The Power Seat

You're already at the pointy end of the IT pyramid when you make CIO. But do you have real power - and if you do, how do you use it, share it, grow it and keep it?

Some CIOs find talking about power as enticing as the prospect of root canal work. They have it, yes. But crow about it? That's another story. For some the topic prompts hand wringing; others squirm in leather chairs, glancing out the door to see who might be listening in. One CIO actually invokes the spectre of Adolf Hitler, pointing out that power was his problem.

Australia's CIOs it seems are a modest lot.

In fact about the only thing they are all prepared to admit is that the ultimate manifestation of their power is that when something goes wrong the buck stops at their respective desks. It is not as though all of them even believe they do have the greatest power over their IT systems. Some say it is the CEO or the CFO, or the business. Some are content to execute against strategy rather than formulate it.

When Telstra unveiled its technology strategy in November 2005 it was chief operating officer Greg Winn, not then CIO Vish Padmanabhan, doing the talking. At the time Padmanabhan was top dog of the telco's $1 billion plus IT operation, but he was not the one outlining strategy. He was "busy just trying to keep the spaghetti together", according to Winn. (Padmanabhan, whose first role at Telstra was as deputy CIO under then CIO Jeff Smith, stepped into the CIO shoes in 2005 when Smith left. In February Padmanabhan stepped back into his deputy CIO shoes with the announcement that Qantas CIO Fiona Balfour would be moving into the CIO spot come April.)

Even when CIOs do have real power, they are reluctant to flaunt it. Derek Goh, CIO of Challenger Financial Services, believes he has an absolute power over the IT systems, and in fact the APRA regulations that govern financial institution operations demand that the CIO sign off on IT capability. "If I don't sign off then Challenger can't operate," Goh says. Now that is power.

Yet Goh says he is not a fan of power. "I have a nice fancy office, but that's not for me. That's for my role. The office is for whoever plays the CIO role." Indeed Goh believes the ultimate confirmation that he has real power would be never having to use it - by creating systems, processes and protocols that guide and steer information systems to the extent that exercising his power becomes a measure of last resort.

Power also seems to be something that people worry about less as they grow older. Both John Wadeson, CIO of Centrelink, and David Issa, CIO of IAG, say that as they log years in the role and mature personally they are less concerned about power and status.

"It was important when I was 30 and I was pretty aggressive," Issa says. "Now I'm 46. As I got older and more experienced I worked out that it's your people who make it happen, not you." He says he seldom wields his power, "but I do get frustrated and I do have my moments".

So if power is not something to be paraded or prized, what is it? How does it manifest for CIOs?

Hemant Kogekar, group executive IT for Suncorp, observes that while a CIO's power is both overt and nuanced, perhaps more importantly, it's not what you've got, but how you use it. "Power is your accountability to get things done: to control resources, to control dollars and to control decision making. The other dimension is your access to information that is not available to everyone and the ability to shape the enterprise," Kogekar says.

"There is a legitimate power base of the [CIO] role. Then, depending on how you engage or don't engage, you add or subtract from that base. Power is gained by how you work with that. For example one person may have greater power if the MD listens to him. They seem to be better connected."

Connections are important in shoring up power bases. Metcalfe's Law, which states that a network's power or value is proportional to the square of the number of nodes in the network, would appear to hold as well for people power as for communications power. Having access to a robust network of peers is important to CIOs, according to Mike Kennedy, who was until recently CIO at the NSW Office of State Revenue (OSR). "Your network is an explicit manifestation of your power," Kennedy says. "You can call and say: 'Can we have coffee?', and they will take your call. That is good for career advancement if it's true that only a fifth of all jobs are advertised."

Issa agrees that it is important to have a network, to have a public profile and to take a position on certain issues in order to reinforce the position.

While peer networking might shore up power, Kogekar says that other people accrue power because they complain more. "People say: 'Let's run it by him'."

