Cracking the alignment nut
- Details
- Written by Dave Carey
Perhaps more than any other C-suite executive, CIOs must constantly confront and resolve issues related to widespread and rapid change. It’s ironic, then, that perhaps the biggest issue they face seems impervious to change. It’s been going on as long as CIOs came into being, and for many in the profession, it’s still the toughest nut to crack.
I’m talking about that eternal disconnect between the CIO and the business. It’s still a much discussed topic whenever CIOs get together, and it seems no closer to resolve now than it did when I began covering the CIO profession as a journalist in the 1990s.
A case in point is the recent 2012 CIO Peer Forum in Toronto, the eighth edition of the flagship event of the CIO Association of Canada. The annual conference, one of the most important CIO gatherings in the country, took for its theme this year, “Be the Business: Meeting the Future Head On”. A large part of the program revolved around how CIOs can become more innovative and value-added members of the executive team.
Some of the sessions were fresh and inspiring, while others had a very familiar ring to them. When listening to the panel session, “Alignment or Alliance? Becoming the Business, rather than Serving It”, I felt that I’d stepped into the Wayback Machine and dialed up 1997. The issues around alignment haven’t changed a whit in a decade and a half. Not to say some CIOs and their IT organizations haven’t become true strategic partners of the business, but they are certainly more the exception than the rule.
During that panel session, the oft heard remedies kept popping up: CIOs have to speak the language of the business; they need to get out and personally engage their C-suite colleagues more; they need to earn the trust of the business; and so on.
All of these are perfectly valid and worthy suggestions – and they’re just as important today as they were in the 1990s. I’m sure these approaches have helped CIOs win a lot of battles over the years, but evidently they’re not doing much to help them win the war, or we wouldn’t still be having these conversations.
In my two decades as a journalist covering IT management, I’ve interviewed countless IT executives across the country. And one in particular really stands out in my mind as having figured out a way to crack the alignment nut. I interviewed Sav Dipasquale of pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline (then Glaxo Wellcome) in the late 1990s. At the time he was an IT manager, but not yet the CIO.
Sav is a marketer at heart, and he made it his mission to market IT to the business – in a big way. He hired a professional writer to communicate IT’s successes and value to the business on a regular basis. He organized vendor fairs at GSK’s head office, where those in the business could get a hands-on feel for the latest technology. He implemented high-profile awards programs for IT, and launched countless other marketing initiatives. In short, he really put IT on the map for the rest of the business.
When Sav took over the CIO role, he continued his intense focus on alignment. He had all those reporting to him sit on executive management teams in the business, their primary function being relationship management. He zealously strove to find out the pain points of the company’s business executives, so that IT could maximize its impact with them. In particular, he wanted to know what the CEO’s hot button was. Was it profitability? Flexibility? Nimbleness? Knowing that would enable IT to meet the CEO’s key objectives.
I’m just scratching the surface here. To really appreciate Sav’s proactive approach to alignment, you’ll need to speak to the man himself. Or read that book he’s planning to write.
Sav’s alignment successes served him well. Not only did he become CIO, he garnered the CIO of the Year Award at the 2006 Canadian Information Productivity Awards. And since then, he’s gone on to become GSK’s VP Business Development & Corporate Planning. Now he’s a member of executive team that, as a CIO, he strove so hard to align with. If that isn’t proof that his alignment methods work, I don’t know what is.
So my advice to CIOs is this: if you want to begin winning the alignment war, you need to seriously put on your marketing hat. If you don’t have marketing skills, consider going out and acquiring some. Failing that, you may be having the same alignment discussion another 15 years from now.
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