Character Counts!

The word is in - character does matter. Good gals and guys do finish first. That subtle inherent set of behaviors does make a difference. With remarkable consistency, CIOs and the CEOs who hire them cite character as a primary differentiation between success and failure. On both a personal and organizational level there are two character traits that make the most significant difference in CIO performance. Those two are honesty and reliability.

In these days of continuing concern around corporate ethics, it was refreshing to see how unified opinions are on this topic. Nearly 100% of the participants at successful firms listed both honesty and reliability as core values that a successful CIO and her or his team must demonstrate. Why this tangible reliance on an intangible trait?

Most CIO’s and IT managers fail not because they have planned poorly or the technology didn’t work. They fail because they did not build a successful bridge to the business leadership in their organization. With the average time in position of CIO’s continuing to drop, it looks like a lot of IT leaders still don’t get it. But the New CIO does.

By its nature IT must be a separate team with a strong identity, specialized knowledge and professional skills. But it must also be an integral part of all other business functions. The IT team must be trusted by all and reliably deliver the infrastructure. IT honesty and reliability directly impacts the success of the organization. The New CIO’s role is to ensure the health and quality of the IT team and provide the senior level linkage to all the other functions. It is in building those credible linkages that CIOs succeed or fail.

Success starts inside. Your intent, your agenda, and your objectives will drive how others perceive and respond to your initiatives. These intangibles are very tangible in producing results. To succeed you must be willing to assess your character and work to polish it until your reactions are unthinkingly straightforward. If you won’t do this then don’t bother striving for the top. You may make it to CIO but you’ll only last six months.

The first and foremost character trait to practice and display is honesty. Telling the truth is core to establishing successful relationships. As a technology executive once said “Very few people lie particularly well, so you might as well tell the truth.

Now you’re all probably sitting there thinking, well gee this is dumb, I always tell the truth. Good for you. But let’s test that assumption. If you always tell the truth, then when was the last time you told your business partners exactly how you were going to use your entire budget, in detail?

Ah, yes. We would all like to be honest except, …except where it isn’t convenient or is too hard, or is too embarrassing, etc. We all have rational, legitimate exceptions to the rule. We call them little white lies, when we are sparing someone else. We don’t call it dishonesty when we omit to tell all that we know. We are comfortable with letting someone else be the bearer of bad news. Worse, we use subtle techniques to mold the perception of truth to our advantage.

For some it is OK to obscure a situation by using language that is incomprehensible and arcane when we’d rather not have to explain things. Others manipulate forums so that participants do not have a real choice in the options presented to them. Some compare apples to oranges knowing that the audience is not knowledgeable enough to sort the difference. All of these techniques can be used very successfully to achieve short-term gains.

In the poorly managed firms studied, these techniques seemed to be used as standard operating procedure. We all know of individuals who have built very successful careers using them effectively and are completely unconcerned about their reputations. We all face choices, but the evidence is in. If you seek long-term career success or want to work in a rewarding, leadership environment then seek out one which values honesty and practice it personally

Best Practices of the New CIO, Honesty In Action

One of the bravest CIOs I know is Will Headapohl of Gateway Systems. Will is a seasoned exec with experience in marketing and sales. At Gateway, Will has done the unthinkable. He has taken 100% of his budget and resource allocations and revealed all of it to his business partners. It is an open book budget. There are no skunk works, no slush funds, and no set-asides for rainy days. Equally important Will has formed his colleagues into a “tribal council” that is more than window dressing. Projects and investments are voted off the island all the time. All the VPs meet regularly to review and select priorities for IT. The whole council determines where resources will go. Each functional leader has learned the consequences of not being a good advocate for their particular projects or features. This is one monthly meeting they do not miss.

If there is a windfall savings in one area it isn’t automatically swept into a trouble spot to fix things. When there is a resource shortfall the whole council works together to resolve the issues. This has built tremendous teamwork around solving the business’s issues and allowed Will to cut his capital spending by 50%.

As a result Will has earned the confidence of all his peers. This personal reputation for honesty allowed him to execute major changes and cuts in his department and turn around his entire team’s reputation.

Character counts in many ways. Joshua S. Levine, CIO of E*TRADE Financial, notes that honesty problems are closely associated with people playing organizational politics. His advice is to opt out of the politics. Be neutral so you can be the honest service provider. A self-promoting CIO is usually a sign of an insecure CIO. If you want to be the big shot don’t become a CIO. Having a private agenda will derail your team’s success. A CIO has to serve the other business functions and stay above the infighting.

This all makes sense but it is the opposite of the de-facto assumptions of most managers. They view their role as that of advocate or champion for their function and their own careers. The not so subtle message in most business cultures is still ‘go for your own best interests and devil take the hindmost.’ The word collaboration and ethics are often used in press releases and while speaking to the masses, but the insider subtext reads differently in too many firms.

In the 90’s, the water cooler consensus was that you had to be cutthroat to move ahead. All was fair in love and business. But the consistent advice of the New CIO is to park your own agendas and ambitions at the door. Successful CIOs are aggressive and ambitious, but not for themselves. Their ambition is for the business, for the whole team, for the result.

