CIO's, Think Like a Business Executive

The one-two punch of digital technology and massive enterprise disruption has left many CIOs feeling as though they've been unexpectedly dropped into a war zone. What's more, there's a growing recognition that many of the tried-and-true systems and tools of the past are no longer completely effective in running IT and the business of today.

Like business executives, CIOs should actively manage their IT portfolio in a way that drives enterprise value and evaluate portfolio performance in terms that business leaders understand—value, risk, and time horizon to reward. CIOs who can combine this with agility and align the desired talent can reshape how they run the business of IT.
This means tying together disruptive technologies, including crowdsourcing, mobile only, big data and cloud.  Unfortunately, the current tools for managing risk and leveraging assets may not work in this new world,

Here's what business-based CIO thinking looks like and what IT leaders need to focus on:

• Valuation. Understand the quantitative and qualitative value the IT organization contributes to the business.

• Handicap. Grasp how the competitive landscape will likely evolve by more fully understanding product and technology roadmaps.

• Hedge. Develop a strategy to invest and divest technology and assets.

• Promotion. Build an IT brand that is respected, if not admired, within the organization.

• Talent brokering. Identify skill gaps and understand which capabilities the organization can develop internally and how to tap external talent.

• Agility. Balance nimbleness and responsiveness with architectural integrity.

A CIO must possess a complete technology inventory, have the means to evaluate the portfolio (including risk, value and strategic importance of each portfolio item), double down on winners and fold losers, and have direct line of sight to revenues.

Deliberate Practice makes perfect

Simply put, there’s a difference between doing things you already know
how to do and doing things that force you to stretch and improve your
skills.

To get better—and win the promotions and opportunities
most of us dream about—we must set out to intentionally improve our
performance. In studying why some people develop remarkable careers,
this is a key unheralded distinction between the average knowledge
worker and the stars at most companies: the former work hard while the
latter systematically practice hard skills --this type of structured
activity is called deliberate practice!!

1) Deliberate practice
requires clarity. Set a clear goal slightly beyond your current
abilities, but not too far beyond, and list specific actions that
advance you toward your goal.

2) Deliberate practice requires
feedback. Assuming you don’t reach your goal on the first try, you need a
source of objective feedback so that you can improve on your next
iteration. Without frank, even harsh, feedback, your progress will
likely stall.

3) Deliberate practice is unpleasant. You have
to stretch yourself beyond where you’re currently comfortable—not a
pleasant feeling. To make deliberate practice work, you must not only
tolerate unpleasantness (and stick with the task, regardless of your
urge for relieving distraction), but learn to seek it, like a
bodybuilder seeks muscle burn.

True standouts systematically
develop rare and valuable skills. Building these skills requires
practice, and it is not something that you gravitate toward naturally.

3 Practical Ways to Become An Innovative Leader

Innovation doesn't require genius, luck, or magic--but it does require talking to the right people, being able to clearly articulate a vision, and putting the right partnerships in place. Having a practical guide can help anyone develop into an innovative leader. Here are my top three steps:

Step #1. Talk to the Right People
Your most important asset is your mind. Your experience, expertise, and know-how governs your understanding of what is possible, the options you see, the strategy you formulate, and your assessments of the environment around you. To expand your vision, meet with other minds! Make it a habit to identify and visit the people who will provide you with fresh ideas, key learning, new tactics, and strong strategies.

Step #2. Articulate the Way Forward
People rely on their leaders to craft a vision of the future that makes sense and can guide their everyday decisions. Some of the leaders I have met improvise this activity and many do it badly. And yet articulating a rousing vision of the future isn’t difficult. It can be your secret super-power, if you just master three tactics:

• Be explicit about your conclusions and how you came to them. Speak in terms people can understand and relate to. Do more than share judgment--provide insight to your reasoning. 