He warns, however, that whatever the modus operandi of the CIO, if you do not use power it tends to go away. "You can become just a rubber stamp. But you have to use the raw power very carefully. The smarter executives use it carefully by persuasion, influence and governance.

"You use the power less and the influence more. For example, you set up frameworks and say that all projects have to have a payback period of two years. If someone comes to you with a project where the payback period is three years - you don't have to say no. The framework says no," Kogekar explains.

Page Break

He uses a similar technique in the business where he says it is important the CIO uses power sparingly. "You do more things through process. You agree on the standards, the architectures and the processes and then once they are established you use your authority to ensure they are followed." But again that authority is exercised gently, all the time seeking the business buy-in.

"There are a few times - for example in a crisis when you have production problems - when you would inform not consult because of the need to deliver a service. You have to do the execution, that's what keeps you in the job," Kogekar says.

At Challenger, Goh has likewise implemented a framework that makes it very difficult for a businessperson to implement a technology platform without his consent. "Not too long after I joined, an executive decided to implement a platform because the vendor said it was free. Now the software may have been free but the risk was not. I confronted the executive with this. No matter if it was a good solution or not, it could have compromised the corporate governance. It would be a bit like the CIO making a financial decision without consulting the CFO."

In terms of enforcing his power, Goh sees the corporate governance frameworks as the ultimate ally. If they work properly he will not have to exercise power; if he does have to exercise power it is almost an admission that the system has failed. If all technical investment decisions are required by the governance model to be endorsed by the CIO then that power base cannot be eroded.

Well, it cannot be eroded as long as those decisions are right - and Goh understands that the only way to keep his power is to keep adding value to the business.

It is the same at Investa Property Group, another financial services business where David Miller is CIO. Although he acknowledges having power over the IT decisions, he says you still need the support of the business. "I don't have carte blanche. I'm accountable."

Investa emerged out of Westpac five years ago and has been on a fast growth trajectory ever since, with 750 people now, all of whom are heavily reliant on the information systems. Miller attributes much of his influence today to his history with the business. Originally hired as a consultant with both business planning and information systems responsibilities, he has continued to have clout even though he relinquished the business strategy role when he became CIO two years ago. Miller admits that it is possible the power he enjoys today may be a legacy of his time as a consultant during the start-up years, and the fact that the firm still has the same CEO who remembers him in that role.

Although power was in some ways thrust upon him, he believes that to maintain it, you have to really understand the business and come up with the solutions that match. Because if CIOs do not do that they will quickly learn that their power is far from absolute. "Business looks to you to develop solutions; if not, then the business will go off and develop things at tangents. Power is fragile and you are only ever as good as your last project," Miller says.

One of the ways IAG's Issa builds his power and influence is to concentrate on the big projects, not on fiddling at the edges of IT with incremental upgrades. "My view is that because we have limited resources the dollars should be spent on the big things, where it will make a strategic change to the organization." In order to do that, he needs his seat at the executive table so he has a grasp on where the firm is headed strategically. "The relationship with the CEO is very important. I'm lucky because I know Mike [Hawker, IAG CEO] and he knows me and he trusts me. He's seen me do these things before."

One CIO who knows he performs a critical function in the organization, but baulks at the suggestion he wields absolute power over IT, is Centrelink's Wadeson. "In an organization like ours, where an Act of Parliament decrees that the CEO is responsible to the minister for efficiency of the organization, then I don't have the greatest power," he says. Wadeson's reticence might, however, be an issue of semantics, because he does admit that as CIO he has "considerable influence".

"Still, when you have an organization like ours, with a lot of people who are competent, then power is not a word I would use. In Centrelink there is a broad range of people with an understanding of IT and who make that contribution," Wadeson says. "I do think this arrangement is more common in government, but it is becoming more common in other organizations where it would be wrong to say that IT is a tool or a backroom function. It's more akin to the relationship that Qantas has with its planes. A lot of people here have views on IT and they are well informed views."

