The 2010 MIT Sloan CIO Symposium Part Two: Solving the CIO Paradox

I recently attended the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium for the second time. It is an annual one-day conference, held on the MIT campus. This is my second set of notes. I attended a session, Solving the CIO Paradox, led by led by Maryfran Johnson, Editor in Chief, CIO Magazine. Panel members include:  Anne Marguiles, CIO Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Bill Brown, former CIO, Iron Mountain, James McGlennon, Liberty Mutual, and Tom Pyke, former CIO U.S. Department of Energy.

Maryfran said they were going to try to solve the CIO paradox as the role is always changing.  They have to drive innovation, manage risk, and control costs and these goals can be at cross purposes.  They often inherit costly legacy systems and then are told to go forth and innovate.  There is a column in CIO Magazine called the CIO Paradox. The writer has now determined over a dozen paradoxes.

Maryfran went over a number of the paradoxes – being strategic and managing risk, enabler of services and business driver, run critical function but always have to prove value, success are often not seen but mistakes are highly visible. Accountable for project success and yet often business manages. Staff are often very technology oriented but now have to deal with people (users), something they may have wanted to avoid.  Technology is a long-term investment but companies are often run by quarters. Tools cost a fortune but have a high defect rate.

Bill Brown began by noting that the life of a CIO is the paradox. The biggest aspect of the paradox is the wild swings between the need for innovation and practicality.  Being able to deliver on both areas is the big challenge. James said that IT can be its own worst enemy as it takes on new things and ownership for outcomes. You need the right mix of responsibility and accountability.  Anne is facing budget cuts at the Massachusetts state government that makes it harder to balance the strategic and tactical.  She said CIO can stand for career is over. She has been more business focused and interested in the people part prior to her current role and continues to look from this dimension. CIOs are now victims of their own success in obtaining the C suite so they now need to be tactical and strategic at the same time.

Tom mentioned the CIO as an opportunity leader. They need to remain strategic while handling the tactical. He says part of his role is cheerleader for smart applications of technology.  Maryfran mentioned the need to move the CIO role from order taker to leader. James said that you need to have the tactical under control before taking the strategic path. 

Anne said that there had not been a strategic plan for technology in the state of Massachusetts since 2003 when she took over under Deval Patrick.  There had also been underinvestment in long term efforts. So a strategic plan was the first thing she did under the direction of the Governor.  One of the first directions was the need to consolidate. They also needed standardization to innovate on top of it.  There was massive decentralization of IT and the organizations. She has pulled over 100 agencies into 8 secretary level groups.

Bill discussed two levels of approaching IT issues at Iron Mountain.  They took on looking at the business processes they were supporting to see if improvements could be made to the processes before technology was applied.  They staffed business process improvement people in IT to address this.

Tom talked about all the stakeholders in any Federal government projects who often have conflicting agendas.  They have increased the defenses against cyber warfare but the attackers continue to get more sophisticated. There is a need to balance risk management and other functions.

James said they have increased support for collaboration through wikis, forums, and other tools at Liberty Mutual. He said that the concept is not new but the tools are better.  Getting people to participate and see value remains a challenge.  They have set up an internal YouTube type function. The uses are not predetermined and he is not sure how it will be used.

Maryfran said that an increasing number of the CIO 100 innovation awards have gone to collaboration activities that have led to innovation.  Bill said that people coming into the workforce now have no tolerance for email. That is something you send to old people. New employees are looking to involve networks through social tools.

Anne said that with 30% budget cuts they have not been able to hire a lot of these young people. Tom said that many young people and young at heart people are entering federal government IT service. Tom does a lot of texting. Facebook and YouTube are used a lot, along with internal equivalents.  He wants to be a leader in encouraging and using new technology.

Maryfran talked about the industry paradox. The vendors play up to the CIOs but they also run around them to sell directly to the business.  What should CIOs do with this? Bill said that you need to develop trust with both the business users and with the vendors.  Have them become your partner and not try to go around you.  James said to engage with the business teams so you are not surprised by IT related activities.  It is not a turf war but there is a need to work together, especially with the cloud.

Anne talked about the development of iPhone apps in state government as a way to involve others in innovation. It started with the White House move to put public data available. So Massachusetts wanted to be one of the first states to have an open data site.  Then they ran competitions for who could develop the best iPhone apps to creatively use the open data such as bus schedules.  Anne wanted to open the data for innovation by those outside government. I really like this creative way to support innovation in a budget constrained environment by crowd sourcing it.

From listening to these CIOs, it seems that the CIO paradox Is not something to solve and put to rest but something to acknowledge and embrace.  Looking for ways to open up data and involve others in innovation with this data as Massachusetts did with the iPhone apps is a good example.  Too much control can be counter productive.  Trust is more useful.