• Give people the opportunity to ask questions. Encourage diverse points of view and different backgrounds. Let people react, inquire, challenge, and extract the information they need to satisfy their understanding. Then you will be in the best position to move forward together.

• Customize your message to your audience. Include something useful in their day-to-day work--utility helps information stick. 

Step #3. Build Informal Partnerships that Generate Synergy
Leadership today is largely about identifying the partnerships that will lead to broad, powerful impact and growth. I’m talking about supportive and symbiotic relationships here, not contractual business partnerships.

Some many leaders shy away from informal partnerships, fearing the vulnerability that comes with relationships. If you overcome that fear, you get the benefits. Here are tips to help you master the third step of innovation leaders:

• Be clear about what you hope to get out of the partnership. Take the time to articulate the value to both parties that makes it worth pursuing.

• Share the goals of the partnership with others who have a stake in its success. Initiate informal conversations, over the phone, via email, or over coffee, with the clients, vendors, industry experts, investors, and others who can share their perspectives how to get the most out of your partnership. Then share what you learn with your partners.

• Take the lead in coordinating partnership activities. Be the one who identifies and handles important issues as they arise. Take responsibility for planning and facilitating joint events. Foster joint development. Provide regular assessment of the partnership that prove its value. 

1+1+1 = > Sum
These three tasks required of innovative leaders--talking to the right people, articulating the way forward, and building informal partnerships--work together. The interaction of these contributions produces a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual components. Together they ensure your leadership is well informed, a source of unambiguous guidance, and reinforced by powerful allies.

Are you using these steps to become an innovative leader? What steps do you find most successful?

Innovation's Magic Is In The Turn, Not The Prestige

I recently attended a conference where the keynote was entitled "Innovation is Analogous to Magic" and it reminded me of the opening dialogue of Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film, The Prestige:

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course…it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”.

It made me think that innovators take something ordinary, do some extraordinary things to it, and then make it re-appear in grandiose fashion. It’s a great trick. It’s so good, in fact, that I think it’s fair to call it true magic. 21st Century innovation remains focused on The Turn, the process by which they make the ordinary extraordinary.

While it lacks the pomp and circumstance of a Prestige on stage at some big event, this interaction is much more intimate, and as such, much more powerful. You may not perceive it directly, but the care and craft of The Turn percolates through your hands and eyes. Within minutes or even seconds, you just know this is something different. Something far beyond what others are doing with their false magic. You want this. You need this.

As an innovative leader are you focused on The Turn or The Prestige??

HR And Leadership Development

Taking a look at the 2012 Society for Human Resource Management ((SHRM) survey, Challenges Facing HR Over the Next 10 Years, ‘developing leaders’ takes the number two spot of concerns HR must address as identified by  52 percent of respondents.  This is a big jump from the 2010 survey, in which a mere 29 percent of respondents named leadership development a pressing HR challenge. In business, as in the rest of life, leadership skills are critical now more than ever.

The number one spot in the SHRM survey with 60 percent of respondents is ‘retaining and rewarding the best employees’.  This makes sense as a lead-in, since I’d argue the best employees are leaders – people leaders, management leaders, creative leaders, technical leaders or sales leaders. We need to fill the leadership gap, and fast.

Here are the top four challenges to developing leaders and a bit about how to address them.

1) Invest in leadership development. Whether you believe leaders are born or made, companies still need to invest in their best employees to develop and sustain leadership qualities.

2) Create a culture of collaboration. Leaders are at their best when the company culture demands collaboration. Rewarding individual success is necessary but not sufficient.

3) Develop communications skills. We may expect our leaders to be good communicators but too often it’s not the case. Good communicators build teams and trust; poor communicators create and feed uncertainty.

4) Drive and sustain real accountability. Leaders must be accountable. They must own the problems they need to solve and own their failures to be credible when claiming success.

HR and leaders alike have many responsibilities. Maybe among the most important is developing the next generation of leaders and being more innovative as times change rapidly before our eyes. Where would you start?