InformationWeek

The Secret CIO: Understanding Each Other

Business folks, as well as IS, must work to make technology understood

Herbert W. Lovelace
Issue column appeared: May 13, 1996

Our VP of planning, J. Karen Lovell, is a nice person; Sid Gornish, our chief financial officer, is not. When Lovell does not understand something, she asks. When Gornish doesn't, he accuses.

Lovell is on the bright side of brilliant when it comes to figuring out the synergies and flaws in business plans. She does not give an inch to fluff or wishful thinking, but is always p leasant during reviews. When I submit our plans, Karen grills me, accepting what makes sense to her, and asks for facts to support what doesn't. Over the years we have gotten pretty friendly. Last summer, Cindy and I invited her over to our place, and we all had a good time. She even shared with us that the J. stands for Jill, and that she started her career worrying that Jill didn't sound like an MBA person, so she adopted her middle name for business. Now she laughs at it, but that's the way it went back then, she says.

Gornish, on the other hand, is basically surly. Sid, like Karen, is good at his job. His ability to manage our cash flow is amazing, and he gets to the bottom of stupid presentations just as quickly as Karen. The main difference is that Sid actually seems to enjoy ripping people apart. The other thing is that when he asks questions, he's never satisfied with the answers. He assumes that if he doesn't understand something immediately, it is a result of fuzzy thinking on the part of t he presenters, and he goes after them with a vengeance.

He is especially hard on IS, since not only do we spend a lot of money, we spend it on things he didn't learn about 30 years ago at Yale. Gornish makes a habit of telling our president that I cannot make myself clear and that I have a problem communicating.

I usually shrug off such criticism since I get along fine with most folks here. What troubles me, however, is the number of computer industry publications that print articles saying that IS must do a better job of communicating to businesspeople. The angst in our chosen field is mind-boggling. It reminds me of those magazines that Cindy and I see at supermarket checkout counters, the ones that explain how to correct your faults and get the person of your dreams. Communication, like romance, is a two-way street.

Whose Problem?
Maybe we need some articles explaining to people like Gornish that the world has changed since they went to school and that it is their resp onsibility to take an active part in learning what technology is doing to and for businesses today, instead of assuming that if they can't understand it in five minutes, it is someone else's problem.

IT is not brain surgery, but understanding it does require work-on the part of the listener as well as the presenter. On our side, we need to make it fun to learn by using more clear examples and hands-on demonstrations so that senior executives begin to relate to what is happening in the world. I've watched how young children will sit fascinated in front of the boob-tube, actually learning from Sesame Street. Heck, I even enjoy watching it myself, and I know my alphabet.

There's a thought. Maybe when I get up in front of the Executive Committee next week I'll tell them that this presentation on the budgetary impact of client-server technology is brought to them by the letters "C" and "S" and the number "10 million."

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