Kennedy believes that CIOs get "explicit power" in terms of the role they are taking on. "But implied power exercised through your influence is the real power. So, for example, you have no explicit power over the company direction but do you have implicit power over it - yes. That's the power that the CIO can choose or not choose to use."

Page Break

Kennedy believes that the time to give your implicit power a test drive is shortly after joining an organization, when the honeymoon period is still fresh. He says that at the Office of State Revenue the CEO had taken a personal interest in Kennedy's appointment, and recognized that IT was an important ally in bringing change to the organization. "I had IT staff who were ready for a change but weren't sure if it was good or bad. That environment set me up for good implicit power. In your honeymoon period you've got latitude and you can make the most of that by picking targets, and then that supports your ability to grow your implicit power."

However, he warns that implicit power is more vulnerable than explicit power. "Implicit power is lost far more easily. If you lose credibility you will lose implicit power very quickly. Your explicit power you will start to lose also, but there is a structure and a process around that so the loss is slower." And therein lies an opportunity for the CIO who has lost implicit power: use the lag time to quickly rebuild your power base or, alternatively, start job hunting.

Power Team

Delegation is one of the great props of power.

Suncorp's Kogekar believes his approach to power and governance can be cascaded through his 800- to 900-strong IT team. "When you create a structure there is some legitimate power conferred and expectations of performance. There are decision-making limits within each role."

Once one of his team is bedded into a role and seems to be performing well, Kogekar backs off and lets them run their business. He has also implemented a committee of peers in his team on which he has conferred some decision-making ability. "They check up on each other," he says.

That level of delegation is imperative, according to Kogekar, who stresses that this is not a "single person" job. "This is you and your team," he says. That said, he recognizes that senior roles "cast a long shadow; if you use your power then you can have a significant cultural effect on the organization".

When Issa joined IAG three years ago he found an IT organization that had seven levels of management before you got to someone who actually did any work. "Now there are four layers between me and the programmers or analysts - team managers, development managers, the [seven] people who report to me, then the CIO." And he ensures there is a close link between business and IT. "A lot of people who work for me sit into the business matrix. Some CIOs might feel uncomfortable with that, that they report with a line to the business, and a dotted line report to me."

But with those IT staff apprised of the five-year road map, and the technical road map that supports it, Issa is confident that his team out in the business will make appropriate strategic decisions. "If it's running well the business is taking ownership but at the same time the strategic direction is being followed. That gives me more power because the business is taking more ownership."

CIOs such as Karen Bard at Santos also identify the important intersection of power and leadership. "I look at my success and the way I get my job accomplished and it's more about leadership to get people to join with me. Ultimately I exert power where differences of opinion or where governance is at stake," she says.

Placing her at an advantage is her history in the business. "I came out of the business so people are willing to open up with me because I've been there and done that. I have credibility with them and can turn the IT language to the frank language of our business." This bolsters her power base with the business, she believes.

Bard manages her team through delegation; by setting clear lines of responsibility. "I tell them: 'Here are the lines, and I expect you to take care of everything below this line, and anything above this line I want to be alerted to because of the impact on other areas'. When things are going pear-shaped I wrest back the control."

Most CIOs believe that demonstrating leadership, both in their team and across the business, does prop their power base. Others, who have to navigate more autocratic executive hierarchies and report to executives other than the CEO, believe that their attempts to lead any part of the organization risk being squashed at first base and feel less empowered.

At Centrelink, with a team of around 1600 people in the IT function, Wadeson has to lead - it is physically not possible to micro-manage that number of people. "That's a big group and I don't sit here all day contemplating the big issues in IT. You don't have all these technical guys and then do it yourself."

Wadeson's style is to put the right people in the right roles and let them get on with it. "You need to have a light touch; I don't want to over-manage them." However, he says that there are times when "technology tribes" emerge that want to do something their way - because that is the way they want to do it, not necessarily because it is the best way - and in that situation he does have to take a more hands-on approach and bring the focus back to the best for the business not the best for the team.

