• White Papers |
• Blogs |
• Video |
• Webcasts |
• Podcasts |
• Events |
• Solution Centers |
• Newsletters |
• RSS Feeds

How to Play Your CFO Like a Fiddle

By Jerry Gregoire

January 01, 2002 — CIO — According to the handbook Karma For Dummies, a CIO who has been evil, cowardly or prone to signing outsourcing agreements in this life is condemned to spend the next as a bean counter. Justice indeed. In all, life as a CIO is better than a zero-sum game. The upsides do outnumber the downsides, good times are more memorable than the bad, and no matter how bad things get, you have the satisfaction of knowing that at least you’re not a CFO?a knee-jerk pessimist, skinflint, spoiler.

Of the three large corporations I’ve worked for, PepsiCo was my favorite. It makes great products, aggressively develops talent, does its best to eliminate the hopeless jerks, and maintains a well-mannered and respectful workplace. I worked there for more than 10 years; my last gig was as the CIO of its largest and most profitable division, Pepsi-Cola Co. For better or worse, PepsiCo’s traditional culture extended to its organization chart, so I reported to the CFO, my team buried (it seemed to me) in the finance department, a layer (and light years) away from where the real strategic decisions were being made. It drove me nuts.

I resigned in 1996 to take the CIO position at Dell Computer, in large part because Michael Dell agreed to move IT out from under finance and give me a seat on his senior team. Here, I thought, was a chance for IT to play a key role in strategic decision making, a place in the inner circle, a chance to spread the message of technology’s bountiful goodness without having it filtered by some tight-fisted luddite. Hurrah!

Things don’t always work out as planned. A CFO with no IT responsibility is just another dissatisfied department head, with lots to say about your budget and little compunction about chartering IT projects using outside resources. Even though I was no longer reporting to the CFO, nothing really changed, so I had to fall back on old skills and even older tricks to get the situation and my soon-to-be best friend under control.

Now, it would be too dull and pointless to replay for you the dos and don’ts of managing up, especially since they don’t generally work with CFOs. The most effective method, known to only a few and shared with you at considerable personal risk, is a reversal on the Stockholm Syndrome?wherein the hostage identifies with his captor, except in this case the CFO identifies with you, sees in you a soul mate, a fellow bulwark, a CFO in the making. It’s a touchy process and won’t come naturally to most CIOs, but here are a few tips to help you get started.

 

 

 

Email

Print

Comments

Digg This

SlashDot