IT leadership: Transforming the CIO

by Bruce Taylor

January 27, 2005 —

Thornton May has been said to be to CIOs what Jane Goodall was to the great apes -- part scientist, part advocate, and always a friend. Indeed, if there's a bloodline father to the coinage of the term chief information officer, Thornton might come pretty close. He managed the research team in 1987 that first predicted the rise of the CIO to the executive ranks. He's a regular columnist for Computerworld and, among a vast array of other corporate consulting and academic pursuits, today Thornton is responsible for sculpting the technology curriculum for executive education at the IT Leadership Academy in Jacksonville, Florida.

Bruce Taylor spoke with Thornton May about the state of IT leadership today. Following is an edited transcript of that conversation. You may also listen to the original interview here.

Bruce Taylor: So, the IT Leadership Academy -- is that just another excuse to be in Florida in the winter?

Thornton May: Well, actually no. Well, it actually is part of the rebranding of the State of Florida, which if you ask people for the sound bite of Florida, it's where people come to end their lives, if you will, where actually Jeb Bush and his gang are trying to say there is a vibrant economy here and it is a vibrant place to start careers and perpetuate careers and to actually have your second or third career. So it's not just a cheap way of being in Florida.

But the IT Leadership Academy, as you mentioned in your introduction, Bruce, what it is is I am a groupie for CIOs. I mean, I'm out there in the field with them, I follow them around. And one of the pieces of data that immediately showed up is that not all CIOs are the same. And as we looked at the data set, we found that 16 percent of the CIOs are world-class, just out there doing amazing stuff, all right? 23 percent are good. They're moving the ball forward, you know. It's a non-toxic situation. The rest, so 61 percent are arrayed over a spectrum of averageness, actually we rendered that sympathetically because a very significant proportion just aren't that good. And so what we said was, what were the differences between the great ones, the great CIOs, and the not so great? And one of the big differences we found, I mean, actually a driver of whether you were getting full value from your information technology investments was the question of whether the CIO was involved and aware of what was going on with their first, second and third-level reports. So the whole question of leadership became critically important.

Taylor: Thornton, give me titles.

May: So a title would be a VP of architecture would be a first-level report. Second report would be a director of applications development. And a third level would be a manager, all right? So you've got that. Now, one of the things -- we went to that gang -- and this is actually about 1500 data points. We went to these CIO reports and we asked them how long they worked in IT, and we got that average. And then we said, of that time working in IT, what percentage of that time would you say you were well led? And the data just absolutely amazed us. The high mark was 25 percent. So that means 75 percent of the time spent working in IT, they worked with a manager they didn't respect and was not a good leader.

Taylor: So, Thornton, looking across management as a whole, how different would you see that from other senior corporate management?

May: I actually find that to be -- we're about four times as bad as the rest of corporate management. And it's just amazing. It's like we're almost on a different planet.

Taylor: And what do you attribute that to?

May: The fact that there is this obsession, a fetish-like devotion, to dealing with things versus with people. And this is actually one of the big transformations we found, is that we are finally transitioning information technology from being perceived as a mechanical art to actually being a liberal art. So we are contextualizing, if you will, all the wonderful things that these technology devices can do for us inside a human, if you will, ecosystem. So it's very exciting -- very significant changes.

Taylor: And do you think management is ready to listen to this?

May: Oh, yes. Not only is management ready, they are insisting on that. But you are also seeing that, if you will, the people in IT are insisting that they get the skills, that they get the education, to deal with being a better manager, being a better leader, basically being able to deal with the human issues associated with dealing in a technology-impacted society.

Taylor: What is the chasm between those people who are selling product and services to IT and the CIO buyer?

May: The tragedy is that there is that chasm, is that many vendors, sadly enough, still perceive the CIO, the buyer, as little more than a pre-revenue unit. They are locked in an industrial age, bordering on a Dickensian type of, like Hard Times type of novel of basically a product being sold, a mass product being sold to a mass market. And nothing could be further from the truth right now because now you're seeing the vendors who are succeeding, are listening, and listening actively and aggressively and successfully to what their customers are telling them.

Taylor: One of the things that occurs to me is that CIOs, like CFOs, live in a very frightening world, a complex world. There's just so many moving parts to it. So much is at risk in the organization. If a CIO is responsible for a very large software overhaul project, literally billions of dollars and the future of the organization could be at stake. So in that world, it strikes me that may have shortchanged their own ability to manage their own shops.

May: You're exactly right because CIOs are very sensitive to aligning with the business. That is a big catchphrase throughout the history of information technology. For as long as there have been CIOs, there has been that concern with making sure that the user felt loved. And what that meant was, you would give the user anything they wanted.

But in a world of constrained budgets, they allocated all their resources to basically sucking up to the user and they kept nothing in reserve to help them manage the resource which then would be available to provide for the user. It's a classic situation of the cobbler's children. And the least managed, the least standardized and the least, if you will, the least scientific of the disciplines in business today, in the modern economy today, is information technology.

And that is actually changing because now we're trying to get -- and this is the paradox and it's a wonderful -- is that not only are successful leaders becoming more human, but they are also rendering the practice of delivering IT systems more scientifically. So I actually think that we're going through a renaissance-like scientific revolution where we're figuring out how to make sure that every dollar, every guilder, and every Deutsche Mark spent for information technology produces a positive desired effect.

Taylor: Thornton, I don't think that anyone doubts that we're in a world where IT is undergoing, on a global basis, a transformation. And on the one hand you say that IT leadership today is not very compelling, not very good overall -- not everybody, but I think you said, what is it, 61 percent?