Energy and a pre-disposition to action are important. But excess personal ambition and internal aggression are early indicators of a team or company that is destined to fail. Think about it. If you were a business manager, would you willingly support a team that was always taking the credit and positioning against you? Not likely. If you don’t partner to beat the external competition just imagine the extra burden each separate team has to carry. It becomes a competitive disadvantage.

Rising above the fray takes courage and it also takes discipline. But you cannot be perceived as an honest partner if you don’t rise to this challenge. As Mr. Levine says “ How can you be their partner when you are competing with them?”

Social Climbers always fall again.

OK – internal politics is out – are there other things to avoid. Many people assume that they have not done better because they have not yet established a deep personal relationship with their superiors. Some actively cultivate false interpersonal relationships in the attempt to promote their personal interests. Let’s call this charm.

Now the ability to interact personably with others is a key skill. Almost all successful senior leaders report they have an open and pleasant relationship with their peers and superiors. But with limited exceptions they do not report anything even remotely resembling an “old boy’s” network of close personal relationships. In successful firms the executive staff rarely socialize outside of the office. Few ‘C’ level executives had any personal relationship with their CEO or colleagues prior to being selected for their current position.

Charm and breeding alone are not going to cut it. It is important to be able to be friendly with all of your colleagues and leaders. But having friends in high places is not necessarily a path to advancement in a well-managed firm.

Reliability – When was the last time you hit two deadlines in a row?

To move ahead professionally, everyone must demonstrate the ability to deliver. Promotions are not usually handed out to the unreliable. Well managed firms are true meritocracies. But reliability remains a fundamental issue for the majority of IT organizations today.

In most companies IT is still not known for what it does for the business but for what it does to the business. Missed deadlines, systems that don’t quite work, even operator error in the business are usually attributed in some way to “the computer.” Innocent or not, the IT function is judged guilty by association. Unfortunately we are often guilty by commission. As a result, the majority of ‘C’ level officers tend to think the following of Information Systems or Information Technology teams:

1) they are never on time

2) they are never on budget

3) they don’t deliver the features promised

4) they don’t deliver value for money spent

All of these can be perceived as reliability or honesty issues.

For the CIO or any manager in IT, the challenge is to demonstrate both superb personal responsibility and extend it to your whole team. The New CIO is one who can make IT work in the eyes of the business. To get there you start with yourself. Then in ever expanding circles, drive a new attitude throughout your entire realm of influence. Easily said, difficult to do. Here are a few best practices from the New CIOs that may come in handy.

Eliminate excuses

Every day life presents a manager in IT with any number of excuses. A vendor fails to deliver, a coder introduces an error or business partners themselves fail to meet their deadlines. It is always easier to accept these as inevitable and issue the excuse rather than the release. That’s the easy way out and why most IT teams are viewed as so unreliable. There will always be the excuse of circumstances beyond our control.

But there is a great deal we can do to regain control and deliver reliably. The first step is to forbid your team from issuing any excuse of any form. They and you can state the facts and accept the responsibility but no excuses. Explain but don’t complain. Keep it clinical and factual. That is step one.

Step two, pick something and do it. Of the several possible issues the business may have with your team’s reliability, let them pick one and commit to changing it immediately. This issue could be performance on deadlines, feature improvement or sticking to a budget. Your business partners can’t choose all at once but let them decide which one is most important to their success over the next six months.

Once the area is selected, commit yourself and your team 100% to achieving a perfect score with the business in this area. This is the best practice of Phil Swift of eSSURANCE. When Phil took office he inherited an organization with little credibility in the business and so many commitments it was impossible to fulfill them all. He went to his business partners and laid out the choices: time, money, features, etc. They were all very clear, the most important thing to the business was to hit key deadlines as promised. This became the marching order, the mantra of Phil’s whole team. Each project was time boxed and the priority was hitting the deadline – no excuses. With focus the team turned around and hit deadline after deadline for six months then a year. Now the business of course wanted a focus on features and then budget. But all this was a good sign. The IT team now had credibility and was given the ability to move the business ahead.

So, you CAN choose the day your partners stop being disappointed. Make sure they know it too. Communicate, communicate, communicate, your partners can’t appreciate what a good job you’re doing unless they know about it.

Roger Gray, CIO of Pacific Gas and Electric makes a good point when he instructs his team to ensure that the business is never surprised. Roger makes sure his team promises appropriately and works to over deliver. His staff is rewarded for bringing up issues early so they can be resolved without disruption to the business. Under Roger’s leadership a difficult relationship between IT and the businesses has become a partnership. One of Roger’s key best practices is how his team communicates problems and issues: no email, no voice mail messages. If there is something that is off track or there is a concern at any level, Roger requires that his team contact the business partner personally, preferably face to face. This personal contact shows respect and keeps the parties focused on solutions. This and other efforts have improved relationships greatly.

You will be given more support and control if you can demonstrate success in reliably delivering on your commitments. Don’t be surprised if after you just barely master budget control they will be on you to solve feature enhancements or something else. It never ends, that’s the nature of the beast. Just be honest (that character word again) and tell your partners what is most likely and least likely to happen. You’ll get points.

Trust and reliability are the foundation for an effective working partnership. Your business counterparts are more likely to listen to a dissenting opinion or understand it when you disagree with them if they are confident you are acting openly and you will fulfill those commitments you do make. It’s not whom you kill but whom you help.

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