CIO Talk Radio Blog

Covering the length and breadth universe so to speak, we sought insights from 3 distinguished CIO’s, asking them to look at their agendas for the coming year. Each was from a different business vertical.  NASA, a government agency born out of the cold war competition with the old soviet Union, embodies our national aspirations. NASA has a thoughtful CIO in Linda Cureton, whose IT is charged with facilitating a grand mission. Ameristar Casinos has a strong CIO in Sheleen Quish, who heads both HR and IT, managing people, processes, and technology for an organization in the business of creating an experience for its guests. Guess? is a retail chain whose IT is headed by Mike Relich, a CIO on the cutting edge of an IT that embraces social media and mobility as communication and marketing tools.

"The new normal has become the now normal." The historical review of yearlong metrics and benchmarks is dying. The new metrics are about "What do we need to do about that ...blinking red light right now." (Michel Janssen, CRO, the Hackett Group) "The idea of the new is really important. Things are happening so fast that relying on year old numbers is not doing it. The more you can get ... these things in real time, even if not a perfect real time, the better you are, and "whether or not you have the perfect bench mark if you have a metric that works, you can trend that over time and looking at the trends can be very valuable. ...If it is a metric that works for you and you are measuring yourself against yourself that is a believable trend."  (George Westerman, Research Scientist at the CISR, MIT, SLOAN School)

Change is a given. Change brings uncertainty and opportunity. ...And, change is coming to the C-suite world of IT leadership. According to Thornton May, Traditional measures of IT are "broken." IT is more and more, becoming a team sport. There is a "trifecta" of CFO's, CMO's, and CIO.s coming together to make IT happen, almost in spite of the fact that companies have generally invested almost nothing in developing the executive potential of their IT leadership... the onus of learning the necessary leadership skills having been left on the individual who was expected to self-educate.... So great IT leaders, "Value Artists," have had to evolve through experience... the IT leader of the future will, for one thing at least, be defined by narrative (noted futurist, Thornton May).

Recently I was on the CIO Talk Radio and we were discussing on the emerging and changing role of the Head of IT function and I was pleasantly surprised with the co-speaker introducing himself as the Head of CPO (Chief Process Officer).  During the course of the interview, he explained that he preferred the title of the CPO v/s. CIO as it describes the real role that he is playing.

Donald Rumsfeld’s recent book might help you answer that question – or perhaps the WSJ excerpts below will suffice and save you from reading his 815 page volume (Known and Unknown).

Ah, but there’s another book written almost 20 years ago that’s needed to complete the picture: Polarity Management, by Barry Johnson.  Subtitled “Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems,” its premise is that you can become a more effective leader by distinguishing problems you can solve from those you cannot; and additionally by increasing your ability to manage the polarities inherent in those unsolvable problems.