How CIOs Should Spend Their Day

Deliberately Distribute Time Across Constituents And Yourself
This is the first document in the “CIO Time Allocation Best Practices” series.
by Lewis Cardin
with Laurie M. Orlov and Bo Belanger

FORRESTER’S 30-30-30-10 TIME DISTRIBUTION FOR CIOS

CIOs often have difficulty balancing their time and focus between their different constituencies, which include their staff, senior execs, and peers. Too often, CIOs are overly focused on one specific area, such as on issues inside their own organization, at the expense of other critical but neglected interactions, such as working closely with a peer business group or executive.

Forrester’s model is based on the premise that there are four areas where CIOs must direct their time: above, across, below, and with yourself. Sounds simple, right? Putting this into practice, however, requires a paradigm shift in how CIOs think about and plan their calendar. It’s important to note that this is not merely about the time spent with these constituents. It is highly unlikely that a CIO will spend 3 hours a day with the CEO. Instead, this is time invested on behalf of each constituent. CIOs must distribute their energy with deliberate balance because constituents that are:

· Above the CIO direct the CIO’s agenda. This group should expect and receive 30% of the CIO’s attention. This constituency can be the board of directors, audit committee, CEO, and/or the senior executive team. Time invested with this group of CIO stakeholders builds credibility, proves the enterprise value of IT, enables the CIO to become an architect of corporate strategy, and develops the CIO’s ability to deal from a position of strength.

· Across from the CIO are the constituents of IT organization results. Demanding another 30% of the CIO’s time, this constituency is made up of peers, CxO executive colleagues, and key vendors. They are the customers of IT in the enterprise. CIOs may rely heavily on team members to work closely with these other groups, which, while necessary, is insufficient to ensure that a CIO fully understands key business issues and concerns.

· Below the CIO make up the team that collectively delivers IT value to the business. Requiring another 30%, this group is the CIO’s own organization. For CIOs, time invested with their own organization provides the leadership for IT to perform effectively, deliver on expectations, and to run like a well-oiled machine. Sometimes, CIOs are so busy working with other execs and above, the “well-oiled machine” becomes badly in need of management maintenance — and this becomes all too apparent to those outside of IT.

· You: CIOs need private time to restore and keep perspective. The CIO should reserve 10% of business time for strategizing, perspective setting, and reflection. This time should be used for consultation with mentors and coaches and dialogue with trusted colleagues and business role models. This should also include self-assessment as to which behaviors and relationships are working well and which are not. This time contributes greatly to the CIO’s effectiveness.

WHY CIOS SHOULD BE DELIBERATE AND BALANCED IN MANAGING THEIR TIME

CIOs should deliberately structure and organize calendars in a 30-30-30-10 distribution to maximize effectiveness in the role and to ensure that constituents are pleased with IT and that IT is looking ahead. And no portion of the CIO’s time should ever exceed 40%, even allowing for IT organizational structure variants like federated or decentralized. The risk of imbalance inevitably results in issues surfacing with one constituency or another.

An Approach To Solving The Current Balance Problem

Consciously keeping this balance in mind, whether it is through daily, weekly, or even biweekly reflections is the key ingredient to success. Forrester recently interviewed 18 CIOs to learn about how they distribute their time. They generally agree that the model makes sense, but some report that they struggle with balance:

· I spend too much time reacting and fixing problems below. Unsuccessful CIOs sometimes spend too much time below them, which takes away opportunities for them to prove IT’s value to the rest of the business, namely in the above and across categories. Anytime a CIO is spending more than 50% of their day on behalf of the constituents below them, with at least half of that time on reactive problem-solving, they are in trouble.

Solution: Interestingly, CIOs with technology backgrounds get stuck in this rut more often than their colleagues with a business background. The reason? They instinctively want to fix problems themselves because they can. CIOs should deliberately teach and mentor a strong management team that is constructed to handle all tactical problems that should not need CIO attention. Cultivating this team in the long run will make the team’s job easier and, more importantly, the IT organization more efficient.

Example: If a CIO finds that he or she is spending too much time putting out fires inside IT, and his or her team isn’t strong, it may be in the CIO’s best interest to appoint an operations executive to handle all of these problems until a solid management team is in place beneath them. This way the CIO can continue to serve all other constituents without getting sucked into a reactive problem-solving role. For example, one newly appointed senior IT VP in a nationwide bank is consolidating support responsibilities under a single trusted leader who will run day-to-day operations while the VP spends more time developing and promoting new technology enabled business ideas that the bank can use.