May: Sixty-one percent. We're not living in Woebegone. Everybody is not above average, that's for sure.

Taylor: How are these people going to make this transition? Are they going to make the transition into the new world of leadership?

May: Well, the nice thing is, is that you talk about the complexity. We're now living in a world which is very demanding. So, if you will, economic Darwinism is culling the herd. And what we're finding is one of the traits we see in successful CIOs is they have robust, diverse, very broad and deep human networks.

So those are the winners, if you will, that's almost an early warning device for what's happening in the environment. But that 61 percent who are average or below do not have a robust or well-developed human network. So one of the basic lessons we tell CIOs is they have to get out more because CIOs face similar problems and need to meet their peers more often.

Taylor: And you are in fact talking about external networks in this case, not just their internal corporate networks.

May: Oh, yes sir, yes sir. But it's interesting, in the truly distressed IT organizations, IT is a bunker, and the CIO actually does not go out into the business. And so like not only do they have to get out inside their enterprise, they actually have to get out inside the discipline, which is broader IT, and out, if you will, into the broader industry and into society in general.

Taylor: Thornton, my observation dealing with very large corporate organizations is that the CIO, as are all C-level executives, so scheduled out. I mean, their calendars are booked six months in advance, every hour. I mean, I've never seen anything like it. And it's getting worse, it's not getting better. What do you do inside the IT Leadership Institute to give these people back the kind of time that allows for them to network?

May: Well, the great CIOs actually have, I mean, they're great at time management. And one of the greatest insights in time management is not so much calendar and not so much a tool or not so much a PDA or a BlackBerry. What it is, is having great people. Because you have to let go, because a CIO has to have degrees of freedom to opt in and opt out on an ad hoc basis to the value-creating opportunities that arise on a real-time basis. For example, at these conferences, when they break for lunch or something like that, when I see CIOs running to the phones and playing with their BlackBerries, I'm seeing an organization that is in some trouble. So I guess the answer to that is how do we give them back their lives? They have to create great leaders underneath them, and to do that they have to be able to give up and delegate those large chunks of the day-to-day work so they can create the future.

Taylor: We've learned a little bit about the IT Leadership Institute. What are the other really great institutions doing about this now?

May: I'm very fortunate to be affiliated with several business schools that are actually fundamentally changing their curriculum to meet the needs of a technology-impacted society. And so the comments I'm going to give you reflect on UCLA, the Managing the Information resource program at the Anderson School there, the Haas School of Business, the CIO institute there, and at Ohio State, something called the CIO Solutions Gallery. The common theme between all of those is: One, they start with massive respect for the time of the student, the CIO, the CIO direct report, the CIO second level. But then what they do is they actively involve the CIO in creating the curriculum, because professors have this nasty habit of thinking they know everything -- they find it hard to stand beneath the weight of everything they think they know. They're insufferable sometimes, you know? I mean that in the nicest possible way to my many colleagues out there. But now we sort of feel like, tell us what you, the market, the CIO, needs to know and we will, using the tools of education, basically help you get there. So it's actually, we inverted it. Education, executive education at the Haas School is now market-driven.

Taylor: CIOs are have been asked and have seen an enormous amount of their resources go to such things as compliance, risk management, security, Sarbanes-Oxley. With that burden that has been placed upon them, and at the rate that it has eaten up resources within organizations, where are they on the competitive curve, on the creative side of the business?

May: Well, it's interesting because the great CIOs, the 16 percent that I'm talking about, they actually do not see, if you will, compliance-related activities or security-related activities as being incongruous with the activity or exercise of innovation. Because the neat thing about compliance is that basically -- where it starts is, do you know what is happening in your organization?

And surprisingly enough, in publicly traded institutions and in some of the finest -- some of the perceived as finest, if you will, government agencies around the globe -- people are surprisingly clueless about what actually goes on on a day-to-day basis. So the nice thing is, it's sort of like reengineering, is that you're now being asked is, what actually happens in my business? And you should be able to answer that. And the neat thing you do is, once you're able to see that, actually able to draw a process map of what goes on, that's Compliance 101.

The great companies say, well, wait a minute, we can do better. So basically they use their compliance dollar, they transform it into an innovation and awareness dollar, into what's actually going on in the business. So I actually see that there is some great money being spent.

There is a group, and it's about 61 percent (it's funny how this data all fits together) of the companies we're looking at are basically trying to get by. They're basically teaching to the test, if you will, with regards to compliance.

The great companies say it's not enough to comply. I am obligated. I have a fiduciary responsibility. I have a public sector responsibility to know what's going on in my business. And so I actually see this as a very positive thing.

Taylor: Thornton, as we wrap up here, tell us just a little bit more about the IT Leadership Institute. And particularly, how can our listeners get ahold of the CIO Habitat Reports?

May: Well, the wonderful thing is, it is a free resource. So this is not in any way, shape or form a solicitation. They can contact me. My email address is tamay@fccj.edu, and I'll be delighted to send you these reports and put you on the list for them. They come out about every 6 to 8 weeks and they're about 10 to 20 pages, depending on how robust the responses are. And so it's available to your listeners. Be delighted to get that out to them.

Taylor: Thornton, thank you so much for joining us today. I certainly hope you'll accept my invitation to come back soon.

May: I would love to. And as always, whenever I'm with you, Bruce, I learn more than I impart. So thank you so much for having me.

Taylor: Thank you.

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