InformationWeek

April 13, 1998

Secret CIO:
IT People Aren't Plumbers

The best way to find, attract, and retain talented IT staffers is to value them for more than their technical skills

By Herbert W. Lovelace

recently had lunch with an old friend of mine who is the CIO for one of the larger companies in town. Periodically, the two of us get together to talk about our hot issues and share thoughts on how to solve them. In addition to being a useful way to gain a fresh perspective on our crisis du jour, the meetings also have a therapeutic purpose.

We each get an opportunity to share our burdens with a caring soul who can empathize with our respective major points of pain, and rejoice over our relatively rare moments of triumph, minor though they may be.

It should come as no surprise that it didn't take long before we began to discuss the growing shortage of valuable IT talent. Both of us have had difficulty in attracting and retaining the type of people who make the difference in whether our shops achieve their ambitious goals.

Make no mistake, we can hire people; the difficulty is in finding the right ones. Today's environment blends mind-bending technical change with rapidly shifting business conditions, and is flavored with a dash of corporate uncertainty as to whether management will outsource your specialty as being a noncore activity. It takes a rare breed to survive, prosper, and contribute in that atmosphere.

There is not a lot of loyalty to companies anymore, and understandably so. Industry has finally convinced its employees-through all of the downsizing of years past-that the only s ecurity they have is the ability to get another job. Although we can't change the past, we can take advantage of the fact that one way of getting and keeping the best people is to value IT professionals not only for their technical talents, but also for their ability to contribute as full members of a business project team. Unfortunately, creating this type of environment is a lot easier said than done.

Many IT people have a real desire to contribute to the bottom line of their companies. They've become convinced that IT alignment with the business is a two-way street. But sadly, this virtue is not often seized upon by business executives, who frequently view their IT staffs as merely a set of in-house contractors. It's ironic: Many of these same IT people understand the processes by which the business runs better than some of the business people do, and what IT can contribute is important.

Rewarding Loyalty
If the IT staff is not treated as an integral part of the company, only bad thing s can occur. In-demand IT professionals don't have a lot of tolerance for corporate indifference, especially after spending nights and weekends fixing the company's networks or enterprisewide systems while others are out playing golf with customers.

When skilled professionals are treated as marginal resources relegated to the role of high-tech plumbers who keep the corporate information pipes clean, then we shouldn't be surprised when they react with all of the loyalty of free agents in pro sports who have more interest in their paychecks than the team for which they play.

The next time a clueless manager walks into an IT person's carefully sized cubicle to explain the necessity of working all weekend because a program has failed or a new warehouse needs a network connection, it would not surprise me if the response echoes Rhett's comment to Scarlett: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

Most CIOs, a frustrated breed by nature, would understand that reaction-but I doubt if our bosses and business associates comprehend the new reality of the workplace.

Herbert W. Lovelace is the CIO at a multibillion-dollar international company. Herb practices his day job under an alias and has changed the names of colleagues to protect the guilty. Send him E-mail at lovelace@home.com. He'll provide real answers--and whimsical comments--to your questions on InformationWeek Online at www.informationweek.com.