On May 21 I attended the 2014 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. This year’s theme was Lead Your Digital Enterprise Forward: Are You Ready for the Next Digital Revolution? “As the global trend towards digitization accelerates, organizations need to reinvent their Digital Enterprises, again,” wrote the organizers in the event’s website. “More than just new technologies are required; a whole cultural transformation is needed. . . The CIO is ideally placed to lead this technical and cultural transformation. However, being ideally placed is no guarantee of future success.”
Last year’s MIT CIO Symposium was focused on The Transformational CIO: Architecting the Enterprise of the Future. There were lots of discussions of the key technologies that are fundamentally transforming the business, especially big data and cloud computing. Some CIOs were aggressively embracing them, some were still struggling to separate hype from reality, and some were somewhere in-between, knowing that they had to adapt to these changes, but not being quite sure how and when to best do so.
The discussions this year felt quite different. Cloud and data science remind me of the rise of the Internet 20 years or so ago, when a lot was starting to happen around the exciting new Internet technologies, but it was not clear where things were heading, and in particular what the implications would be to the world of business. After a while, it became clear that the Internet was going to have a profound impact on business. Companies had to embrace the Internet even before they had sorted out all the issues. The marketplace was moving forward, with or without them, and being left behind was even more dangerous than moving into unchartered territory.
This is now the case with cloud and data, as well as with mobile, social, and all the other technologies that are systematically transforming the economy and driving every company to become a digital business. As a result, the job of the CIO is both more exciting, - and more dangerous. In one short year they have moved from architecting the enterprise of the future to having to lead the digital enterprise forward.
In a panel on Working with the CEO and the Board, one of the speakers observed that embracing disruptive technologies is no longer a matter of Hope versus Fear, - the hope to innovate versus the fear of being left behind. It’s now also Fear versus Fear, - the fear of being disrupted by new technologies versus the fear of screwing up the implementations of the technologies and getting fired. The exciting new technologies that companies are being called upon to embrace are fraught with risks. “The verb Targeted has now entered the CIO lexicon,” noted the moderator of another panel, where the consensus was that most companies have likely been infiltrated even if they don’t know it.
How do you balance the fear of moving forward with the fear of being left behind? What’s a CIO to do in such a Fear versus Fear environment? The answer, in a nutshell, is Leadership, as I learned from the finalists of the CIO Leadership Awards.
Every year, the MIT CIO Sloan Symposium gives out a CIO Leadership Award to honor CIOs “who lead their organizations by delivering business value and innovative use of IT in exceptional ways.” The award draws applicants from a variety of industries and backgrounds.
The judging process involves three phases. An initial screening of the applications selects around 10 semifinalists. Next, a team of judges, including past Award winners and finalists selects between 3 and 5 finalists, - we had 5 this year. Finally, 3 MIT-affiliated judges interview each finalist and select the winner.
I was one of the judges, so I was involved in interviewing each of the finalists and selecting the winner. For me, as well as for my fellow judges, it was both a very exciting and frustrating task, - exciting because each of the finalists was so good, and frustrating because we had to select a winner from among 5 such accomplished CIOs.
ATT’s Thaddeus Arroyo was the winner of the 2014 MIT CIO Award. The other 4 finalists were Dieter Haban from Daimler Trucks North America, Adriana Karaboutis from Dell, Stephen Neff from Fidelity, and Rebecca Rhoads from Raytheon.
What made these 5 CIOs so special is that they were truly involved in just about all aspects of the business. They were savvy technologists, - it’s hard to imagine a successful CIO that is not. But, beyond the technology, they worked closely with the CEO and the executive team on their digital strategies, - the exciting opportunities as well as the risks involved. In addition, they personally led some of the most exciting technology-based initiatives in their companies.
Each CIO Award applicant was asked to answer 7 different questions, one of which was: “Describe an innovation that illustrates your vision and achieved your targeted business results.” Thaddeus Arroyo wrote about the project to transform ATT’s retail store experience through the power of mobile, cloud and data analytics.
ATT customer store representatives are now equipped with a wirelessly-connected tablet, which gives them fingertip-access to the relevant customer data. In addition, the tablet brings up recommendations tailored for each individual customer, including products and services, as well as relevant packages and discounts. It’s designed to significantly improve the store experience for both client and service rep.
I happen to be an ATT wireless customer and a few months ago I upgraded my smartphone to a newer, faster model. I went to my local ATT store to take a look at the new phone. A customer service representative, armed with a tablet, showed me the phone, asked me a few questions, and after looking some things up in his tablet, told me that there was a much better ATT family plan than the one I was currently on. He explained in detail why it was better, telling me how much I had spent over the past few years and how much I could now save. I was concerned that the new plan would include enough bandwidth. The customer service rep quickly looked up the information and told me that my family had never used more than 5 gigabytes/month in past years, and the new plan offered me 10 gigabytes/month. I came away with a new phone, a new family plan, and new-found admiration for ATT’s customer service.
Another exciting application was described by Daimler Trucks’ CIO Dieter Haban, - Detroit Virtual Technician. Virtual Technician is like driving a truck with a team of technicians on board. This telematics application collects data when the check engine light comes on, and generates a snapshot of the engine’s status. The data is sent to the Customer Service center where a team of experts can quickly analyze and interpret the information and provide the truck driver and fleet owner immediate feedback. If parts need replacement, Virtual Technician will direct the driver to the nearest authorized service outlet, make sure that the nearest parts are available and alert the repair shop.
A salient characteristic of the 5 finalists is that they are closely involved with their company’s senior executive teams, as described in the answer to another question: “What is the role of IT leaders on the senior executive team of your company? How does this role drive transformative value in your company?”
Steve Neff, for example, sits on Fidelity’s executive committee along with the Business Unit presidents and corporate function leaders. IT is thus an integral part of every strategic senior management discussion.
Similarly, Andi Karaboutis is a co-sponsor of Dell’s company-wide Business Architecture team, where leaders across all functions and business units come together to determine the over-arching needs of the company, as well as the key processes and technologies required to implement strategic changes. As a result, the IT organization feels as much accountability for value creation, revenue generation and productivity as any other member of the business.
Rebecca Rhoads is Raytheon’s CIO as well as the President of its Global Business Services. Consequently, she is focused on innovation and transformation across two fronts. As IT leader, she is constantly working to mitigate the operational risks of the company’s networks and systems. But, at the same time, she is driving operational efficiencies through common digital platforms and processes, which leads to more affordable solutions and revenue growth.
“Strong leadership is essential to identifying and implementing compelling new technologies and to overcoming organizational obstacles,” was the take-away message of the 2014 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium. The 5 finalists in this year’s CIO Awards are real-life examples of that leadership in action.
Comments