The role that Wadeson describes is that of an IT ringmaster - he identifies what is needed, where to find that talent, and then coordinates it.

Page Break

Higher Power

The power of the CIO, and indeed the entire IT team, is to some degree measured by the reporting relationship at the top, according to IBM's Julian Wee. He is not the CIO of IBM - the CIO works for Wee, which indicates who has the greater power at IBM. As general manager of technology and transformation, Wee had an office right outside IBM CEO Phil Bullock's and maintains his residence there under the new MD Glen Boreham. "I don't think that physical closeness is a real issue, although it says a lot to the IT community about how they are positioned in the enterprise," Wee says.

"It's not a motivator to me, but I've seen a lot of my peers report to finance. While that's probably okay for the CIO, you have to ask how that seems to the team." Wee believes that IT departments feel more empowered in the business, and hence deliver more to the business, when they feel they are part of the CEO's team rather than sidelined to the CFO.

IAG's Issa agrees. He believes the CIO-CEO relationship is sacrosanct, as the CIO needs to believe that "IT is a fundamental core competency" to drive the organization. "Now if the CEO thinks IT is a commodity and it makes strategic sense, then fine, the CIO can report to the CFO. I wouldn't work for a company like that - a company that doesn't think the CIO should sit at the executive table." He has never had to, having worked in financial services all his life where IT is fundamental to success.

At the OSR, where Kennedy was CIO, he also reported directly to the CEO, which he thinks was important in order to be seen within the enterprise as having a "trusted adviser status". However, he believes that a CIO's ability to wield implicit power or truly influence the business is "different if the CIO reports to the CFO or in an organization where IT is not a critical success factor".

At Santos, Bard reports to the vice president of development projects and technical services. She is comfortable with that, saying it is part of a Santos initiative to streamline operations, and she believes it makes sense having IT sit in the business and report to the business. "The way it has been handled is that the vice president has made it clear that I'm not the CIO of the department but the CIO of Santos. My scorecard is across the whole executive team. The visibility is there and the support is there."

When IT's contribution is recognized broadly in the business and by the senior executives, a successful CIO can accumulate both power and reach, according to Suncorp's Kogekar (who himself reports to the CEO). "Woolworths's CIO runs their supply chain as well because he has become more useful to the organization." (The notoriously media-shy Woolworths CIO Steve Bradley was approached to participate in these conversations on power, but chose not to do so.)

According to Kogekar, having the power and influence through the enterprise remains an important career stepping stone for CIOs. "If you have the authority you can get things done and play on a bigger canvas."

Goh also believes the reporting structure for a CIO is in part dictated by the sector and the importance of IT to that sector's competitiveness. At Challenger, "the backbone of the organization is technology", he says, "therefore IT will have power and influence by default. The question is how to earn a seat at the executive table where you can use your role and your power to influence the business. However you are going to be at that table not because of your power but because of the value you provide and the trust the business has in you. Power gets you in the door. To stay you need to add value.

"When I am at the executive table I do not exercise any power. That is not a forum for showing power. You need to play the role as a team member, not show the power of the role of CIO."

Besides the importance of the CEO-CIO link in conferring power, IBM's Wee says that horizontal links to business managers can be exercised to break down barriers between business and IT. Where there seems reluctance to cooperate, the savvy CIO will "establish those connections and say to a business manager: 'I want to get your guys to work with my guys'. You've invested time and energy in a high-level agreement but then the other people in your team can go and do it."

For CIOs to be successful they have to understand some of these broader management responsibilities, Wee says. "It's impossible to be a good CIO without being an outstanding general manager."

Page Break

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."

Page Break

Vendor Clout

You can screw down the governance, but does power also mean you can screw down the vendors? When you are in charge of a business that might spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on information technology it might be fair to assume that you have power over some of the companies that sell technology and services. Even here CIOs are equivocal about the power they wield.

