CIO\'s Strategy for Strategic it

¶ … CIO's Strategy for Strategic it Planning

The reason that so many CIOs fail in aligning their strategic it plans to business objectives is that the entire process of creating, editing, and finally seeking feedback and execution of the this plan require an entirely different set of skills the CIO doesn't typically use. For many CIOs, their strongest skills are deductive logic, abstraction and the ability to create complex process workflows in their minds on the fly, then presenting them as solutions to both their boss, the CEO, and to customers. CIOs rise to this level of management not necessarily for their coordination, communication or integrative interpersonal skills in seeking cooperation.

As a result of this and the fact that it has only until recently been on its own from an organizational standpoint, and the conditions that any CIO must grapple with to get a strategic it plan aligned with business objectives becomes clear. When the characteristics and attributes of CIOs that do excel at the strategic it planning are studied a unique set of skills emerge. First, these CIOs have the a higher than average level of Emotional Intelligence (EI), have the ability to instill transformational leadership into teams and drive ownership of plans into organizational units, and finally, gain the cooperation of other departments in cross functional teams as a result of these two qualities. In organizations which have a decentralized approach to it, the need for extensive cross-functional teams is also critical for getting key parts of the strategic it plan completed.

CIOs' Emotional Intelligence and Cross-functional Team Performance

The role of cross-functional teams is primarily to intensely focus resources, processes, and people for the completion and project schedule for a strategic it plan. The logic of cross-functional teams is that the varied members of the team, each from a different functional area or in larger organizations, specific disciplines including engineering, marketing, manufacturing, operations, and service can be more effective in accomplishing the many synchronized and often complex tasks in developing a strategic it plan that supports their specific business goals and objectives. While the logic of having a concerted team of department or discipline experts is the foundation of cross-functional team effectiveness, there is in reality no obligation, no requirement, for the team members to go beyond the minimum level of performance necessary to get the tasks done they are assigned as part of the team. As a result of this paradox of team membership and performance, many cross-functional teams deliver mediocre results and often have multiple generations of members when a CIO scores low on Emotional Intelligence (EI), in addition to not using transformational leadership techniques. The issue is one of infusing ownership into the team members through the combination of EI and transformational leadership techniques. Cross-functional team leaders who attain a best practices level of performance are those that through the consistent use of EI and transformational leadership create environments in teams that foster, reward and perpetuate task and project ownership over time. This translates into strategic it plans that have a higher than average potential of aligning with and contributing to line-of-business objectives.

Transformational leadership is a critical link in infusing ownership into teams, the greater the level of EI-based decisions in a team, the more adept a CIO becomes in aligning specific tasks to each members' core strengths. Once cross-functional team members have the opportunity to excel at tasks that take advantage of their core strengths, ownership of the team's mission, goals and tasks is more apparent than in more transactionally-based leadership environments.

This concept of ownership is well highlighted in the many research efforts of Alstyne, Brynjolfsson and Madnick from MIT who in several research papers and results report the importance of fostering and promoting ownership of tasks through transformational leadership. In their study of the correlation of task and team ownership with business process change success, Alstyne, Brynjolfsson and Madnick (1997) comment that "The very act of decentralizing decision-making - asking workers for their values and then taking them seriously - can have a positive effect on the change process by giving employees a sense of ownership and responsibility," and from previous work show the impact of theories of ownership on change management with this insight from their work Alstyne, Brynjolfsson and Madnick (1995): "Theories of ownership, for example, suggest that decentralizing the use of data and decisions can boost quality levels in systems users control themselves."

Where EI, transformational leadership, and the effectiveness of a cross-functional team get tested is in the execution of the strategic it Plan. CIOs with high EI begin the cross-functional team creation process by specifically studying the team-to-division hand-off even before the cross-functional team begins work. The many challenges of turning a strategic plan into a series of more tactical strategies within a company require the CIO to continually focus on the transformational leadership qualities that lead to the development of the plan to begin with.