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Win
friends, influence business: IT Executive Leadership
program gives senior IT professionals the skills they need to
leap into the CIO’s chair
By ACNielsen,
Computing Canada, May 14, 2004
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A killer golf swing may be the most important skill an aspiring chief
information officer needs to succeed. That’s because much of
a senior IT executive’s job entails relationship-building –
within their departments and with other decision makers in the company,
says Mimi Hunt, Athabasca University’s program director in the
IT management department. “I always tell CIOs to create a schmoozing
line item in their budgets because it’s important,” she
says. Hunt was in Toronto last month lecturing a group of 24 students
enrolled in the IT Executive Leadership program, a forum that offers
practical and academic instruction in the skills needed to make the
transition to an executive-level position with IT.
The program, co-sponsored by the CIO Summit and Ryerson University,
is comprised of three modules, each containing four days of classes,
says Barry Clavir, executive director of the CIO Summit. “In
each module, we’ve paired a leading academic in the field along
with an experienced CIO to ensure participants gain insight into both
theory and practice,” he says.
It’s that practical focus organizers say will differentiate
the program from others out there. “These guys can go to school
and hear academics anywhere,” says program director Craigg Ballance.
“What they don’t have access to is real CIOs.”
The transition to becoming a CIO is a difficult one and education
is a practical avenue to ease that, says James Norrie, professor and
director of Ryerson University’s School of IT Management. “The
transition from being a functional leader in IT is very different
to being a member of the executive team – taking on responsibility
for providing leadership to the technology function as it relates
to integrating business strategy and IT strategy,” says Norrie.
“Nowhere along the way do we educate these folks and then they
wonder why their first stint as a CIO is a failure.”
Parviz Mohamed says the program is exactly what she was looking for.
As the director of IT development services for TransAlta Corp. in
Calgary, Alta.,Mohamed is just one step below the CIO. Although she’s
not interested in pushing anyone out of a job, she says she’s
eager to develop as an IT professional. “This isn’t necessarily
about a promotion,” she says. “It’s more about my
professional development. Mohamed says the training has helped her
sharpen her skills in strategic execution and political maneuvring,
essential tools in a CIO’s arsenal. “One of the challenges
is how to become more effective politically,” she says. “Not
so much with the execution of IT, but more around the value of IT
and how to interact with other business leaders in an effective manner.”
How well a CIO leads her team, says Mohamed, is also an important
measurement of success. “At the end of the day, if you’ve
been able to build relationships and articulate the value of technology,
that’s a good thing,” she adds.
The program has offered Wayne Millar an opportunity to re-examine
his leadership style, something Millar sees as crucial to being a
successful IT leader. “My approach has always been intuitive.
I lead by common sense,” says Millar, director of onsite support
for Sunlife Financial in Toronto. “I need to sit down and figure
out what kind of leader I want to be and plan a more structured approach.”Millar
has about 80 people on his team and says the program has already had
an impact on the way he deals with his direct reports. One of the
bonuses of participating in the leadership program, adds Millar, is
the opportunity to network with other IT professionals from across
the country. “Most people, because of their time commitments,
spend a lot effort looking inside the organization. I realize I need
to look outside more often and here we have top IT people from across
the country.” The next IT Executive Leadership program will
take place in Calgary this June.\ The cost for the program is $8,900.
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Binary code: IT directors are heading back to the classroom to learn
how to speak the same language as CEOs
By
Andrew Wahl, Canadian Business, April 26, 2004
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Any executive will tell you that often the most important business
doesn’t take place in the boardroom, but in the elevators and
hallways of a corporation (if not in restaurants, bars and golf courses).
That’s where relationships are built, over time, in small snatches
of conversation and quick impressions, not some long PowerPoint presentation.
People working in sales or finance get this stuff. In fact, they got
where they are today in part because they mastered, at an early stage
of their career, the political art of small talk with the boss.
But techies? They don’t speak the same language – or at
least the other executives
don’t think so. In their eyes, the CIO knows servers, networks
and e-commerce systems – things most execs struggle to understand.
That disconnect poses a big problem for IT professionals moving up
the ranks.
Recently, I found out just how much of a problem it is when I chatted
with several IT directors (generally the people who report to the
chief information officers and the prime candidates to take over those
positions). It didn’t take long to find out what they really
think.
The classic problem is that, when they get on the same elevator as
the CEO or other top executives, the topic of conversation is –
you guessed it – their laptop. “It’s unbelievably
insulting,” said one director of IT. “These are the same
people who you stand in front of to make strategic presentations about
your interpretation of their business, and they give you funds for
it so you can help them do business. And they see you in the elevator
and it’s, ‘Oh,my laptop isn’t working,’ and
‘Do you think you
can get me a BlackBerry?’ You know what? F— off!”
You can’t say that to the boss, of course. (Well, you could,
but only once.) So the challenge for high-level IT professionals who
closely interact with other high-level execs in the corporation is
to learn the nuanced language of business, and the kinds of management
skills that resonate with senior-level people.
That’s why a group of about 30 IT directors signed up for a
six-month (parttime) IT leadership course jointly organized by the
CIO Summit, an annual speakers’ forum, and Toronto-based Ryerson
University. (A similar course will begin at the University of Calgary
in June.) This pilot group of students hail from across the country,
with jobs at mid-size and large publicly traded companies from almost
all industry sectors, as well as the public service. Not only did
the program address topics like how to transition from manager to
leader, how to structure a department for better IT governance and
how to manage expectations, but it also gave participants a chance
to network with their peers and swap stories.
