"When I joined Hutchison, I conducted one-on-ones with all of the staff and invested a lot of time in talking and listening to them to try to find out what issues they had and how we could improve things. I did the same with the business. We have a lot of challenges in front of us and we do still make mistakes. But I think the level of service we're providing the company today has improved and therefore the service going out to the end consumer who has an Orange mobile, or who we see as a potential consumer on the 3G network, has improved," Young says.based in Hong Kong and while most of Young's previous CIO roles have been regional ones, his current one is essentially domestic. However, shortly after joining Hutchison, the company decided to drive a global approach to IT development (including the 3G network project) in order to maximise the intellect in the company as well as reduce costs and speed up the delivery of systems. Young was consequently appointed to a global IT board comprising six directors, so he still averages one international trip each month, typically to Italy or the UK, where the bulk of development takes place.
The chief difference between his role at Hutchison and previous ones, Young says, is the pace and the uncertainty, which he has never before experienced to the same degree.
"I think that as we mature we tend to know the shortcuts and hopefully have learnt from our mistakes," he reflects. "Having said and applied all of that, this is still the fastest paced [company] I've ever worked in, again because we're running two businesses in a sense - building one and maintaining another. Then the uncertainty comes in to what we're building because there's a lot of innovation involved and in some cases we're not quite sure what's coming up. Alongside that, though, is the satisfaction. The motivation and the passion of people working for this company is unbelievable. I've never come across it before."
Whe CIO ws launched five years ago, the CIO position, in both name and concept, was still relatively new in Australia. Young doesn't think the role itself has fundamentally changed in that time, but that those in it have become more experienced at it. He also thinks businesses have become more aware of IT and what IT can deliver, and that a number of things that five years ago were viewed as discretionary are now seen as critical. He cites Hutchison as an example of where networks and IT are normally first or second on the agenda of any major meeting.
In 1998, Young made the statement: "It really is Â'career is over' for CIOs who don't possess business skills" - and he thinks it still applies, in that being a successful CIO is all about relationships, communication and human rather than technical attributes. In fact, Young sums up the lessons he has learned throughout his career - and life - in one word: listen.
"We all have good ideas throughout our career and we have staff who have good ideas. But if you think about all of the stories that keep coming up about the disconnect between business and IT and unfulfilled expectations, for me [the problem] comes back to basic communication, which comes back to listening. It's about listening to understand what the business wants, what your staff need and what the community's looking for," he says.
However, Young still believes that technical skills are important. He accepts that in the right organisation someone without a technical background or with just a semi-technical background can be a successful CIO. In his experience, though, there is more risk of that not working as well as an IT professional who has made the transition to management. In the case of non-technical CIOs, he has encountered flaws in design and cost, which normally need to be rectified. This in turn has also created a disconnect with the business, he says, because promises were made that could not be kept.
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