effective. He or she is often buried in the management structure of other functions, such as Finance or heaven forbid, maybe even some kind of Shared Services function. This means that the linkage between the rest of the IT organisation and the business will also occur at correspondingly lower levels in the hierarchy. The whole question of the management of IT, unlike other disciplines, seems to have a curious optionality about it. No CEO in their right mind would leave their Finance Director buried several layers down in another function. However, they seem to think it is quite acceptable for this to happen to their IT leader. Some even believe that IT can be led by someone with no experience whatsoever in the discipline. There is also a curious penchant for relatively junior manager with a hobby interest in IT to end up as main points of engagement between business units and the IT function. People seem to end up in these positions irrespective of their seniority, their role or more importantly, their degree of common sense.
Figure 1.4 shows a notional organisation by level. The CEO sits astride the top of the chart, with the real workers at the bottom. The main area of responsibility of each role is identified, together with the types of things that these individuals will be worrying about in normal day-to-day business. The main interactions are represented by the thickness of the arrows.
Figure 1.4 A Well-Connected IT Organisation
In this example, the linkage is established at the top level. In other words, the IT leader is a bona fide member of the executive team. They have a direct reporting relationship with the CEO and the status to match. When the IT leader is seen as a proper member of the management team, it is much easier to generate an agenda where IT is an important enabler for the strategic plans of the company. The thickness of the arrows in the diagram above is very similar, indicating consistent interactions between the IT function and all levels of the organisation. Discussions between the CIO and the SVP of Sales for example, will all be about meaningful topics, such as how they can work together to improve global Sales and Marketing performance.
The second case, shown in Figure 1.5, is unfortunately much more common in our industry. The major links between the business units and the IT function are established at much lower levels in the hierarchy. In this model, the IT leader can also become completely detached from the main business leadership. This is a much more dangerous operating model. It often results in demands for large-scale tactical engagements which in turn spawn large numbers of small-scale projects. In this example, the leader of the Sales organisation does not interact with his IT counterpart, or anyone else in the IT function for that matter. Most of the exchanges are occurring between the UK Sales department and their own local IT support unit. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that any attempts to implement a sales automation system will almost certainly end up as a tactical, UK-centric system focused on capturing and analysing data at a country level. Nobody is talking about improving overall Sales and Marketing performance across the enterprise.
Figure 1.5 A Poorly Connected IT Organisation
The relative lack of interaction between the IT leader and his business counterpart is also very dangerous in other ways. It may for example, encourage the IT organisation to take on a more inward-looking emphasis. This might lead to a progressive lack of alignment and an increasing risk of dislocation from the leadership of the organisation.
To avoid such problems, it is essential that any IT leader achieves good quality interactions with the leaders in the business. He or she should operate an IT division that is well integrated at all levels. Without this, it will not be possible (or at least intensely difficult) to develop any kind of strategic agenda – at least one that will make any large and positive impact on the company. This is bad for IT but even worse for the company. Thoughtfully conceived, well-designed and skilfully executed IT projects enabling process change can automate and change the core business processes themselves to create enormous advantage to the corporation. But you do have to be the right person who is – critically – in the right place in the organisation.
The View from the Top of the Tree
IT leaders often fret about how they should support the company's leaders. Many believe these lofty folk are the most vexatious group to satisfy. Clearly, such interactions will be easier if the IT leader is a full and active member of the management team. Nonetheless the needs of the leadership are often very different to the rest of the user community and the wise IT leader should tread very carefully.
In terms of company leadership candidates, organisations are usually only interested in promoting those with experience, ability and a track record. It therefore takes quite a while for the ambitious Young Turks to climb to the top of the tree. This means that many company leaders today are Old Turks and have a degree of computer literacy that would probably cause a bunch of 16-year-olds to guffaw in disbelief into their social media networks. This is not the time to make ageist comments about baby boomers, but many of your leaders will be handicapped as far as modern technology is concerned. Most grew their careers in times when Information Technology played a much more peripheral role in industry than it does today. Many will favour traditional paper-based methods of communication control, often leaving email and other electronic wonders to their much younger assistants. I recall the first email I received from a CEO I worked for some years back. It simply said (in capital letters):
“PLEASE COME AND SEE ME NOW”
I scrambled straight up to his office expecting to get fired. Instead, the meeting was convivial. Our leader wanted to follow up on a piece of strategy work we had been discussing the previous week. When I asked the Boss why he shouted at me with his email, he just looked at me blankly. He thought I'd be pleased that I was chosen to be the recipient of his very first email.
For every electronic dinosaur, there are of course plenty of fast trackers who are interested in IT. They may also be great exponents of that wonderful concept – “a little knowledge is dangerous”. The cleverest IT leaders have developed clever ways to please these folk. The steady provision of coloured glass beads, trinkets and other worthless bits of shiny technological metal works well. Trinkets, in this sense, cover all the latest and greatest pieces of new technology, many of which will be named after inappropriate fruits. Many companies are still unfortunately under-represented by female leaders. This means that when great executives from different companies get together at meetings, conferences or symposia, a “boys with their toys” situation can often develop in the breaks between the punch-ups. Everyone will be comparing their “tech” with the innocent yet passionate enthusiasm of primary school kids swapping Pokémon cards in the school playground. You may have put in the best ERP solution in the world, but if one of your Senior VPs hasn't received his 64 gigabyte diamond geezer super-smartphone running the strawberry cheesecake muffin operating system on the very first day it is released, then you could find yourself being very unjustly turned into jam very quickly indeed.
“Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.”
So, it's likely that you will find an astonishing variation in computer literacy amongst your leadership. This might also be tricky to spot at least initially, because the illiterates will almost certainly be experts at concealing this from you. Hiding ignorance is a skill that will have been essential for one who has ascended quite so far in the organisation. One of the ways that concerned IT leaders deal with this issue is to build an Executive Support team. These are composed of people who can pander to every wit and whim of the company's leaders. If you carefully hand-pick your staff, then you can match up your support staff's temperament and skill to each leader. Those leaders that are particularly illiterate can be sympathetically assisted. Assigning a trusted, patient and discreet member of staff who speaks beautiful English rather than dot-net-talk works well. Those bosses that