· My peers’ expectations of my IT organization are too high. CIOs who cite this are really saying that there is a lack of communication between the CIO and the execs of the business lines, the customers of IT. If peer execs don’t understand what IT is doing or what they should expect from IT, exec grumbling and frustration grows.

Solution: CIOs must work hard to market IT more effectively, boost communication with their peers, better understand their peers’ issues, and manage their peers’ expectations of IT. This proactive effort can in some instances feel awkward, but these relationships must be developed through one-on-one meetings or even something as simple as a weekly lunch. Once this relationship is built and the communication is improved, the CIO’s peers become credible sources about the value of IT to their businesses — a topic the CIO’s executive team above should constantly be reminded of.

Example: The CIO at one of the world’s largest multinational consumer products companies said: “I tend to engage my peers in new possibilities, new ideas, and new strategies that we can work on together. We get a lot of insight early on. People want to help — they want to feel that what they think is interesting. Three years ago, we created new strategies for IT here. We had very early discussions with these people to get their reactions, and it worked beautifully.”

· My executive team doesn’t care about strategic input from IT. The executive team in some firms recognizes the importance of IT and regularly discusses IT’s impact on the business. Where that doesn’t happen, it is not the CEO’s or anyone else on the executive team’s job to make this connection — it is the CIO’s job. Again, this involves proactively finding opportunities to provide business value through casual or formal meetings in the office or outside of it. It requires going beyond learning about other parts of the business to find areas where IT can provide value.

Example: When asked about which topics were covered during executive dialogues with constituents above and across from the CIO, the CIO of a $1 billion-plus manufacturer and retailer said: “I tailor the message to who is in the room and how they can help IT in the next 60 days. I coach the CEO on how other division presidents can use IT efficiently and more effectively, and this works.”

· I don’t have time to even think about balancing my time! Often CIOs will be so caught up in day-to-day crises and tasks, they lose the time to reflect and make adjustments moving forward. When CIOs find themselves in this situation they must realize that this comes from constantly reacting to problems in the business and not being able to execute their own agenda.

Solution: Alone time is significant because it allows CIOs to step back and see exactly where they have been spending their time and how effectively it has been spent. Taking a half hour daily or a few hours at the end of the week for this reflection is a good investment of time because it allows CIOs to correct their mistakes and work more confidently and efficiently moving forward. Also, this alone time is an opportunity to seek help from fellow CIOs or trusted advisors within or outside company walls with tough questions that are troubling
them. Often times, a fresh outlook will be exactly what CIOs need to solve a problem. Simply, networking with other CIOs on a regular basis is best practice to succeed in this role.

Example: Following an old adage to a T, the CIO at a billion dollar information service and technology firm never eats lunch alone. The CIO says: “I frequently connect with peers, vendors, and other CIOs informally. This is invaluable, especially with CIOs at bigger companies. Their organizations are more complex, and they deal with much larger issues. They offer an idea that I haven’t even imagined.”

It's OK to be a spreadsheet junkie
Beverley Head, Information Age

Until it implemented an integrated enterprise management solution, travel guide company Lonely Planet was managing the business using 40,000 different spreadsheets.
It's easy to scoff, but Lonely Planet got to be a very successful international business with those 40,000 spreadsheets - it just believed it could do better if it had better management reports based on accurate and timely information.

In the past, business intelligence systems and their ilk have largely been the province of big business and government, but medium enterprises like Lonely Planet are now also turning to such systems in their search for efficiencies and agility.

According to Rob Wells, managing director of Business Objects, more than a third of the company's 2006 licence revenues came from small and medium businesses.
"The basic requirements and needs of the mid market are fundamentally the same as the largest organisations - they want access to information quickly and from a trusted source. And they suffer from having sales directors around the country who believe that their Excel spreadsheet is the truth and their core financial system is telling porkies," said Wells.

However, Associate Professor Beth Walker, director of the Small and Medium Enterprise Research Centre at Edith Cowan University, warns that there is no such thing as an homogenous SME, and for many small companies if the spreadsheet approach works, then there's little point in upgrading to a bigger more complex computer system on the vendor's say-so.

