CEO - CIO: Bridging The Chasm, Part I

When talking to CEO's and CIO's, I notice a big difference in outlook. The differences seem to fall into 3 key areas:

1) CEO's want change - CIO's tend to resist it. Most CEO's I've talked to are keenly aware of the global competitive landscape and know they have to change to stay relevant in the marketplace - they at least say they want change. But many CIO's are running by their business goals of "keeping the lights on" or more appropriately, "keeping the servers running", with less money. Thus, any large scale or maybe even any change at all is not high on many CIO's list.

2) The Fear Factor. In college sports, it's accepted that a new head coach brings in his/her team of assistants. I've heard teams will pay another $10 million or so in hiring and severance payments to give a new coach "his" team of assistants. Wholesale team changes are done in Washington with every new President. And even when Shirley Tilghman became president of dear old Nassau, there were suddenly a bunch of Dean changes. Yet, it's far less common to see new CEO's quickly bring in "their" IT team of a new CIO with maybe 1-2 levels of top execs below that. Thus, it appears many CIO's seem to be less secure about moving aggressively on IT issues because they are not that confident in their relationship to the CEO or other high level execs.

I recently had a nervous CIO explain to me that the "board would kill him" if he was to spend money on a consultant after the $x million purchase of large enterprise software - failing to even look at how with small additional consulting money it could make huge business differences with his purchase and help address the complaints I heard at several operational units. I heard one CEO say he would like to make more changes but had to deal with the team he had inherited - that sounds like a real recipe for losing and a severe disconnect between the CEO and IT.

3) The Black Hole Syndrome. You know the stories. How CEO's have watched tens or even hundreds of $$ millions go into some IT project fiasco. This leads to the "safer" but wrong action of hiring "cheaper" people to replace the automation. I've just witnessed where a CIO added expensive full-time staff to perform tasks that lend themselves to computerization - in an industry that is getting national attention for poor cost control. Possibly a short term cost savings, but almost always a devasting long-term business mistake. Little wonder that CEO's often shake their head with IT. But one CEO argued with me that it is always cheaper for him to farm something out to a "3rd world" country - you know what the arguments are - but he wouldn't hear it. Big and bigger disconnect.

Next we'll address how these "chasms" can be addressed.