Mark Samuels

It’s tough to take a place at the executive top table, so knowing which features will make you stand out from your peers as an IT leader is essential. Here’s a presentation of such features by me for silicon.com:

What makes a great CIO? And how can such leaders encourage the best perception of IT across the business, as well as foster the right type of behaviour among the technology team? silicon.com spoke to five IT leaders with five different perspectives.

Put commercial issues first and IT second - Success is not defined by how you interact with the business but how you become part of it, according to Steve Jeffree, operations director and group CIO at the Law Society.

“The future for the CIO who acts in a standalone manner is very limited,” he says, referring to his own additional annexation of the operations director role at the Law Society in March 2009.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

Read the media, or speak to any number of so-called industry experts, and you will still hear the same line: the CIO needs to be more aligned with the needs of the business.

Now is the time for the use of such clichés to stop. If a CIO really isn’t engaged with the business, what on earth is the executive responsible for technology doing on a daily basis?

The answer is quite a lot, actually. What becomes clear is that CIOs do not spend hours talking of the need to spend more time with other functions because such connectedness is a given.

The context to this new level of interaction is change. Perceptions of technology within the business have altered rapidly over the past decade or so, shifting from being seen as a dark art that is best left to the geeks in the basement, to an essential backbone of business success that must be widely understood in order to create competitive advantage.

Such perceptions continue to alter on an almost daily basis, with the business forced to confront challenges across multiple technology fronts. These battlegrounds include cloud computing, social media and consumer technology.

But across all fronts, the CIO has to be in charge of one crucial component: information. Now, more than ever before, the executive responsible for business IT truly is the chief information officer.

For far too long, CIOs have been forced to justify the relevance of technology to the business. Brought into board level debates on an ad-hoc basis, IT leaders have then been asked to explain why spending on hardware and software is important.

More fool the business that still takes that closed approach. In comparison to other c-level executives, the CIO is the individual with the broadest view across all business functions. That great view across the enterprise should, in itself, be enough to guarantee the CIO’s regular seat at the top table.

But there is more. CIOs have long recognised what the rest of the business has only just started to comprehend; your success or failure as a modern organisation relies on your ability to understand data.

From structured data stored in stove pipes to unstructured data floating round on social media, successful businesses will be able to take data and create useful information that can help improve decision making and boost customer engagement.

The CIO, as the guardian of this information, is the person who will ensure data becomes useful knowledge that provides a business advantage. Now, then, really is your time.

The above editorial introduced the recently released summer edition of CIO Connect magazine

The CIO’s job is, by definition, all about information. But on a personal level, just how good are IT leaders at communicating? My latest feature for silicon.com investigates:

The clue is in the job title - the CIO’s role is all about information. A great IT leader manages data to create useful intelligence for the business.

Such knowledge is the lifeblood of the organisation. Executives across different lines of business can use up-to-date information to make crucial decisions about internal projects and external customer-facing services.

Malcolm Simpkin, CIO of Aviva, agrees with the sentiment that the IT leader plays a crucial role in helping to create intelligence for the business. The information-aware CIO, he says, is more than simply a necessary executive evil.

To read the rest of the feature, please click here.

With the rise of the cloud and stronger procurement functions, some organisations may ask whether they really need an IT function. The following feature by me for silicon.com explains why many CIOs think it’s vital they move beyond technology implementation and operation:

“CIOs now have a better opportunity than ever before to move beyond the confines of IT,” says Catherine Doran, director of corporate development for infrastructure specialist Network Rail.

She should know. Doran has followed 30 years’ experience in business technology, and CIO roles at BT and CapitalOne, with what is often seen as the apotheosis for IT leaders: a senior executive position around the boardroom table at a blue-chip organisation.

In Doran’s case, the old adage that CIO really stands for ‘career is over’ is redundant. She has used the CIO position as a means to demonstrate her broader business abilities. The result is that Doran is judged on her capability to lead transformation across the organisation and not just in the IT department. So, how has she managed to make the transition?

To read the rest of the feature, click here.

OK, catch-up time. I’ve had a few more articles published on silicon.com and it’s time to update my personal database (in other words, my web site). I’ll spread the joy, rather than publishing the pieces in a long list.

The first was published before Christmas and includes comment from a series of CIOs who suggest why it is crucial to communicate the benefits of IT in terms the business can understand:

CIOs know that you are going to get left behind if you are simply an IT director who’s good with technology. Technology chiefs who make a real and lasting contribution at the executive level are able to communicate the benefits of IT in terms the business can understand. The successful CIO is now, more than ever before, the communicative CIO.

“I network with a lot of CIOs and I see that the successful IT leaders are socially adept and communicative,” says John Adey, chief operating officer and CIO at Star Technology Services.

“The best IT leaders have business influence because of their soft skills – if you can influence people, your technical skills won’t matter. A lot of IT people come up through a technical background but the successful CIOs are business-savvy; they talk about benefits not technology.”

To read the rest of the feature, click here.

The autumn edition of CIO Connect magazine has been out for a couple of weeks now and we’ve been receiving some great feedback from members and non-members.

