InformationWeek

Ask The Secret CIO

By Herbert W. Lovelace
Issue date: March 25, 1997

Your letters to my print column and this E-mail forum ask some serious questions about managing information technology in today's world. Since today's world is essentially absurd, my serious responses may sometimes sound a little whimsical, and my occasional whimsical ones, serious. In any case, if you want to participate, write to me at secret@cmp.com . I'll respond to those letters that I can. I reserve the right to edit for size and content. Just sign your E-mail the way you want it to appear online.

Dear Herbert: " Days of Auld Lang Hype " (Dec. 23, p. 80) -- what a great column. I have yet to read one that I didn't find insightful, humorous. Thanks for your efforts!

My question is this: As a young IS professional (how young? 27), I find myself torn between accepting the big-money positions at larger corporations and taking the more friendly, yet less lucrative, jobs at smaller establishments. Also, I can't seem to decide whether or not to pursue a career with a company in the technology industry, or become an IS team member at a company that doesn't have anything to do with providing technical services, such as a health-care provider. Any advice? Thanks in advance.

Tony

Dear Tony:

Thanks for your comments. I keep telling Cindy that I am insightful. She contends that if I were really insightful, she would permit me to buy my own ties.

Your dilemma is one with which many of us have had to struggle. The answer really depends on what you value most. Of course, that's an easy observation to make; the problem is trying to decide how you translate your values into a career decision. For some of us, our response varies based on what was the last business activity we enjoyed or the last bad experience we had. One way, however, of getting at the answer is to listen as you describe yourself to others. If you harp on what you have and find that you envy people with the big dollars, you have answered the question. On the other hand, if you value close relationships and find that you use the word "we" a lot and talk about what your team has accomplished, you're probably better off in an environment that values cooperation above all else.

The second part of your question is whether to work as an IS professional in a technology company or in one that has nothing to do with technology. Keep in m ind that what a company sells may not have a lot to do with how much they value the internal IS function. It is more a matter of whether technology is important to their business, rather than what the company does for a living. Information systems is more of a core business activity in a bank than in disk drive manufacturer. Make your decision according to how much you care about being in the mainstream of the enterprise.

Herbert:

I have read a number of your Secret CIO articles in InformationWeek , and would like to know if you could give some personal advice on a decision I'm facing. I know you may not be in the business of doing this, but any advice or comments would be appreciated.

I graduated three years ago and have been working as a software engineer at a bank-card company for about five months. Previously I was a consultant and did about a year and a half of SAP consulting. Many have asked why I left the lucrative market of SAP, and my response is that my long-term care er goals prompted my decision. I want to work in upper technology management (e.g., as a CIO). Therefore, I wanted to get more exposure to technology other than SAP. Sure, the money is not as good, but I thought the experience in a technology-driven company would be beneficial.

Now, I will say that one thing I am struggling with is that I do not enjoy coding, or should I say, I do not want to be a coder for much longer. I did some design and coding in SAP, primarily EDI design, and now I am doing some design and coding on a data-replication project using Oracle, C, and Visual Basic. Now, here is my situation, I have been offered a position with a former client to manage an outsourcing relationship. This client has outsourced its whole IS department. They would like me to manage that new relationship, ensuring that the consultants adhere to the contract and to the service-level agreements that we design. I would also be involved in the financial matters, ensuring that project bids are justified and that pr ojects get budgeted properly. Thus, I would be involved in the technology, but at a much higher level. I would be reporting to the new director of application systems and the CFO. This company is not technology driven, but technology is necessary to stay ahead in the market. They do not have an extremely large technology budget, though.

I am worried that I might be making the jump too early in my career to the management level. While the new position is something I would like to do, I am concerned that I may not have the technical experience I need to succeed at the level I eventually want to get to. I am not concerned about the people and motivational skills necessary at that level, but I am concerned about job security if I do not have a strong technical background. On the other hand, I have been in design, coding, and system implementation for a couple of years, so I sometimes think I should take an opportunity like this while it is there.

I know without a lot of information it would be hard for yo u to talk to this issue, but I would appreciate some of your advice based on my career goal and current situation. Anyway, if you have time in your busy schedule to respond, I would appreciate it.

Thank you.