Although Australia has a huge population of small and medium enterprises, only a small percentage of them would be ripe for investing in business intelligence, according to Prof Walker.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics there are 1.86 million businesses operating in Australia. Of those, 1.79 million have fewer than 20 people working in them. A small fraction of those micro businesses are what she refers to as "gazelles" - fast movers with lofty ambitions - and many of them do have advanced information systems.

But for a great many more, "MYOB does the job". For those small businesses which actually don't want to grow (and this she claims is as many as half of them) installing information systems geared at growing the business can be counter-productive she warns.
"Whatever you do, ask if it adds value. If it does then it's probably a good idea. If it's going to take you time, and money with no clear benefit then it's probably not."
She said that a lot of the information systems that small and medium businesses do implement are required for compliance; for tax purposes or meet the requirements foisted by Australia's three layers of government. Staying a spreadsheet junkie may be just fine for many successful businesses.

"The mid market Australian firm still does it on Excel", John Hoffman, general manager of Altis Consulting confirmed. He believes though that businesses that want to grow, (and do )grow, taking on multiple product lines or services, or moving into new markets, will have to look at more sophisticated business intelligence tools.

Whatever the vendors and consultants say, even committed medium businesses find the migration from management by spreadsheet to integrated information system a challenge. Lonely Planet for example, found that in spite of its planning in advance of the migration to an SAP integrated information system, it was under-resourced in just about every area, and regretted not talking to other small and medium businesses about their experience in moving to integrated information systems.

And while many large enterprises have their own internal or consulting business analysts, able to identify the information reports required by managers, and translate that into an information systems specification for IT, smaller companies often struggle to crystallise what they want - or just as importantly know when to stop asking for more and more reports just because they can.
Michael Horsfall is systems developer for Perth-based Cash Converters. Like Lonely Planet his company wanted access to a single view of the truth. It had been running non-relational Domino databases along with a range of other data systems which held information vital to obtaining a clear view of the company's workings.

In the past, store managers were cutting and pasting data from the Domino databases into spreadsheets, and then sending these across to head office. "Management was saying that they had not got the information to help them make business decisions," according to Horsfall. After implementing Business Objects' Crystal Reporting he said there is a single view of the information available and "we have done a reconciliation report that was taking an accounts person three or four days and now takes 10 minutes".

Cash Converters has a particular need for improved reporting following the December 2006 passage of new anti money laundering and counter terrorist financing legislation which will require many businesses, especially those involved in financial services, to overhaul their reporting systems. Companies involved in lending, leasing, hire purchase, asset management (there are 70 designated services affected by the new rules) must maintain detailed records about customers of those services. Prof Walker expects many SMEs to get caught up in the new compliance regime.

Even without the regulatory stick, Doug Goethal technical director of eBI, believes that business intelligence is a growing issue for small and medium companies. But where in large enterprises business intelligence is championed by the IT director pushing upwards the benefits of technology, in smaller companies demand is often seeded by management according to Goethal.
The challenge comes in balancing management's hunger for more and more information reports with IT's ability to deliver. "It rips the efficiency out of the IT team - but it can turn them from being a cost centre to being a profit centre," Goethal said.

Michael Horsfall has limited the ability to create reports initially, although "In the future we'll be giving this to the managers to build the reports they want".

Gavin Cooke, director of technical services at Altis, warns against companies seeking too much information, and getting bogged down by reports, however: "If you have more than five key performance indicators then you are fooling yourself. We know of one business unit with 216 KPIs and the executives say they use the Powerpoint printout as a doorstop."

Cooke believes companies need to identify the handful of KPIs that they need to monitor and focus their efforts on those - but he warns that "As an organisation is maturing and developing the indicators will change."

For any organisation, of any scale, considering an adventure in business intelligence it is worth remembering that there is no off-the-shelf product; intelligence and insight comes from careful analysis of needs which then acts as the foundation for whatever technological solution most closely fits the bill. Sometimes, for some companies, that will still be a spreadsheet.

In any case picking the technology should be the last step taken when companies design a better information system. According to John Hoffman "In the real world, IT says 'good we've got a budget let's buy a new toy'."

Gavin Cooke stressed: "They should ask what problems the business is trying to solve, and identify the outcomes required and then the data and the people they need to provide those outcomes, and lastly the technology.

"I've seen BI projects where a company replaces one BI tool with another. It's like a builder saying it's a crap house because my hammer was useless."

To adapt his vernacular, it might not be a crap company just because of a spreadsheet. Business intelligence will often make a good company better, but it will rarely rescue a dud.