CIO Era Magazines

I would love to say that as a manager of a service oriented organization, the key is to just rise above or ignore the politics and do your job. Sorry, that may work as an individual contributor but as a manager you must deal with the pushes and pulls from a variety of sources and make the best decision that keeps the “right” people happy. This means you must learn to play the game but it does not mean you have to give up your soul in doing so..

 

In my career, I have watched with frustration when the “wrong” projects were chosen or the “wrong” person was chosen for promotion/termination. However, right and wrong in a corporation can be somewhat gray at times and I can say with certainty that, short of a rare ethical breach, the decision-maker believed they were doing the right thing and in many cases were proved correct in doing so. That was a painful lesson for me and it took several attempts at reinforcement by my own mentors for it to get through my thick head, but it was an invaluable lesson.

 

As an IT manager on the way up the ladder, the key is to strike a position of influential objectivity which, obviously, is a contradiction in terms but we’re talking politics here where most of the rules of normalcy may not apply. So, since I made up the term, I get to define it; “influential objectivity” means the ability to position yourself in the most objective and visible position possible related to the best interests of the business and work to assist the upper-level management team with making decisions that are most beneficial within that scope.”

 

This is not a simple or short-term process but there is a workable path to reach this position of influence. A few weeks ago I wrote about the 3 absolute requirements of leadership.  As a quick reminder these are:

 

Maintain confidences

 

Be transparent, “Speak Truth to Power”

 

Deliver more than what you promise.

 

These 3 personal/professional attributes are fundamental and must be ingrained in the IT professional in order to achieve influential objectivity. You must be a trusted source of information and respected for the quality of your recommendations.

 

The next step is to make sure you understand your business. I am not talking about specific product you sell, I am talking about where your company adds value to your customers. In the 1995 book, The Discipline of Market Leaders, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersma identified 3 primary competitive business strategies that lead to success in the market place. I found this book to be one of the most insightful of the many management books published over the years and came to realize that understanding your business’ approach to the market is the first step in political positioning. Using the 3 strategies you can determine where the power-base of your company’s management will be located. For example:

 

Product Leadership: if your business is known for the product you deliver, seek out the management in R&D and Engineering

 

Customer Intimacy: If your company attracts and maintains its customer base because of the extreme high level of service, the power-base will be found among those managing people with direct customer contact.

 

Operational Excellence: a company that excels in this area will have the most influential management in production and logistics.

 

Of course, in the imperfect world we live in there are very few companies that achieve their success with a single one of these competitive strategies but for the most part these 3 areas are pretty definitive. The management power-base within these areas are now the targets in terms of working the politics related to IT.

 

For our discussion, we will use the area of “Operational Excellence” to dive a little deeper. In this case, the product itself may take a back seat to the company’s ability to deliver what is needed exactly when and where it is needed. This is pretty common with commodity oriented products and is exactly how Amazon has become dominant in the market. Your ability to rise to the CIO office in this type of company will be completely dependent on your engagement with the operational management power base to deliver the tools that make them successful.

 

Having identified the power-base, it is incumbent on aspirational IT management to gain a deep understanding of the goals of the business segment(s) and the processes that enable those goals. In this area, you will be looking at metrics related to cycle-times, on time deliveries, supplier performance, etc. Deep-dive into the existing metrics and if they don’t exist, work with the management team to create them. Expertise with the data related to the operational processes gets your foot in the door with the upper management team. This becomes the objective platform that should inform the discussion on most, if not all, topics related to information technology in the operational area. 

 

Insights into the data, combined with your deep understanding of existing process, can now be integrated with potential enabling technologies to establish a position of influence within the power base. The combination of the objectivity provided by the data and the influence provided by knowledge of enabling technologies creates a unique ability to influence the decision making processes related to projects and priorities. Hence, influential objectivity.

 

 In the IT world where demand generally exceeds resource capacity, the politically savvy will always prioritize those resources that support and enable the key competitive strategy even to the dismay of other constituents (please refer to my blog related to being the most unpopular guy in the company). Success as a CIO lies in the ability to participate in the political arena as an influential member of the management team while maintaining objectivity as a service-based organization. You can do it!