How to succeed as a Chief Information Officer?

Motivation

The impact of the top IT executive (CIO/CDAO/CTO) to success of organizations has never been clearer. Effective and responsible use of data and digital technologies, is key in solving business problems, pursing commercial opportunities and weathering an increasingly uncertain future. My reflections on this topic, overlaid with what I learned lately about Product Thinking and Engineering Leadership are explained in a Q&A format below.

Who are the CIO's direct customers?

The CEO and peer executive leaders.

What is the CIO's job?

Empower your customers with business applications, data and analytics to help them succeed in their jobs while doing the right thing with secure, legal and ethical use of data.

What is success?

Your direct customers are delighted with the service the leaders you coach provide with their teams.

How do you succeed?

Listen and understand what your customers want, set clear expectations, communicate with candour, under-promise and over-deliver. Understand that your first team is not the team of leaders you lead, but your peer executives.

What shouldn't you do?

Robust discussions are good, but you trust your CEO's and peer executives' expertise in their areas and support them, unconditionally. They succeed, you succeed.

How do you measure your success?

An NPS = 100 in your quarterly customer survey means it was a successful quarter. Success is not a final destination, it is simply a measure of how well you are doing at a certain time.

How do you scale success?

Recruit, inspire and coach a team of leaders. Give them a clear mission, values and principles. If things continue to work well, years after you left, you have succeeded in building a sustainable positive culture as well.

How do you structure your organization?

Structure them as Team of Teams, aligned to one or more of your peer executives' domains, and dedicated platform teams for security and enterprise infrastructure. Enable each team to make decisions, respond to problems and add value, fast.

How will these teams be structured?

Each team will have an Engineering Manager and Empowered Engineers.

How many people in each team?

A maximum of 10 with 1 leader, 3 Seniors and 6 Juniors.

What about platform teams like the Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence?

Dedicated platform teams empower other teams to do self-service. They are needed only when you reach a certain critical mass (>50 Engineers). Until then, you distribute bottom-line accountability for specific technology assets to specific engineers in various domain teams, who are skilled and passionate about them.

Is there a separate Data Science and Analytics Team in your organization?

No. Develop a Data-Driven Culture across the organization by promoting analytics as a skill among Engineers and Managers.

Will the company ever have dedicated analysts?

Yes, but not in the CIO organization. As the company grows, encourage other executives to hire dedicated analysts/data scientists, within their organizations, especially if they need deep domain expertise, for solving specialized problems.

Why organise by domains?

It makes life simple for your customers. They have a single person accountable for all their needs. For example, the People Organization Leader will have a single manager to talk to for all the application systems she/he needs support with (say, Small Improvements, BambooHR, Lever etc.), and also all supporting people analytics: If the number of employees metric isn't in sync between BambooHR and the the People BI Dashboard, it is a single person accountable.

Should you hire people for Product Management, Quality Assurance, Business Analysis, Project Management, Delivery Management etc.?

No. Similar to analytics, these are skills and not roles. The CIO should coach Engineering Managers on how to develop these skills within their teams.

What is in it for the Engineering Managers and Engineers?

They have the opportunity to grow in career pathways with clear levels, in either an Individual Contributor(IC) /Engineer Management (EM) tracks, within the company, or move horizontally across domains. They develop knowledge and experience in generating end-to-end business value. They grow as T-shaped professionals with depth in a subset of areas they are passionate about, and breadth in many. Most EMs should have the opportunities, and coaching, to develop skills to become CIOs themselves, and each IC be inspired to become a Distinguished Engineer, should they aspire to.

What are some resources for further reading?

1) Product Thinking - Inspired and Empowered, Marty Cagan

2) Engineering Management - An Elegant Puzzle, Will Larson

3) Scaling - High Growth Handbook, Elad Gil

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Photo Courtesy : Tim Foster on Unsplash