How can a CIO keep the board informed about major initiatives when setbacks are expected before results? Angela Maragkopoulou, the chief information and digital officer for Sunlight Group Energy Storage Systems, explains how to engage board directors in a focused presentation using three slides and 10 minutes.
Corporate boards of directors expect linear progress from approved technology initiatives. However, an enterprise-wide operating systems transformation is anything but. It proceeds in fits and starts, as issues emerge and IT leaders and their teams regroup and adjust the approach over time.
I’ve experienced this time and time again, most recently with the planned implementation of 11 SAP S/4HANA ERP modules (including sales and distribution, production planning, materials management, and finance and controlling) simultaneously across our company’s mega-factories in Greece, Germany, and the U.S*. As I wrote about in my previous article The Zero-Disruption Playbook: 6 Principles to Keep A Transformation Initiative on Track, we dealt with everything from significant data migration issues during early testing to change resistance on the production floor.
Those aren’t the kinds of things a board wants to hear during a CIO update.
But ultimately, there are important differences between what a board wants to hear about technology-driven business transformation and what they actually need to hear. They want to know if the project is on-track and on-budget and when the company will see a return on the investment. What they actually need to know is where the risks are, what decisions they need to make, and how they can gauge if a project should be abandoned.
Developing a communication plan that delivers essential information in a digestible, actionable way is critical.
The Three-Slide, Ten-Minute Rule
Too often CIOs fail to consider their audience when updating their boards about major technology-driven initiatives. They deliver incredibly long presentations with a focus on technical data rather than business-relevant, actionable information. They fail to present the total cost of ownership and business benefits in a prominent, recurring position in their decks. They may not be clear about whether the program will benefit the top or bottom line. And too few are proactive in providing guarantees of success.
The key to my monthly board updates: keep presentations focused and fast. I give myself boundaries for this. The deck should be three slides only and I must be able to present it in 10 minutes. Such brevity is a tall order for a project that spanned six factories, multiple countries, and two different approaches to data model and business process transformation. But it’s doable.
Slide 1: Progress. This covers what we delivered in the previous month — business outcomes, not technical milestones. And it indicates what we would deliver in the following month — actual commitments, not aspirations.
For example, this slide might explain how far along we were in the order-to-cash process migration or what percentage of data had been validated within a specific business process.
The board is rightfully focused on understanding the risk levels related to customers, revenues, and operational costs. So, CIOs should focus on information about customer satisfaction, revenue generation, and the future of operating expenses. Typically, boards appreciate this and respond with some questions to confirm they understand the state of affairs.
Slide 2: Risks & Mitigation. Here, I list the top three risks ranked by impact, not likelihood. I also note what we are doing to mitigate each. The focus is on action rather than analysis.
For example, if there were a translation rules failure for data migrated from the previous system to S/4HANA, I would explain what data were affected (e.g., materials management data), what percentage of it (30%), and what risk this poses to the process (e.g., ineffective sales order migration and fulfillment issues). If the solution is to create a task force of product, IT, and procurement team members to address the fault, I indicate when this team is expected to be finished and what the impact will be to the project timeline, and if other corrective actions are needed.
The purpose of this slide is to explain current risks, their severity, and how and if they can be solved.
Slide 3: Decision Needed. On the final slide, I present just one decision I need from the board. I don’t leave this open-ended, however. I offer them options, my recommendation, and my rationale for the recommendation — making it easier for them to say yes.
The decision is always related to a change in timeline or cost, for this is the range of concern for a board. For example, it was critical to change the overall project manager more than once because the matrixed organization was not executing as it should. Given that we needed to recruit a new project manager from outside the company, we needed a summary approval by the board, given the significant cost.
The aim here is to provide a clear rationale for the decision or approval, a deadline, the method to approve (in real-time or offline), and the cost of not making the decision.
The Payoff
The approach to ongoing board updates has been fruitful. The key wasn’t just that the decks were short and focused; it was that we were giving directors the intelligence they needed to fulfill their duties — even when the information may not have been what they hoped to hear.
Boards don't need you to be perfect. They want you to be honest, clear, concise, and decisive.
The presentations benefited me and my team as well. Board meetings evolved from interrogations into collaborations. The board members grew to trust that I would bring any issues to them early, rather than hide problems from them. And ultimately, rather than micromanaging the effort, they gave me the room to lead.
* A mega factory operates more than ten lines of assembly or production, a full warehouse, and the complete order-to-cash cycle, creating added complexity for ERP transformation.