Centrelink's Wadeson reports that the vendors do not even always come to him. "The major vendors come in here and talk to the other deputies. I could feel very slighted but I don't because that is the best place for them so that the business gets an understanding."

Does he hold sway with the vendors themselves? "It's probably better to ask the vendors," he answers. But with $300 to $400 million a year to spend on IT, Wadeson definitely has sway, although as a government department his decisions, as were Kennedy's, are partly dictated by the tendering process. Wadeson sees the relationship he has with vendors as one of equals where it is important for him to spend time with the industry - both to find out what vendors are doing and how that might impact Centrelink - but to also provide vendors with insight into what Centrelink is trying to achieve, thereby giving them the opportunity to craft useful offerings.

In November for example, Centrelink held its first open industry day, inviting many smaller SMEs into Centrelink to learn how it operates.

If CIOs do not feel they have power over vendors, they certainly demand respect. Issa admits that the aggregate spending power of an organization like IAG does give him some leverage over the vendor. "I get a good deal but it's got to be a win-win and sustainable over the long term. If I find I'm not getting the best deal they can do on the day then I will walk away. If they are not doing that then I will cut the relationship because there is a lack of trust. That has happened in the past, although not now."

One less enlightened vendor view was reported by a CIO who claimed suppliers treated her differently because of her sex. "Suppliers do treat me differently. Very often you get: 'Oh, you're a female, who's your boss? Who do we have to talk to to make it happen?'" Most of the time a little direct education reminds vendors that they need to convince her and no one else. "The ones you don't get through to are the ones you don't use," she says.

Vendor gender has not been an issue for Santos's Bard, who says that although in the early days she had some vendors who attempted a divide and conquer approach with her, she has quickly reminded them who is in charge of Santos's IT, and that she understands the business better than they do. "With oil and gas application vendors, well I've worked for two of the majors, and I know how they work and what profit margins they work on. The vendors know my background and so I've been able to influence them."

Whatever their relationship with vendors, CIOs today are recognized as having more power in their organizations than at any time previously, according to Robert Ashe, president and chief executive of global business software firm Cognos. On a recent visit to Australia he told CIO magazine: "Go back five or six years and many CIOs were purveyors of infrastructure. Now there is more business involvement and the business sees them as powerful individuals, and that is partly influenced by the impact of IT on the organization.

"So a bank CIO, compared to other organizations where IT has less impact, and where you might not have the CIO at the senior management table, has comparatively more power. I'm damn sure that the CIO of eBay has a very powerful role."

And what of the CIO's power on suppliers? It is a consideration Ashe said, and big spenders can have a big impact on big vendors, although some smaller spending CIOs can be even more valuable. "As you get very important to these big suppliers then the CIOs push you to put more in the product. The big spenders can have a big impact, but equally important are the real innovators that might give us our next $100 million product," Ashe explained.

Page Break

Power Down

When you are at the top of the IT pile, it is a long way down. "You have to manage the visibility and you tend to be more careful with what you say," says one of the CIOs who wished not to be identified, when they were asked about the downsides of having power and influence over enterprise IT. "Politics exist in every company and you have to ensure that you don't expose a weakness that can be used against you. Most CIOs I talk with agree that they find that very challenging.

"Also the CIO - probably even more than the CEO - has to understand the whole of the business, where the CEO can delegate down. That broad knowledge responsibility is a lot of hard work."

Suncorp's Kogekar says the main risk is that "the buck stops with you, even if you're not the one who made the mistake". To try to avoid mistakes being left unseen, Kogekar has one of his direct reports who "plays adviser" to him. "They always say if they think there is a better way of doing something. That diversity reduces your blind spots and I encourage that."

At IBM, Wee agrees that once you reach the top level of IT, it is important to have "feedback, not flattery". To the same end he says it is important that people do not try to mystify IT in a bid to retain control; rather, they need to make IT as transparent as possible so that any looming problems can be nipped in the bud.

