There are still companies where the IT department is
regarded as a back office function - a necessary evil, part of the
cost of doing business. But increasingly, IT directors and chief
information officers are finding they offer a unique insight, which
puts them and their teams at the forefront of business
development.
Tania Howarth, CIO of Coca-Cola Europe, is one such CIO. Howarth
has expanded her role outside the confines of IT and believes IT
should be an integral part of each area of business operation.
At Coca-Cola, Howarth has been spearheading a number of projects
focusing on improving operational effectiveness. These have not
been restricted to IT operations. "As a CIO you cannot just hide in
the technology," said Howarth.
In her experience, organisations are often not equipped to
handle change. Business change encompasses process and behavioural
change, and Howarth believes the CIO is uniquely placed to
orchestrate these changes. "The CIO can see the connection between
the different business functions," she said.
The most successful heads of IT are good communicators, are able
to display an empathy with the business and are good at managing
people. "To be successful at the top of IT you have to be a
successful leader and understand the complexity of management."
Howarth has distilled her vision of what it takes to be an
effective strategic CIO into seven steps (see box). At the heart of
these is the premise that an IT head must have an instinct for
business. Questions IT directors should ask themselves include, "Do
you really understand how the business works?" and "Can you
empathise with the challenges the business faces?"
Howarth regards business strategy and its execution as dynamic,
continuous and holistic. For her, the real value an IT director can
offer is to connect up the value chain across the business.
Stakeholder management is as important as the skills more often
associated with IT directors' core skills of project management and
risk management.
According to Howarth, the role of the CIO is to deliver
strategic change. In her words, the CIO needs to "create an honest
and compelling value chain of delivery".
She urges CIOs to remove any barriers that hinder progress,
deliver the benefits in small steps and ensure that there is a
governance process with clear lines of accountability for the
business change project. Last but not least, she says, "Delivering
change is the art of the feasible."
What is important for Howarth is that the project should not be
a one-shot. "Change is constant," she said. She believes it is
critical for the CIO to move from an undue emphasis on
transformational change to continuous improvement. Such continuous
improvement needs to be embedded into normal working
operations.
"It is important to take the team with you," Howarth said. This
means the team should understand its greater role within the
business.
"Even for very technical roles, business integration has to
happen at all levels. If you work within IT at Coca-Cola you work
for a soft drinks company, not an IT company."
She acknowledges an IT department needs strong technology
people, programmers and network designers, "but everyone in your
team must understand the business". It helps when the IT staff work
more closely with the business. At Coca-Cola, Howarth's team has a
lot of touch points with senior business heads. "Even junior
managers have client responsibility."
Some of her team have worked with the sales people on new
product launches, stacked shelves or put up point of sale kiosks.
And the more technical staff are offered management training and
business awareness.
In her experience this day-to-day training is easier to achieve
than a more formal approach such as placing staff on secondment.
"It is difficult to do secondments in a meaningful way and it tends
to happen around projects," she said.
With these measures in place, Howarth recommends IT directors
measure business key performance indicators. She suggests looking
for incremental improvement, rather than measuring the results when
the change project is completed.
Seven steps to being a strategic change
leader
● Think, feel and act as a strategic business leader
● Connect the dots to know the business instinctively
● Operate within the organization
● Take the IT team along with you
● Deliver change according to a clear destination and through a
staged process
● Continuous improvement and exploitation
● Measure until it hurts
Comment on this article:
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