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Business Intelligence Initiative Salvaging A CIO’s Reputation
Problem: The CIO for this $750M high tech company was summoned to a ‘findings’ meeting to hear what the outside consultants, hired by the COO, had to say regarding a major IT initiative that had been abruptly halted after 9 months and $990K spent. Upon hearing what the consultants (Business Ingenuity principals) found in their investigation, the CIO turned to the COO, ashen faced, and stated “I guess this means I should tender my resignation?” Astonished, the two consultants shot back in unison “NO! this is fixable!” Luckily, the CIO took them at their word; the initiative was rescued and went on to be a rousing success. It also proved to be a bellwether for transforming IT’s relationship with the business.
Situation: The IT initiative in question was a business intelligence (BI) initiative, born out of a recognition by the CEO and his senior leadership team that they were ‘flying blind’ in making strategic decisions for the business; they lacked solid data and analytics to steer the business. However, attempts at gaining traction kept falling short; the leadership team couldn’t come to agreement about what should be prioritized in terms of key data or how much investment was justified. Eventually, the CIO, from his own and others frustration, simply took it upon himself to take charge and ‘make it happen’ as an IT led initiative.
The CIO contracted a trusted 3rd party provider to help with scoping. Workshops were conducted to define a high-level gap analysis. A substantial investment was approved by the board for a technology platform that aligned with the gap analysis. The CIO then brought in another 3rd party provider to conduct a series of ‘fit gap analysis’ workshops, involving many more people from the business units, requiring many more hours. Becoming increasingly frustrated, the business started pushing back: “the process seems rigid and unclear, and not ROI focused,” “the road map feels like being in a maze; we’re only being given the next step, not the whole picture,” “we thought we would get a solution quickly, within a couple of months.”
When the business demanded a halt to the initiative, it took the CIO and his team by surprise: “we were surprised and shocked at the level of intensity of the feedback”. From their perspective “the workshops went very well, we had good business involvement,” “we used the business liaisons to vet ideas to not bother the business.
Obviously, the two parties were not on the same page.
Diagnosis: The CIO was trying to do the right thing, doing what the business wanted but couldn’t come to agreement on. But two mistakes spiraled the initiative in the wrong direction. These are mistakes we see repeatedly; mistakes that are correctable – with a subtle but significant change of mindset about how to orchestrate client engagements. We credit this CIO with having the humility to question what he had come to take for granted about managing large initiatives, in order to ‘make it right.’
Business Ingenuity principles made their diagnosis from the perspective of a customized adaptation of the Flores-Winograd 4 phase action cycle1 illustrated in diagram 1. Seen from this perspective, the CIO’s first mistake was attempting to ‘rescue’ the situation by assuming the role of “Executive Sponsor / Customer” for the BI initiative, instead of steadfastly maintaining IT’s role as “Engagement Manager / Performer” to the business. Properly establishing the customer-performer roles is critical for several reasons but first and foremost, it determines who will pass judgement on ‘the deliverable’ in terms of received value. It is critically important to establish who will take on this ‘customer’ role at the outset, as well as who will take on the ‘performer’ role – the person who is recognized as ‘accountable’ for the deliverables.
The second mistake was not involving the business in the formulation of the ‘agreed solution, plan and commitments’ in the Co-Design phase, based on the false premise “this was an IT led initiative.”
By keeping the business units at arms-length, reciprocity, was lacking where it was most needed – in coming to agreement about the solution. Instead of a two-way ‘give and take’ approach for coming to agreement about deliverables expectation, IT fell into its familiar a one-way ‘this is what you’re going to get based on your specifications’ approach.
Intervention: To get the BI initiative back on track, the consultants recommended establishing the primary customer-performer roles based on two questions:
1. For Executive Sponsor role: “who is the one person accountable for increased performance i.e. revenue / profit on the other side of new BI delivery?”
2. For Engagement Manager role: “who is the one person prepared to work with the Executive Sponsor to take on accountability for specifying and delivering the new BI?”
Based on how these questions were answered, three changes were made:
1. Separate BU heads were inserted as “Executive Sponsor” for two specific initiatives. This established a single point of contact whose decisions were respected - eliminating the previous ‘death by a thousand cuts’ from requirements ‘lobbed into IT’ from all directions.
2. Because of the negative history and importance of positioning this initiative as a bell weather opportunity, we recommended the CIO take on the role of ‘Engagement Manager’ – using this as a springboard to revamp the cultural pattern underlying how IT took on large development initiatives.
3. A steering group made up of executive leaders was established for regular updates on progress and guidance as the BI initiative began taking shape.
Results: Within a few short months, the BI initiative was back on track – delivering ‘quick wins’ to the delight of business unit employees and the executive leadership team. The success of the Customer – Performer engagement model took hold and gradually transformed IT’s relationship with the business.
A key part of this transition was a new emphasis on stakeholder relationship management, becoming the ‘trusted partner’ to the business. Not all business units came along at once – for some the historical distrust was deeply lodged. But through honest evaluation, using the matrix illustrated in diagram 3, strategies for repairing and building trust were deployed and routinely monitored for desired effect.
For this CIO, the Customer-Performer engagement model became a mainstay in his leadership and management approach – for himself, his senior team and the entire IT organization.
Footnotes:
1 see “Competing in Time”, Peter Keen - for a more complete description of the Flores-Winograd 4 phase model.
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