Matt

Dear Matt:

It's a tough choice you face. Let's first review some of the facts. You have been out of school for three years, have a year and a half of SAP experience, and have been with your present employer for about five months. You would like to move out of coding since you feel you've done that long enough and probably don't really enjoy it. Your long-term goal is a CIO or equivalent position. You have been offered a position to manage an outsourcing arrangement at a company and wonder whether it will help you achieve your goal. You are concerned that if you move now you may not gain enough technical experience to succeed at your target career.

You are to be commended for having your career goals defined so early in your working life. As you are finding, it is very difficult to know what training will be necessary to be successful in a job that you may not have for perhaps 15 to 20 years. The trend, however, is that the role of the CIO has become that of a business person who is technically knowledgeable. The level of technology needed varies with industry and company. As for your upcoming choice, recognize that managing an outsourcing arrangement is not viewed the same way managing people directly is, so you have to weigh that factor in your decision. Whatever you decide, your best bet is take jobs at which you will develop a track record of success and broad experience. While it is not good to get the reputation of a job-hopper -- you need to show a progression of promotions within a company -- the one thing you do not want to do is work at a job you do not like for any extended period. Your lack of enthusiasm will show, and that is a career-stopper.

Dear Herb:

Once Gartner Group said that there's no evidence of gains of productivity or efficiency in compa nies after investments in IT, why we just don't shut the doors and all go to the beach and have some fun? We are always trying to justify ROI for every little project -- even for buying a memory upgrade! I think this is silly. If you try to think of the world without a credit card or the automated teller machine...

Thank you for your comments.

Dear HP:

The comments about the lack of productivity gain from IS projects is a hot button that people push periodically to get some exposure or because they have to fill up some empty space in their publications. Personally, I think that there is a 0.7 probability that the Gartner Group has nothing better to do than stir the pot.

It is obvious from the examples you cite, as well as many others, such as airline reservation systems, that corporations have benefited immensely from technology. Of course, there are other projects, such as some of the ones I have worked on in my career, where the company would have been better served if all of us had taken time off and gone to the beach. In fact, they could have paid to send us on a cruise and they still would have come out way ahead. But, overall, I feel it is readily apparent that corporations have reaped tremendous value from technology.

By the way, the reason we do ROI on the projects is to:

try to separate the winners from the losers,
put some discipline in place for users so that they don't go crazy with blue-sky requests,
. keep Sid Gornish, our pain-in-the-butt CFO, happy, or
all of the above.

Dear Secret CIO:

I found your three laws of meetings (" The First Law Of Meetings, " Nov. 4, p. 150; " No Decision Before Its Time, " Nov. 25, p. 136; and " If It Isn't Vital, Let's Talk, " Dec. 9, p. 132) quite fascinating and very true. While I can identify with scenarios covered by any of your three laws, the last one (i.e.; "Time spent is inversely proporti onal to the importance of the subject") is of special interest to me.

I would propose a direct corollary of this law as follows:

"Issues of minor importance discussed during meetings will usually yield inordinate amounts of time spent on 'follow up'"

For example, at some point during our budget review, the president of the division noticed that travel costs were high (no definition given, though). As a result, I was asked to cut my travel budget. My travel budget represented 1.4% of my total IS departmental budget. I proposed cuts in other areas of my organization that would have netted a 5% overall reduction, without having to spend more time on the issue (this was important because we had very aggressive plans to align our international operations and our travel dollars would have allowed us significantly more visibility to implement our plans).

The result? You guessed it! We still had to spend the next two days figuring out how to cut travel costs, which resulted in a whopping 0.5% reductio n in my overall budget.

So how about adding a corollary to your third law? After all, if you don't agree, we can sit down and have a meeting to discuss it.

Jon

Dear Jon:

Fantastic! Great! You've come up with a worthy addition. Reminds me of the time that Phil Whitestone, our president, asked during the staff budget presentation about the cost of cutting the grass at the R&D Center. Ideas flowed like pickle juice spilling (all over the place, terrible to ingest). One was to buy sheep, let them do the job, and show that we are being environmentally correct. The manure that would have been generated from this idea, I guess, might have paid for the fence necessary to keep the livestock from roaming. And, hey, the neighbors probably would have learned to love the smell.

The head of R&D wound up with the assignment to investigate the problem of the lawn-cutting costs and came back about a month later with a beautiful report which must have cost a year's worth of lawnmower effort to produce. Af ter all the technological alternatives are investigated (reseed with slower growing grass, asphalt the whole thing, and even the sheep-dip option) the entire subject died a well-deserved death.

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