During a board dinner a while back, I managed to get myself trapped in a predictably overheated argument about the best method for managing projects and organizing IT departments. One of the other board members (also a CIO) and I decided to entertain the rest of the committee by pointing out the various and fatal flaws in each other’s approach.

Why Don’t I Stick with Football?

There are some topics you just don’t discuss in polite company, especially these days. You know the list: politics, religion, most social issues and of course, any point of view that is liable to cause listeners to scurry for their respective corners and glare at one another. That’s why it’s never a good idea to sit down at a cocktail party. Everybody is interesting for five minutes, but after that, the conversational pickin’s for us introverts get pretty thin and it’s time to stroll to a different part of the room. Experience with things like vendors, consultants, hardware or recruiting tends to be pretty much the same, so finding common ground is easy. However, on the continuum of social missteps, expressing a point of view (no matter what it is) concerning organizational and executional strategies and tactics falls somewhere between redipping your half-eaten corn chip in the salsa bowl and shooting the Cheez Whiz directly into your mouth.

Now stand back and watch as I try not to shoot any cheese up my nose.

As I see it, IT organization charts and project execution ought to be less about managing IT and more about managing users and the needs of the company. A good CIO has to overcome her natural tendency to want to mix it up in the trenches and must be careful not to overcontrol a department, especially a big one. An effective CIO stands far enough back to observe what is going on, calibrate and refine. Get the strategy right, the saying goes, and any middle manager can work out the tactics best suited for the situation.

If you don’t agree, it may be because you’re a control nut.

Running the War from Headquarters

I haven’t changed companies as often as some of the CIOs I know, but in the arc of my narrowing career, I left three CIO positions: once for a division transfer, once for greener pastures and once for my own sanity. In each case I walked into a department populated by competent, hardworking people who had, for related reasons, lost the confidence and support of the company they serviced. All three of these organizations had in common an inadequate or misallocated budget, all were beset by covert and competing IT organizations in the field, and all were centrally (and exclusively) managed from headquarters.