The CIO as the superhero - P Man

In the dark and distant past, IT professionals tended to be ‘jack of all (IT) trades’ with their knowledge spanning across the various technology disciplines. Then IT professionals started to be put into technology boxes and they became a subject matter X-pert. They were trained to become an X-pert and only an X-pert and this has generally been the way for a while. There was mention of the hybrid IT person but that referred not to cross discipline IT but more of a cross between IT and the business. You don’t seem to hear much of the hybrid term anymore, although the need remains and is growing. Unfortunately the hybrid may now come from the business.

The CIO of today, unless they came from that dark and distant past, were probably trained as an X-pert in a particular field of IT and then as they moved into IT management, still managing their X-pert area, they started to become more aware of cross IT functionality and then on becoming the CIO needed to suddenly have knowledge across all disciplines of IT. Now of course I am generalising here but making a point that a lot of IT people have not had a wide exposure to all the disciplines (except at University where they may have had some theoretical knowledge) and as they get promoted there is a need to gain a wider understanding until they become the CIO and then they will need to be that superhero.

The attributes of a superhero befitting the CIO are:-

• Extraordinary powers, skills and/or equipment (With servers, .net and SQL who could argue!)
• Strong moral code (Everybody is signed up to a professional body’s code of ethics, aren’t they!)
• Secret identity ( not a good one for this role but some CIO’s are unfortunately not known in their own organisation)
• Supporting cast ( the IT management team or at least some of them )
• Number of enemies (the CFO?)
• Base of operations ( secure protected server rooms to hide in)
• A weakness (Not on the board/ poor golf handicap!)

All superheros have a name which can be emblazoned on their chest; I have called mine the ‘P man’. This is perhaps not the most glamorous of names but is very functional and appropriate to what CIO’s need to do.
So why the P man? I think you will discover that the P’s refereed to here are all essential to becoming a superhero CIO.

Let’s start with by taking the first three P’s from the UK governments ‘P30 programme’.

To quote “ The purpose of the Portfolio, Programme and Project Office guidance is to provide universally applicable guidance that will enable individuals and organisations to successfully establish, develop and maintain appropriate business support structures that will allow:

• Informed senior management decision making on strategic alignment, prioritisation, risk management, optimisation of resource etc to deliver their business objectives (Portfolio management)
• Identification and realisation of business outcomes and benefits via Programmes
• Successful delivery of Project outputs that enable benefits within time, cost and quality restraints”

These three P’s are key to a CIO’s success for the very reasons outlined above.

But there are more:-

• Planning - (IT strategy/ project – essential to success)
• Platform – (Getting a solid, flexible and functional infrastructure)
• Policy – (ensuring a set of ‘living’ policies)
• Protection – (security, the key to a good night’s sleep)
• Providers – (supplier management is often overlooked but can pay dividends if done correctly)

And maybe you can think of some more.

The bottom line is that the CIO needs to be seen as the superhero within their organisation and have a wide breadth of knowledge not just about IT but the business that employs them and be able to help that business succeed. They need to deliver on the P’s.

Otherwise the only P they will need will be a Parachute!

"This post is on behalf of the Enterprise CIO Forum and HP"