Power versus Ego
What happens when CIO power meets business ego? It is an issue that many CIOs face. "In some environments you get a lot of ego, and you have various strands of power. At the pointy end of the business this is all about information," says one CIO who declined to be named. "For the CIO there is an extreme danger of going head-to-head with other power bases and it can be an arm wrestle. Step one is to learn the playing field."
Understanding the politics of the game, the CIO has established well-defined boundaries within which the information systems have to operate, and which are justified on largely economic principles. While this allows some flexibility for the individual users of the system, it precludes a free-for-all technology-wise.
"Everyone around here will say: 'Why can't we do it this way?' Those arguments are knocked into touch by the economic argument that we do it just one way," CIO says.
Another CIO reports a similar problem with the business. "I feel I don't have enough respect in the business. Maybe that is just this business. I do find the attitudes of the staff and dealing with them difficult sometimes. Now whether their attitude is a general attitude to IT, or whether that's their attitude towards me, I don't know. I tackle it occasionally, but most of the time I just cop it."
When at the OSR, Kennedy quickly identified grumbling stakeholders in the business upon taking on the role, and worked out they could pose a stumbling block. Rather than "cop it", he made it a priority to invest more time with the grumblers in a bid to win them over. "I had some good discussions with the CEO about where there were strong relationships with IT or not and I specifically went after those where they weren't good," Kennedy says.
"I used the honeymoon to work out why they weren't so good. If you understand where the enemies of IT are, then it puts you in a more powerful position later," when you do have to enforce your power. "One director wanted to buy a different software product that didn't line up with the enterprise architecture and there was the classic stand-off between the business unit and IT.
"At that point I'd been there two years and had introduced an enterprise architecture, and strongly enforced it. So I said no to him - in nicer words - and explained why. It was the only time I'd used explicit power, and it was one of the directors who'd been identified as having problems with IT early on, but this time it didn't damage the relationship. Once a week I got together with this director. For four years we did it and over those four years we went from oil and water to a cooperative collaboration."
Kennedy uses a gardening metaphor to explain how he woos users. "Planting ideas is like planting seeds: you plant them, germinate them and feed them."
Powerful CIOs also have to navigate egos on their own team as well as those in the business. One CIO acknowledges being challenged by the IT department itself, for what the IT team saw as an overly business-centric approach. Rather than focusing on new technology the CIO is exploring new business protocols and procedures, where technology is helpful but not critical.
"I've had a lot of push back from IT, fundamentally because I'm not focusing in their comfort zone," the CIO says. "People aren't openly challenging me, but there are some grumbles. The way I'm tackling it is to tighten governance. Until they start behaving I'll screw down the governance."
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