How to Save Your Strategic Rights

The CIO of Santander Consumer USA convinced the business to keep him on the strategic team.

June 24, 2009 — CIO Executive Council —

If only all problems could be solved in one meeting with the CEO. My team had done an admirable job of becoming more strategic and partnering with the business. But then when the business was relying on us most, we blew our credibility and experienced a real possibility of losing our strategic ground.

In late 2007, Santander Consumer USA entered into a period of high change across the company, and we were really stepping on the gas. For the past few years, IT had become involved in a more strategic role and, in many cases, we were in the driver's seat for long-term business solutions and customer interaction. But this time, the company's operational mode was different, and we started feeling pressure from the business units to perform with more precision to ensure stability. In previous years, my peers in customer-facing leadership roles were accepting of a higher defect rate in exchange for rapid delivery. Now we were being asked to deliver quickly and have zero defects.

As market-driven initiatives ramped up and demand increased, we stumbled on the run side, and I found myself fighting against being forced to temporarily give up our strategy role. Negative perceptions of our operational capability compounded the situation, undermining the competent image that had earned us a shot as a more strategic driver.

I found my solution in an effort already underway. I had been assessing our IT capability using the CIO Executive Council's Future-State CIO Model, which illustrates how CIOs serve the business from a tactical/operational role through a strategy-oriented role. That helped crystallize the problem, and I realized what I had to do.

First I pledged to my business peers that IT would put a renewed focus on systems operations and support and on laying out key metrics to measure improvement. I also explained the importance of IT's presence in strategic conversations if we were going to develop and implement solutions that would serve Santander well into the future.

I did not expect our CEO to be as easy to convince, despite our close relationship. I used the Future-State model (see council.cio.com/programs/future_state.html) to visualize why IT needed to not only deliver operational excellence but continue to be part of the strategic planning. That model outlines three general areas of focus for CIOs:

Function Head: focused on activities facing the IT organization, which are intended to achieve IT operational excellence;

Transformational Leader: focused on creating change for the enterprise through close partnerships with business operations and cross-functional corporate departments; and

Business Strategist: focused on driving business strategy for competitive advantage.

I pointed out that while a Function Head CIO could deliver great service, my team and I needed to also operate as Business Strategists in order to provide systems and support that would satisfy more than the short-term needs. We needed the time and space to both assess the impact of our market-driven solutions and to think long-term about service sustainability.

It took that visualization for the CEO and me to reach a renewed understanding. Without a model to guide me in how to guide him, I doubt I would have brought him to this point that quickly.

I have also come to realize that business alignment isn't just about capturing business objectives and driving them down into the IT organization. Business alignment is about adapting to the changing needs of the business and operating as one executive team. I have to be prepared to be a function head, a transformational leader and a business strategist, and employ varying emphasis in these areas to adapt to the business needs as they change over time.

Don Goin is CIO of Santander Consumer USA, an auto loan finance company, and a member of the CIO Executive Council. To learn more, visit council.cio.com.