The CIO Bias

Those of you that know me, or have followed my blog (which, admittedly, has been rather intermittent lately) know my background: Right up through the ranks… programmer, manager, VP, CTO, CIO..and now IT research (how did that happen?).

It was pretty clear to me, especially as a CIO, that an undue amount of “influence” was often targeted at me by vendors. “Influence” came in many ways: attention, perks, gifts, fake friendships, free offers, private plane rides…the list is endless. In fact, I am just now working through the last of my vendor shirts and t-shirts – many in the painting clothes drawer.

The attention was at times annoying– and a good reason to hold the high watch for ethics – my ethics, my staff’s ethics, the department’s ethics, and the company’s ethics. Even tchotchke from a trade show I viewed with a healthy dose of ethical scepticism – and when those tchotchke included $100+ dollar tickets to Cirque, well…

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What I didn’t know (but clearly suspected) is an observation that I have been making in this quasi-vendor role. Yes – I’m in the demilitarised zone between vendor and client. My job is to work for the Gartner customer – think first “what’s right for my customer, regardless of our revenue goals” – yet, I am still (in sheep’s clothing) a vendor now. In this role I see a behaviour, especially in vendor organisations, that (at the least) is disturbing, and reflects what I always knew, but didn’t dwell on.

The egregious behaviour that irritates me can be summed up simply as: “Get the CIO”. Get her mindshare, get her on your side, get her to be a friend, get her to be a strategic partner, get her to come to your briefing. Get her to sign the contract! Whatever it is GET HER (or him).

That can get manifested in annoying phone calls, emails, invitations, etc, etc. And its all certainly part of the game – the Social Network. The latest iteration of this game is “get connected to her with Linked In”.

But focusing solely on the CIO, or the euphemistic “IT leader”, is a flawed strategy. And it’s an insidious sickness. You, as a vendor, may not even know you have it. But you do. It’s falling for the “Decision-maker Delusion” – that hope, that one mind, one person, can make all the difference. And sometimes they can – like hitting the lottery can make all the difference. But you don’t want to base your financial planning on it.

“DD” is present when you hear “we have to talk to the CIO”, “ I can’t get any traction with the CIO”, “How do I get past her admin for an appointment?”, “How will this play with her?”. Why is it a delusion? Because it treats everyone else in the organisation as a cog, a stepping stone, an obstruction – rather than the thinking, intelligent human beings they are. It ignores the contributions, influence, and responsibility that practitioners – front line staff, middle management – can have.

DD leads to classic top-down thinking; push, rather than pull. Whole marketing and sales budgets are predicated on DD: Get the CIO. Yes, regrettably, even research. Is strategy for CIOs only? DD thinking says yes. Is advice for managing employees for CIOs only? Another DD trap. Governance an exclusively CIO topic? You bethca – if you are D-Delusional.

Social networking, crowd sourcing, anytime/anywhere access, faster career turnover, job discontent. These are all signs, at the practitioner level, that DD approaches are failing – and that engagement on every topic, at every level in the organisation is the antidote to DD. I recently heard an off-the cuff definition of creating an architecture (I’m paraphrasing): it’s organising (a building, a system, an enterprise, a workforce) so that the will carry a greater load. Simple, and broad. And architecture has to take into account DD – both in how we architect, and how the final architected solution operates. The practitioner is a part of the solution.

Do practitioners have a role in setting strategy or architecture? If you have DD, then the answer is clearly NO! Can I create my own strategy/plan/roadmap before my boss (Manager/CIO/CEO) does? If you have DD, NO! Can I, as a practitioner, be fully engaged in my company. If you have DD, NO! Should I sell to all levels of the organisation that are impacted by my product? DD sez NO! NO! NO!

The author is a Research Vice President with Gartner.

For more blogs by Jack Santos, log on to http://blogs.gartner.com/