodity. I am not suggesting it is easy and if you have a basic foundation in ITIL concepts you can appreciate the enormous amount of rigor and commitment it takes to run IT as a service, but we have the tools and knowledge to support the tactics that realize the strategy and this is an advantage to creating a sustainable problem solving organization.

Put these two things together and you get the idea pretty quickly that one of the best outcomes of pushing yourself towards an equal presence in the Board Room and the War Room is this: the organization can rely on you to make strategy come to life and problems go away. This is a unique and valuable role for Chief Information Officer, SVP or IT Director and not easily replaced or duplicated. Being in the space of Chief Problem Solver makes you relevant when the strategy is created and critical when the tactics come to life.

BONUS POST: Boardroom vs. War Room discussion from LinkedIn group "IT Transformation"

This was a great question that I hope can reach a more general audience - so enjoy the re-post!

Original Question from LinkedIn Group:
Thanks for the post and link to your blog. One question I have is 'what are the boundaries of the War Room' from your perspective ? For example, my experience from a prior roles and with our current clients indicates a true distinction in the use of the War Room for internal IT action and the relationship with the Business customers. Interested in your thoughts :) !

Answer:
think what you are talking about is – do we want or should we let the customer see how the sausage gets made? Generally, I think the answer is no. However, the interesting aspect to the answer is should we look at the process on a percentage basis and only answer “no” to part of the process?

When I was a kid I remember a diner where the handoff from the kitchen to the counter was a little slit in the - the food magically appeared. Now, my local diner has a big glass wall where you can see the cook hard at work using meticulously placed ingredients that are constantly refreshed. He is entertaining the patrons convincing them this is the cleanest, hippest place to grab a stack of pancakes and hash browns. Many Krispy Kreme stores have large glass walls where the kids can see the donuts being proofed and dropped into the fry pit and then rolled through the glazing machine. All of these things market the value and quality of the process while obfuscating the less attractive pieces. No one sees the ingredients being prepared, no one sees the dishes being cleaned, no one sees the ham come out of the freezer, and no one sees the donut being mixed or the pots being cleaned. The process is part of the marketing and assurance you are spending your money and time wisely.

Roll that same concept into IT and you get how I handle the War Room. We perform some type of significant maintenance to all or part of our domestic infrastructure every quarter. Usually this is over a weekend. We start the weekend off with a War Room that is IT only and dedicated to managing the maintenance events. We don’t communicate much about this part of the exercise until the infrastructure and associated systems are ready to go and then we start a check out process. The folks engaged in the check out process now start interacting with the War Room staff to verify – from their perspective – everything is ready to go. Now, on the next business day we actually set up a War Room in a visible location within the building and broadcast to every stakeholder where we are and what we are doing. They know we are on the job and focused on issue management, resolution and follow up. Of course, the risk is low at this point because of the process over the weekend. However, the sense everyone has of what we are doing and why is strongly enforced. The trust we are on the job is enhanced. If a problem does materialize people can reach us easily and feel good about the status. I think this “part” of the War Room process is shared with everyone and results in a very healthy outcome!

Part 2: Is the War Room really so bad for a CIO?

Previously, I explored why title and organizational accountability seem to surface on a regular basis for CIO and IT Directors as a critical aspect of their career ambitions. The metaphor I developed was based around the idea that being in the “Boardroom” with the senior management of an organization was somehow related to your title as Chief Information Officer or the title of the person to whom you directly report. Wrapped into this metaphor is the idea of the “War Room” being a reflection of a tactical obligation and career limiting alignment which will have a direct negative impact on your career ambitions. The goal of Part 2 is to dispel this assumption within the metaphor, shine a bright light on what the War Room really is and explain why it is an essential career development platform.

Of course, the War Room is not the place we gather to discuss casual events. This is the place where the folks who work for you (or you work with) convene to cope with some type of challenge, emergency or event that requires a focus and dedication to detail not possible in the normal course of conference calls, meetings and cubicle communiqués that fulfill the normal troubleshooting and communication needs of your organization. The War Room is a tense, highly charged and dynamic environment.

Furthermore, I would ask you to see the War Room as a personification of the responsibilities we carry to maintain, fix and improve the infrastructure, applications and services of our companies. The War Room simply represents the fact IT needs to work and it only works when the IT people in a company are organized and attentive.

We, the CIOs and IT Directors of the world, are responsible for the daily success of our operations. Fundamentally, when you pay ample attention to the War Room and everything it represents you are paying attention to making sure IT works. I know there is very little glamour and excitement associated with being the type of leader that simply makes sure things work, but let’s take a minute and think through the ramifications of not – at a minimum – being able to achieve this level of competency.