And the IT directors seemed happy to discover that the problems they’ve
encountered – knuckleheaded CEOs included – were not all
that unique. The pressures keep ratcheting up. IT is constantly putting
out new fires – from security, privacy and business continuity
threats to spam, Microsoft patches (they were specifically mentioned)
and cameras in cellphones – and it draws attention to all the
wrong parts of the job. “Like most service organizations,”
said Jay Giblon, Gennum Corp.’s director of IT, “people
tend to only pay attention to you when something’s going wrong.”
But CIOs and IT directors (especially those hoping to get promoted)
can’t get into those kinds of details if they are to play a
leading role in the executive suite. That job operates at a higher
level and is more about communication, navigating corporate politics
and, especially, how to cope with budgets.And all of that requires
less tactical thinking – something tech managers are accustomed
to – and more strategic thinking. It’s a hard shift, but
it’s absolutely essential for IT professionals to make if they
are to be effective in their jobs, and especially as IT becomes more
closely integrated with individual business units – or face
being outsourced altogether. What many of the IT directors I spoke
to made clear was that those skills need to also change how other
executives perceive their contributions to the organization. A good
start would be to find a way to politely remind CEOs that fixing their
laptops isn’t what they’re paid to do.
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Geeks
break glass ceiling: Out of the computer
room and into the C suite
By
Laura Pratt, Financial Post, National Post, February 2, 2004 (cover
story)
TAKING
CARE OF BUSINESS
Keith Powell, left, a former chief information officer at Nortel
Networks, and Barry Clavir, president of THE CIO SUMMIT, have organized
a new program for information technology professionals who want
to put more focus on business. Even if they have the right stuff
for the executive suite, information technology professionals often
are passed over when companies fill top management jobs. However,
specially designed management education programs are giving ambitious
information technologists the tools they need to break through the
glass ceiling. The IT Leadership Development Program is a unique
collaboration between the School of Information Technology Management
at Ryerson University in Toronto and THE CIO SUMMIT, an organization
that has been running executive leadership programs for Canada’s
IT industry since 1993.
The new program is designed to give upwardly mobile mid-career IT
professionals preparation for becoming business managers, possibly
making them candidates for the position of chief information officer.
“IT professionals have a glass ceiling,” says Keith
Powell, who was CIO at Nortel Networks between 1996 and 2000. “There
are people in the IT [arm of an] organization who have the capability
to become CIOs, but they’re being passed over by the CEO,
who is bringing in business people.” Powell says that is because
“the IT fraternity” often has difficulty talking about
business.
“I’d see very bright executive-calibre people who just
weren’t getting the opportunity to [become] CIO. And it’s
because they were technology-focused and not business-focused.”
Powell says he was an exception. He was plucked from inside the
company to become CIO.More typical, he says, is for a company to
bring in an outsider for the position. It is not fair, he says,
but it is understandable. Powell, along with a handful of others
who recognized the same shortcoming, is one of the catalysts for
the IT Leadership Development Program.
“I think it’s good for business and it’s good
for IT,” Powell says of the program.“The more people
we can broaden, whether it’s IT into business or business
into IT, the more positive it is for business overall. We’ve
only seen the thin edge of the wedge in terms of the impact that
IT is going to have, not only on business, but our on whole lives.
I think this is a way to throw the doors wide open.”
Barry Clavir, president of THE CIO SUMMIT and founder of the Ryerson
program, says CIOs who do not know such business basics as how to
read balance sheets are not doing themselves or their companies
any favours. “If you want to become a vice-president of anything
in a large business organization, you must understand the business
drivers so you can relate to your peers.” One option, Clavir
says, is for CIO aspirants to return to school to earn a masters
of business administration. But many have neither the time nor the
budget to go that route. What’s more, an MBA would expose
them to the theoretical side of business, but might not give them
much practical experience.
Clavir says the Ryerson program “combines the rigours of academe
with the practicalities of business life.” In addition, founders
created an advisory board of CIOs that vet the program to ensure
the material is relevant to what is required in a workplace. Two-thirds
of the Ryerson program faculty are industry experts, so students
get to enjoy a mentoring experience. The other third are academics.
The program’s first module was last November. The second module
was last week, and the final one is in March. A module is four days
long, with three months between each module. James Norrie, director
of the School of Information Technology Management at Ryerson University,
says the program is based on an Austrian academic approach called
“the reflective practitioner.” The idea is that adults
who already have career experience learn very differently from students
who are academically inclined. Professionals, he says, learn best
by acquiring new knowledge, applying it, seeing the results, and
then making choices about whether to integrate it into their management
style. Between the modules of the IT Leadership Development Program,
Norrie says,“there’s an expectation that you’ll
go back to the business and put into practise what you’ve
learned.” Lecturers ask students to journal their experiences
and look for any changes that result from the program. “It’s
imperative, as professionals, that they experience a change in outcomes
as a result of a change in behaviour,” Norrie says. “Because
what we know about adults is, unless they see the value of a change,
they don’t continue to do it.” Participants are selected
with great care. “It’s a competitive mission,”Norrie
says, “and we pick them to all be more or less at the same
spot in their careers, with the same experience and so on, so they
can all draw on one another.” There are 24 participants in
the current student group. Of these, 80 per cent are either in the
public sector or with publicly owned companies. Andrew Dillane,
chief information officer of the Toronto-based IT staffing firm
CNC Global Ltd., is part of the initial group. “Most of my
expectations have been realized,” he says. “As anticipated,
the cohort and faculty have been phenomenal. If we continue at the
same pace, level and relevance, I think this program is going to
have a very long and prosperous following and future.” Clavir
plans to take the program to other universities. The next launch
will be later this year. |
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