Wee quotes Peter Parker, the alter ego of Spider-Man: "With great power comes great responsibility. If you become the centre of the universe then the whole operation will come unstuck. It is easy for IT guys to mystify things and if you do that you can quite easily become the centre of gravity, which is a back door way of holding onto their power. I came across one peer whose way of exercising control was to lock down the workstations. If you hold and wield that power then your users feel very restricted.

It is this thinking that Wee encourages among his team - they are there to serve the business. And rather than try to become the centre of gravity he attempts to "lower the centre of gravity - push down the decisions.

"The key to sharing power is sharing responsibility."

With his bent on making big changes a priority, IAG's Issa is aware that "if you want to make big changes and you get it wrong then you make big mistakes". Nonetheless he feels it important that while he is in the role (and head-hunters please note, he is quick to point out that could be another "three, five, 10 or 15 years"), it is the big strategic changes he is gunning for. He is also very wary of outsourcing, believing it can be one of the greatest threats to a CIO's power, especially for an organization where information technology needs to be a core competency.

However, the real power of the CIO role is that when you get it wrong the buck rests with you, as Kennedy confirms. "You can always make the wrong call. With explicit power your risk profile is very high. With implicit power the risk profile is lower because you are planting seeds, so the risk is lower and you are more powerful."

At Challenger, Goh says that the power of the CIO - just like in any other political system, can be nice. "But if it's overused then it can create distrust and a barrier which keeps people distant. Power is a great thing - but the greatest thing is not to use it." v

SIDEBAR: Having Cut through the Glass Ceiling . . .

Gender influences how CIOs view - and wield - power

Karen Bard, CIO at Santos, is by profession a petroleum engineer and came to the CIO role in August 2004 out of the business. Despite her relative newness to the position, Bard is in no doubt that her responsibility for strategy, policy, process and making the budget means she ultimately holds her company's IT power in her hands,.

However, she readily admits to being uncomfortable with the "P" word. "I find it very negative. It makes me think of people with power who abuse it, who always put their thumbs down. It's a negative, controlling type word.

"In fact I asked myself when you rang: 'Do I really want to be part of this?', because power has such a negative connotation for me."

Maybe it is a gender thing. On a recent visit to Australia, Laura Tyson, who as an economic adviser was the highest ranking woman in the first term of the Clinton administration in the early 1990s, also explored power and her relation to it. "If you ask me do I want to have power, I would say no. I have never aspired to power for its own sake. But I would like to think I had influence - that is, I would like to have my ideas influence the organizations and the people for whom I work."

Moira Rayner, who with Joan Kirner wrote Women's Power Handbook in 1999, claims that power is a term which women do tend to avoid using, in part because of its occasionally negative connotations. However, her definition of power, which is the ability to set your own agenda, not reacting or responding to or resisting others' opinions, paints power in a more positive light.

Mike Kennedy, now a Gartner analyst but a CIO until late 2005, says that in his experience, "this is an industry where the glass ceiling is not there. Women and men have explicit and implicit power just the same. There are a lot of strong, powerful female CIOs - particularly in government, such as, Jane Treadwell [Victoria's CIO] and Anne Steward [the federal government CIO]. And there's Michelle Tredenick [NAB] and Fiona Balfour [ex-Qantas and now Telstra].

"They have a lot of explicit power and implicit power too. There is no real difference," Kennedy says.

Broadly, Bard still believes that women are less likely than men to be overt in their use of their power, while adding the rider that there are exceptions. "I've seen women who are draconian and thrive off their use of power," she says. In the main, though, Bard thinks women are less likely than men to use their power and ride roughshod over colleagues.

Like Tyson, it is a less hairy-chested definition of power with which Bard is more comfortable. Bard says when thinking about "power" in preparation for her conversation with CIO magazine, she looked it up in the dictionary. "It said it was the ability and capacity to perform effectively."

That she can handle, but for Bard the real power comes in persuasion.

