When Carlton Communications merged with Granada to
formITVthree years ago, Richard Cross faced the greatest challenge
of his career. At the time, he was chief technology officer (CTO)
at Carlton. There was also an IT director at Granada. But the newly
merged company would need only one IT chief. Within months, either
Cross or his opposite number would be looking for a new
job.
"What made it especially challenging was that we had to work
together until the appointment was made," recalls Cross, who was
appointed technology director following a gruelling selection
process.
Cross's experience provides some useful pointers for other
senior - and not-so-senior - IT professionals whose smooth career
progress suddenly receives an unexpected jolt from a merger or
acquisition. The dealmakers who stitch together these corporate
tie-ups rarely give a thought to the career turbulence they create
for the people who work in the companies involved.
But that doesn't mean a merger or acquisition has to be a
career-stopper. Calm thinking and careful preparation are the keys
to coming out on top.
Even so, working with a colleague while knowing that soon one or
the other of you will be out on the street is not the best basis
for a harmonious relationship. Yet it can be done. Cross says, "I
think we were honest and frank with each other. We knew that
whoever got the job, it was in both our interests to inherit
something that was going in the right direction. It made a lot of
sense to work together and I think we did reasonably well."
So merger lesson one: if your job's on the line, don't join the
awkward squad. Otherwise, you might end up facing the firing
squad.
During the period leading up to the merger, Cross and his
colleague had to take a lot of decisions about how the different IT
systems from Carlton and Granada could be pulled together. They had
to do it against a background of post-merger manoeuvring in the
rest of the business.
"Typically, what would happen is that if a Carlton person was
appointed to head a department, they would favour Carlton systems
and vice versa," says Cross. "It was quite hard to go into part of
the business and decide what systems to put in if the head of that
section hadn't been appointed yet."
In this climate of uncertainty, there was only one way to do the
job successfully. "We set out to be honest and transparent about
the ways we took the decisions," Cross explains.
So merger lesson two: being open-minded and professional gives
new colleagues and old the confidence that your main concern is the
future health of the business, rather than a desire to fight turf
wars.
But, for Cross, by far the most challenging aspect of all was
the selection process involved in the new appointment. "We both
went through quite a lot of in-depth interviewing and analysis," he
says. "But there was a feeling that whoever came out of it on top
it was a fair contest because we both had the opportunity to
present our views to a group of senior managers.
"It gave us the chance to put across our views on how we would
run things. It was an extensive and transparent process."
So why did Cross succeed? He is clear now that it was because of
the way that he presented his ideas about the future contribution
that technology could make to the newly merged company. In reality,
his approach was a factor of the kind of IT professional he had
become. And that, in turn, was the result of the way he had
developed his career.
That career started with a computer science degree. But while
many computer science graduates cheerfully choose the techie root
into a career of nerd-dom - and there is nothing wrong with that:
IT needs its nerds - Cross was determined to head in the opposite
direction. "I've spent most of my career trying to move away from
being purely technical and to focus on how to extract value from
the technology.
"My feeling has always been that technology on its own doesn't
really deliver anything very much. It needs to be used in the right
way to deliver business benefit."
His first job after leaving university was with Andersen
Consulting (now Accenture), renowned during the time Cross was with
the firm for its excellent management training. "It was very
appealing to go through that training, which was almost akin to an
MBA," Cross recalls.
But even though Cross has developed a broad management
hinterland, his technology background has still proved useful in
his career. "When I see a proposal for implementing some
technology, my understanding enables me to get a much better
appreciation of what's realistic and what's not," he says. "It
enables me to see if something is not quite right and then be able
to ask the specific questions to try and unpack what is in the
proposal and understand it."
Yet what may well have made Cross the strongest candidate for
the ITV job was the systematic way he had developed his career. HIs
focus has always been on building a portfolio of skills so that he
could present himself as a well-rounded management professional. "I
wouldn't say that I had a long-term 20-year career plan when I
started out, but I've always tried to have a three- or five-year
view of what I'm doing," he says. "I tend to look at it from the
basis of whether I'm still learning and challenging myself in my
current role."
The rolling career plan means that Cross has systematically
sought to round out his experience. "When I am looking ahead and
thinking about where I go next, I'm considering how I can go into a
role where I'll be learning something new."
That explains why, after 12 years, he moved out of the
consultancy world to take a job managing a department with line
responsibility at transport company Exel Logistics. "I thought, why
don't I take on a role where the buck stops with me, not with my
client? Can I manage a budget with all the constraints that come
with a line management role?"
And when he moved to digital TV technology company NDS, where he
worked on creating what amounted to a new business, he gained a
valuable commercial dimension. "I gained experience of having
profit and loss responsibility, and how to build a business from
scratch when you are responsible for selling the product and making
money," he says.
"Something else I also learnt there was how to work with a large
R&D department on picking new technologies, choosing the ones
that could make money and then taking them to market."
So when crunch time came and he had to fight for that top ITV
job, Cross believed he knew what would win him the post. "What I
did was to understand what the business wanted, and then try to
exceed its expectations," he says. "For example, when managers said
they were looking for a certain level of savings by applying
technology to the business, I argued that it would be possible to
save more." It was a pledge on which he has delivered.
"I was also determined to be proactive about ways in which we
could improve the service that IT provided to the rest of the
company," he says. At the time of the merger, service levels were
lower than many wanted.
But Cross was not afraid to challenge management colleagues
about what IT would need if it was to deliver. "It's a two-way
process," he says. A poorly resourced technology function will
deliver poor service. The principle of you get what you pay for
applies as much in IT as in other walks of life.
So the final lesson for other IT professionals who find
themselves fighting for their job is this: speak up, speak out and
paint a picture of a positive future.
STEPPING STONES
• Gained first-class degree in computer science from
Loughborough University.
• 1984: Joined Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) as management
consultant.
• 1988: Moved to Bermuda to work as project co-ordinator for a
computer services company, Bermuda Business Machines
• 1989: Back in the UK, again as a management consultant, this
time with Ernst & Young. Became a lead consultant in IT and
business process improvement practice.
• 1996: Joined Exel Logistics UK as director of systems
delivery. Moved on to become solution delivery director for NFC
Europe, then European IS director for Exel Logistics.
• 1999: Appointed vice-president for interactive TV at NDS, a
News Corporation company. Developed new group which grew into
world's leading supplier of interactive TV technology.
• 2002: Became chief technology officer at Carlton
Communications, responsible for 500 staff and a technology budget
of more than £70m.
• Following merger of Carlton with Granada, appointed technology
director of ITV.
IT ORGANISATION
• Richard Cross is responsible for all IT, engineering,
transmission and media technology at ITV. He leads around 1,000
staff and controls an annual budget of more than £200m.
• The technology function is organised so that it "lines up
against" each of the company's divisions. So Cross has direct
reports who head the broadcasting division (which runs the TV
channels, sells the advertising, and so on) the production and
sales division (which produces the programmes and sells them
internationally) the consumer division (which deals directly with
customers through websites and businesses which ITV owns, including
Friends Reunited, as well as mobile phone services).
• In addition, Cross has a direct report who runs the core
infrastructure (including service desk, desktops, networks and
e-mail), and another who handles planning and governance (including
strategic planning, standards and security).
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