First, why would you be entrusted with any amount of corporate strategy and leadership if your own house isn’t in order?

Second, how can you successfully build and grow a company when the underlying foundation isn’t solid?

Lastly, how can you get your team to go after big hairy goals when they simply don’t see you as a being in touch with the rigors and obligations of daily life in an IT department?

I can’t honestly think of too many conversations with CEOs or CFOs where the primary verbalized complaint was “our stuff doesn’t work”. I don’t believe most leaders or executives really want to be so vulgar in their description of such a critical asset. Usually, the pejorative attitudes I encounter further exacerbate disconnects between Boardroom and War Room. The other senior folks develop a sense the IT leaders aren’t strategic enough or can’t leverage the investments made to date. Realistically, what they are thinking is “why can’t these people make the basic things work without?” I am not a mind reader, but I do ask questions. When the Q&A starts what comes to the surface quickly is one simple fact: most executives outside of IT want IT to work like dial tone – always on.

So, before you think being skilled in the War Room doesn’t help your career remember one thing: managing the War Room means you are managing the reliability and quality of the services your company realize from IT. That is always a good career move. If you crave more get this one right first. If you still aren’t satisfied make sure you honestly assess the type of company you work for – some companies really don’t need IT to be strategic as much as they need it to be operationally excellent and there is no career failure associated with giving your company what it needs.

Next, Part 3, How to own the Boardroom and the War Room.

CIO in the Boardroom vs. War Room Part 1 of 3

Part 1: Why are we fixated on The Boardroom?

Many of us have been indoctrinated to fixate on one career goal - make it to the Boardroom. You must report to the CEO, you must have a "seat at the table" and you must do all of this or you simply can't be effective in your role. Sound familiar? Furthermore, the same mentality applies when talking titles. Every person who is the top IT leader in their organization wants to be titled CIO or CTO.

There is so much pressure to meet these goals one can miss the opportunity to do the thing that brought us all into this profession in the first place - solve problems and manage change. When you allow your career goals and opportunities to be measured on title and reporting relationship, as a dominant factor, you start making decisions out of context and with ill conceived ideas of how to produce the best results.

In my career as a senior IT leader I have held titles other than CIO while still being the top IT leader for my organization. I have held the title of CIO and reported to the CEO, the COO and various other acronyms. I really can't say, upon reflection, any of these scenarios were a direct impact on my success. The organization, my colleagues, person(s) providing direct supervision and the teams I built certainly affected my results. However, my title and my immediate manager's title - well I really can't offer that as a justification for my successes or failures.

So I offer everyone these three bits of advice. First, honestly assess your situation and ask yourself this: What would I do with my IT organization if I were the CEO? Actually, when you look at your title and reporting structure with an "outside in" perspective most of our situations make sense. CEOs are smart people and when they decide how to organize and title their senior management team it is usually a fair reflection of many factors. The type of industry, the size of the industry/company, the responsibilities of IT and the role it plays in the company and the comfort, time and insight a CEO feels justified providing to the top IT leader. Second, never be afraid to join larger or smaller organizations just because the title or reporting relationship changes. If the opportunity makes you grow - go for it. Third, if you already work in a larger organization with lateral opportunities don't fear making a move - if it makes you grow.

Next, Part 2, Is the War Room really so bad?

CIO Squared - a better way to reach your goals?

It is always dangerous to generalize. However, when you think about the people you know who read magazines such as CIO (or other industry/professional type publications) there is always one person who likes to take the smallest possible blurb and turn it into the next big thing. That isn't me.

I do like to keep up to date on what topics the publications within our profession believe will spark our interest. Ultimately, being plugged in will spark something in my own thinking or be a trend/concern I will have to address at some point in the future.

This article from their digital edition written by Peter High regarding the CIO Squared is a good example of how we should allow our thinking as CIOs to expand.

We get so fixated on our strategic impact we sometimes miss how difficult it is corral and control strategy in an organization. However, innovation is the root of a valuable strategic plan. Putting more emphasis on how you affect the innovative cycle within your organization may be the best roadmap to having an impact on the strategy.

Welcome to CIO Therapy!

We all need a little help once in a while. We all need some advice and some wisdom to navigate the challenges we face in the role of CIO. Unfortunately, it simply isn't very easy to build a network of peers that have the experience and the time we might need.

Building up the capacity and experience to help others is simply not that easy. However, through this blog I hope to parlay my years of experience and tenure into an ongoing source of insight and advice to help every CIO digest thoughtful topics and strategies bound to have a much bigger impact on our careers than the next OS, next development methodology or strategies for migrating to <insert new technology name here> .

Namely, the issues we face at mastering the intersection of people and technology.