A CIO's Job is to Make IT Investable

Like many leaders, I can look back at my career and appreciate the great mentors, coaches and friends that helped me develop both as a professional and as an individual. I was fortunate enough to work with some amazingly talented and experienced IT leaders early on in my career, and I still go back to the discussions I had with them long ago to help me with the work I do today.

The best advice I ever received about what makes an excellent CIO came from an unlikely source -- my CFO.

Given the tug-of-war that often exists between the CFO and CIO roles, the generally expressed frustration of being thought of as a ‘cost’ function, and the desire to be more strategic, it certainly wasn’t the first place I had thought to turn. 

But early in my days in senior leadership at a large, global pharmaceutical company, a new CFO came on board. During his first few days on the job, we sat down in his office to discuss his role, and what he expected from IT, and from me.

“My job, simply put, is to make sure the company is investable,” my CFO said. “To ensure that the shareholders and investors get a good return, to communicate our long term strategy for growing the value of our organization, for making investments and taking risks, and to have a cohesive method for prioritizing the spend of resources in a way that protects and expands our core value proposition.”

 “Your job,” he went on, “is to make IT investable.”

The CIO as a Business Leader

This was a simple statement. However, I walked out of that meeting with a whole new way of thinking about and approaching my role as CIO. When we talked about making IT an investable part of the business, about considering the resources, people and capital, and all the competing opportunities are available, it changed the way I thought about – and talked about – what I do. And what we do as a business function.

That’s not to say that we hadn’t always put together a business case for each new project, or that we neglected to speak to the impact and planning activities for each new program. I already had an IT strategy that I was proud of, that incorporated legacy technology, new innovations, sourcing and vendor management, and all the other operational and long term aspects that consider as an IT leader.

As the leader of a business function, however, I realized that I had neglected to put it into context.

To make an investment in a new technology meant choosing from an array of possible places to spend time, resource and capital. Is the ERP upgrade worth more or less than a new product packaging line? Is the document management solution going to produce a higher long term value than hiring two new scientists in R&D? Are we able to  measure and demonstrate that we delivered the promised value from last year’s portfolio? Do we have a roadmap that clearly connects to our core value proposition, creates new channels for distribution, or protects the company from market evolution? 

As CIO, I was chartered with being the steward of technology for the company, much as our General Counsel is in charge of ensuring that we navigate the legal risks and opportunities in all of our markets.

However, up to this point, no one had helped me understand quite as clearly that the old language of IT is no longer enough for the CIO. I had to be able to communicate the way our CFO did – in terms that articulated that we were doing the right things with the resources we receive, and that we were consistently able to deliver back a good return on that trust.

What Your Internal Investors Expect

Know where your resources are – What’s going towards keeping the lights on? What’s being invested in R&D? What’s the project portfolio in execution and for the next 18 months? 

Know what they’re worth – We would never launch a product to the market without measuring the sales results. Similarly, we won’t launch a service in IT without metrics for uptake, use, effectiveness or other qualitative measures that we can communicate back on a regular basis to ensure our investments continue to pay off, and to continue to earn the trust of our colleagues.

Know how to communicate it – I spend a lot of time with my peers and their teams, understanding where they are leveraging technology, and what else they’re working on.  This helps create the context for investment decisions when it comes time for an executive decision on where to go with the next program. And it helps me understand how to position an investment for my peers in Marketing, Operations, etc.  I also take a lot of time to routinely describe the measurements we use on our part of the portfolio, how it’s evolved, and where we’re headed.

In all honesty, none of the above is truly different from what I had done throughout most of my management career. Managing a project schedule, or a data center operation, or a help desk – all of these require careful budgetand resource planning, and coordination.

However, my wise CFO gave me the context that I hadn’t considered before – and as much as any other experience, that slight shift in thinking altered my course as CIO from department head and decision maker to that of a business leader.