Armed with a broad business background and a global perspective, your successor will tackle your former job like a CEO brought in to effect a turnaround.
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The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it. The man who knows how will always have a job. The man who also knows why will always be his boss.
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Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.
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Replace Thyself
David L. Reff
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If you are a CIO who came up through the IS ranks, the market is speaking to you. It's telling you to become your own successor, effective immediately. According to a recent survey in Computerworld [CW, March 14], 44% of more than 200 large companies think CIOs with a general business background can significantly outperform you.
"The business background gives them the ability to step outside of what they're doing [and] look at [information technology] objectively,'' says Microsoft Vice President Mike Brown, who oversees both finance and information technology for the industry leader. According to Brown, the days when CIOs could simply be responsive to "issues which have been framed for them by somebody else'' are over.
As an example, he points to Microsoft's new CIO Chris Gibbons, a management professional with a background in finance as well as IS.
So how can IS-bred CIOs give management what they want before it's too late?
Let's play pretend
Let's assume for a moment that you've been replaced. Armed with a broad business background and a global perspective, your successor will tackle your former job like a CEO brought in to effect a turnaround.
First, the new CIO will determine what changes must be made to ensure success for the company. How do we gain an edge on the competition? What are other IS organizations doing better, and how can we match or exceed that level of accomplishment?
Starting with an extensive review of corporate goals, both analytical (such as expense reductions and sales projections) and conceptual (such as employee morale and market position), the new CIO will take a proactive role in obtaining input from other top executives to learn how IS can help the company prosper.
MSA Chairman John Imlay once observed, "Everything to a CEO is staff.'' Your successor will view the CIO role in exactly the same fashion, balancing the abilities of a highly talented team to deliver results of exceptional quality.
To achieve this goal, they will conduct a dispassionate and ruthlessly objective evaluation of the senior information technology staff, the people who must ultimately be relied upon to get the job done. Are these the best people available in their particular specialties? If not, would upgrading personnel lower costs and/or yield higher quality results?
"Quality is critical,'' says Andersen Consulting's Bruce Turkstra. "It's quality of the management in the end that tells the difference.''
It can be challenging to objectively evaluate the strengths and limitations of your staff. But recall the fate of the Dallas Cowboys at the end of the Tom Landry era. At his peak in the 1970s, Landry was considered the best head coach in the NFL. But in the 1980s, his stubborn determination to stick with outmoded players and strategies left "America's Team'' the worst in the league.
Don't tempt fate
When new owner Jerry Jones came in, he ruffled feathers by abruptly firing Landry and replacing him with Jimmy Johnson. The result, however, was back-to-back Super Bowl victories a few years later.
Of course, there are no guarantees that drafting first-round picks and delegating in earnest will translate into instant job security. However, not doing those things is a good way to tempt fate in today's do-or-die economy. So replace yourself now before somebody else does it for you.
Identify what your successor would do and start doing those things yourself. In other words, become your company's new CIO.
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