SIDEBAR: Power Lessons

Power is a potent drug. Sometimes a reality check is the best antidote . . .

One of the things that power has provided David Issa, CIO at IAG, is the opportunity to pursue private passions, notably working with public schools in disadvantaged areas. Issa has forged a relationship with Lurnea High School in Sydney's south-west, which has led to his company providing some technical support to the school and inviting students in for work experience. In return he believes the relationship provides IAG with a better understanding of the communities it serves.

It also pulls him back in line when he is in danger of a power puff-up. Thinking about the salary he earns, the role he performs and how that compares with the salary of the deputy principal at Lurnea, and the role she performs is a great leveller of the ego, according to Issa.

Julian Wee, IBM's general manager of technology and transformation, has more conventional power mentors, nominating former GE boss Jack Welch as his business hero. He has spread Jack's word by buying a copy of Welch's latest book for each of his management team.

Derek Goh, CIO at Challenger Financial Services, says he has learned a great deal about power from conversations with older people, with their experiences teaching him that "people you meet on the way up you also meet on the way down. When you are modest you respect the power that is given to you, and that power can be taken from you. You need to see yourself like any other professional doing your duty professionally."

If he ever is in danger of overdosing on power, his two young sons keep him in check. Goh says that the relationship he has with his sons is different to the traditional Asian parent-children relationship where parents are respected as a matter of course. "You do not have to earn their [children's] respect."

With his children, he says "if you want to be their friends then you don't exercise power", instead he crafts the relationship based on trust and mutual respect. Nevertheless, he notes that however good the systems families establish, good parents still have to exercise power about 5 percent of the time.

SIDEBAR: Power and the Professor

It's all about influence says AGSM professor Mark Griffin

CIO magazine provided a draft copy of this article to Professor Mark Griffin, who teaches leadership and organizational change at the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM), and sought his interpretation of CIOs' reactions to the concept of executive power.

He said that while the responses were broadly in line with other C-level executives' experiences, "if there is a difference, it is a greater tentativeness around the notion of power itself. There is more attention to the negative connotations of power".

According to Griffin, power is "having influence". "You can ask three big questions about this notion of having influence that seem relevant to the article: What is being influenced, how is it being done, and why?

"Let's start with the last one first: Why does someone exert power or influence in a corporation? There's a deep suspicion of power that is exerted for personal or egotistical reasons, so you naturally see a lot of emphasis on reasons such as improving shareholder value, increasing productivity, keeping up with market demands or creating a social benefit. These are all legitimate reasons why people in corporations might manifest power or influence," Griffin said.

"The second question is: How is power manifested - that is, what does it look like? One big issue now is justice and the perception of justice. People need to see that influence happens for fair reasons. Let's take the issue of networks. There is no doubt that someone with a large network of business connections is seen to have more power and is able to have more influence. But how is that network used? Fairly or unfairly?

"Making contacts to develop new business lines and open up opportunities is likely to be seen as fair. Using contacts to get a more powerful job you're not qualified for would generally be seen as unfair. So a really big issue for the 'how' of power is the fairness of the way influence happens.

"Finally, power is about what you can influence. This is probably why those who influence key financial strategies are often seen as having more power than those who influence technology or human resources, for example. In the long run, these perceptions might be either right or wrong, but in the short term they clearly influence how power is manifest."

And what about the perception that female CIOs might be less powerful than their male counterparts? Griffin warns that just as it is dangerous to stereotype women, it is dangerous to stereotype men, since "not all men operate the same way".

"Overall, I think women help to bring a stronger emphasis to the 'what' and 'how' of influence. In terms of what is influenced, the range of bottom-line outcomes that are seen as important can be broader. In terms of how, women often have to exercise their power in different ways because the same behaviour by women - for example putting forward a strong point of view - can be perceived differently than if a man did the same thing. The woman might be considered 'pushy', where the man might be perceived as 'assertive', when they are both acting in the same way."