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CIO Executive Council

A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Webcast: In the Google Apps Cloud: How to Achieve Your Business Objectives

Dec 3rd, '09, 1 - 2 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Council member Brent Hoag, Director, Global IT, at JohnsonDiversey, as he discusses the adoption of Google Apps which has helped meet four corporate goals; sustainability, simplification, increased employee productivity and global collaboration.

Webcast: Collaboration Initiatives: Benchmarks & Best Practices

Dec 15th, '09, 4 - 5 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Council members Ruth Thorpe, VP & CIO at the U.S. Pharmaceutical Operations of Sanofi-Aventis, and Gary Kuyper, CIO at Bethany Christian Services, as they speak about their collaboration initiatives and experiences in how and why they chose the social networking and collaboration tools they are using and their business goals for collaboration, and facing culture change challenges.

Data Overview: Collaboration Initiatives Field Guide: Benchmarks & Best Practices

This appendix to the Council Field Guide provides an analysis which discusses benchmarks for collaboration IT implementation costs, adoption rates and payoffs. The overview identifies top IT and business goals and satisfaction rates for collaboration initiatives as well as best practices and lessons learned for implementing collaboration IT.

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News Feature

The Best Leadership Style? It All Depends.

The many comments by readers of my previous Leading Questions column, which explored the difference between leadership and ...

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December 30, 2004 — CIO —

The many comments by readers of my previous Leading Questions column, which explored the difference between leadership and management, revealed several truths:

Leadership and management are very different…but it’s hard to say just exactly how
Leadership is harder than management…but people who can execute are rarer than big thinkers
Management can be the more valuable skill…except when leadership is critically important

That these comments are in some ways contradictory doesn’t mean they’re wrong; they were made by intelligent CIOs, IT managers and others who have experienced what they write about. Leadership and management are situational: Different scenarios call for diverse responses and dissimilar skills. And what works in one situation can be disastrous in another.

A Situational Framework
The concept of situational leadership was popularized by management guru Paul Hersey, who developed a useful matrix for determining the amount of direction and support that a leader should provide, and the skills required by the leader and followers. But his is a very general framework; a more useful model for CIOs would take into account the particular requirements and tensions of the role.

One situational leadership model was outlined to me by Bradford Brown, director of the Business Technology office at McKinsey & Company. At one-third to one-half of all companies, IT doesn’t function well, Brown says. Development projects come in very late or well over budget or both. There may be fundamental problems with IT. The leadership qualities required of a CIO in this situation are a deep competence in the underlying processes of IT and a firefighter’s mentality, Brown says.

At the other end of the spectrum, about a quarter of companies enjoy well-run IT departments and recognize the strategic importance of IT, Brown says. The leadership qualities needed in this situation are, on the business side, an ability to engage with senior executives, talk their talk and understand their businesses; and on the technology side, the vision to channel the power of IT for competitive advantage. Functional competence in IT is secondary. Brown observes that a firefighter CIO would be a flop in this situation.

The situation for CIOs at the remaining portion of companies—a quarter to a third, in Brown’s estimation—falls somewhere in between. Leading-edge IT isn’t the concern, but the ship is sailing smoothly. Leadership here calls for an ability to steer others toward the goal of continued execution, using soft skills such as charisma, rather than the highly directive capabilities required in the first situation.