It’s a bumper edition, which features profiles of London Olympics CIO Gerry Pennell and BBC CIO Tiffany Hall. There’s also exclusive content from CIO Connect’s recently held annual conference, ‘Business as Unusual’, and the first part of our annual Horizons research, which explores the future of the CIO role. As ever, thanks to all interviewees and contributors. A full list of featured CIOs and business leaders is provided below:

• Gerry Pennell, CIO at London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games
• Mark Foulsham, head of IT at esure
• Tiffany Hall, CIO at BBC
• Rajiv Hingoo, chief operating officer at CLSA
• Jon Curry, director of HR and ICT at The Eden Project
• Poornima Kirloskar-Saini, head of IT at Women Like Us 
• Neil Brooks, CTO at Business Monitor International
• Bill Brindle, CIO at Hogg Robinson
• Toby Clarke, group IT director at Abbey Protection Group
• Tim Fillingham, chief operating officer at Torus Insurance group
• Neil Pamment, IT director at Denton Wilde Sapte LLP
• Chris Miller, CIO at Avanade
• David Felstead, CIO at the Forestry Commission
• Vincent Kelly, CIO at Orange Business Services
• Stuart Curley, chief technology architect at the Royal Mail
• Mark Quartermaine, managing director of BT Global Services in the UK
• David Bradshaw, research manager at IDC
• Barry Jennings, solicitor in the commercial department at Bird & Bird LLP
• Ganesh Ayyar, chief executive at MphasiS
• Srikrishna Ramakarthikeyan, vice president at HCL
• Vin Murria, chief executive at ACS
• Nathan Marke. CTO at e2e
• Dominic Batchelor, partner at Ashurst LLP
• Inbali Iserles, professional development lawyer at Ashurst LLP
• Danièle Tyler, solicitor at Ashurst LLP
• Nick Kirkland, chief executive at CIO Connect
• Nisha Pillai, BBC World News anchor
• René Carayol, leadership guru
• Chris Hadfield, executive coach
• Ellis Watson, chief executive of Syco Entertainment
• Roger Camrass, general manager for Europe at Wipro Consulting
• David Smith, economy editor at The Sunday Times
• Trae Chancellor, vice president of enterprise strategy at Salesforce.com
• Jeremy Vincent, CIO at Jaguar Land Rover
• Tom Herbich, director of business applications and information governance at Deutsche Bank
• Margot Katz, executive coach
• Nigel Moulton, director of product and solutions marketing for EMEA at Avaya
• Chris Barrow, EMEA solutions marketing executive at Avaya
• John Lawler, deputy director of information systems services at Trinity College Dublin
• David Valentine, general manager for UK and Ireland at Micro Focus

Here’s another article I’ve produced for silicon.com – this time it’s about whether an entirely new type of leader is starting to emerge. With all the emphasis on understanding the business, is there a danger that IT leaders are losing their focus on technology itself?

Much is made of the suggestion that IT leaders must understand the needs of the business. It’s a reasonable suggestion – any technology chief knows success is dependent on engagement with the demands of senior executives. But in this push to comprehend the requirements of the business, have we started to ignore the importance of technology?

It’s a pertinent question, given that most commentators recognise that IT is now the key building block for organisational success. From on-demand computing to social media and mobile technology, IT chiefs will be expected to give quick answers to crucial investment questions.

While such answers will depend on the requirements of the business, the board will first call on an IT chief for their understanding of technology rather than other operational considerations.

For the full feature, click here.

A quick update to my article list for silicon.com – an article explaining why the shift to cloud computing may take longer than CIOs think. Along with the familiar barriers to cloud adoption, such as security and vendor lock-in, there are a number of less obvious challenges giving some CIOs pause for thought:

Listen to the vendors and on-demand computing is presented as an unstoppable force that is set to change technology provision quickly and irrevocably.

Check the research and that representation certainly appears credible, with analyst house IDC estimating that companies spend £10.7bn a year on cloud IT services worldwide and that the market will be worth £27bn by 2013. But while the numbers might sound impressive, IT leaders wishing to transfer services to the cloud face significant challenges.

Executives rapidly discover a dark side to the cloud, where concepts of on-demand technology are confused, trust is constrained and understanding is limited. “I find the whole debate about cloud as interesting as the debate about service-oriented architecture,” says Stuart Curley, chief technology architect at the Royal Mail. “It doesn’t keep me awake at night but it does send me to sleep.”

For the rest of the feature, click here.

I’ve just finished putting together an eight-page special supplement on CIO Connect‘s annual conference. The supplement will be available in the next edition of CIO Connect magazine, which is out in a week-or-so.

The annual conference, ‘Business an Unusual‘, was a splendid mix of interaction, debate and networking. As many as 150 people attended the event, including 115 CIOs.

What type of skills does the CEO want from his or her CIO? My latest feature for silicon.com draws on the experiences of a group of senior executives to discuss the leadership traits that will make a CIO stand out from their peers:

The starting point, says Jardine Lloyd Thompson CIO Ian Cohen, is to understand your personal attributes or strengths and those of your team. Rather than worrying about potential weaknesses, an outstanding leader will focus on their strengths – and those within their teams – and look to exploit them.

“We spend way too much time trying to turn people into something they are not and fix their weaknesses,” he says. “It’s complete nonsense to think that fixing something bad will create something great. If you take ‘bad’ and just invert it – you get ‘not bad’, which is light years away from ‘great’. Find the activities that strengthen you personally, and the people you lead, and look to do those activities more often.”

When it comes to personal capabilities, Cohen is well aware of his own strengths. He says he happens to be good at technology because of the chronology of his career and an employment path that has included senior IT positions at media giants Associated Newspapers and the Financial Times.

To read the full article, please click here.