In his first IT management role at Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP), Walker identified the managing director of a business unit as having management skills he valued. "You study the person and how they've done something, how they've achieved it. Anyone can wave their arms around and talk strategy," Walker says, "but it's the one who understands how to get traction who achieves real results."
But not every mentor is able to showcase the full portfolio of skills that a CIO needs. For example Walker's mentor at BNP was very good on business expansion, but less skilled at managing the day-to-day business. So Walker fleshed out his understanding by identifying other individuals and studying them. One, a CIO at a financial institution, was known for a particularly brutal management style, a style Walker thought he might occasionally find useful. He studied how the CIO operated and what techniques seemed to deliver what results.
In each mentoring instance Walker wasn't setting out to emulate his unofficial guide, instead he was looking for specific skills and traits to add to his management repertoire. This informal mentoring approach has stood Walker in good stead, and is likely one of the reasons he's less than enthusiastic about formal education programs, although time seems the major inhibitor.
"In the last five years I've looked at it [an MBA]," Walker says, "but in the jobs I do I burn through 60 hours a week. To do an MBA you need 15 hours a week, which is pretty considerable given that I'm trying to earn a living. It's all to do with the growth of your career. I've got a reputation as someone who gets things done." Walker believes that if he had invested energy into an MBA program then he may have done fewer things more slowly.
Although he's shelved ideas of a paper qualification, Walker has not abandoned education itself and has for the past five months been working with a business coach, a former executive with about 20 years experience. "There are some challenges in your career and one is the ability to influence people and explain topics. I'm working on that with my business coach," he says.
Up-to-Date Knowledge
While Walker is clearly a fan of the informal education approach, other CIOs, like Dairy Farmers' Tony Talbot, believe it is critical to be able to point to recent qualifications to demonstrate currency of ideas and knowledge.
"Some people have degrees from years ago, but they are not relevant. I have a graduate diploma in technology management, which I got about five years ago. But it wasn't about IT management; it was about manufacturing technology," says Talbot, who is the group information services and solutions manager for Dairy Farmers. "CIOs now need to be totally aligned with the business. That is, they need the full spread of sales, finance, manufacturing, human resources and marketing understanding, so that when they are talking to the heads of these departments CIOs know what they need.
"[Furthering your] education ensures that you look at things differently. There's a saying that when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail. Education helps ensure that you increase your skills to obtain a considered result," says Talbot. "Yet it might not be a technology solution for every issue - maybe a process change is required. For that, the currency of your education is paramount."
Talbot believes a lot of the technical knowledge CIOs need is picked up on the job, "but taking the time out to do appropriate business courses really helps in information management".
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