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April 2, 2001

Secret CIO:
Loud Break In Code Of Silence

Part of the executive ritual is to hide disagreements from the common folk

By Herbert W. Lovelace (lovelace@home.com)

Herbert W. Lovelace e have a little ritual at our place of employment called the quarterly senior officer luncheon. This is an event at which the company's "real executives," the CEO, CFO, and business group heads, meet with the staff department VPs in a spirit of camaraderie and equality. At least that's what Phil Whitestone, our CEO and my boss, had in mind when he decided to force us to endure these meals. Phil is big on teamwork, so we forget our petty jealousies and shifting alliances and sit together for two hours or so while making all sorts of small talk. It really isn't too bad; besides, Phil serves wine of a respectable vintage throughout the proceedings.

Phil enjoys these events. He waxes lyric on the state of the business as the rest of us nod in agreement, paying rapt attention. When he's optimistic, we're optimistic; when he's cautiously concerned, we're cautiously concerned. When he changes the topic to current events, we nod in agreement, or if we are violently opposed to his position, we smile politely instead.

This time, however, things were a little different. Phil started to talk about the need to change the voting system so we'd be spared the agonies of pregnant chads, hanging chads, and their ilk. "It's disruptive to the country," he said, "and bad for business. I still hear people complaining about how the votes were counted in the presidential election."

He then forcefully stated that with all of the technology we have in this country, we need to develop a good system of Internet voting, "the sooner the better." Several of my peers fell all over themselves agreeing with him. Kratmeyer, head of International Operations, interrupted and in a loud voice laughingly exclaimed, "Phil, you're right, but I wouldn't want a voting system designed by our IT people!"

Leave it to Kratmeyer to demonstrate his exquisite ability to suck up to the boss while taking a jibe at another department, especially a staff group that doesn't have much in the way of recourse. I've never figured out why he acts this way; perhaps it's simply because he's powerful enough to do as he pleases.

It was at this point that the typical script changed. Sid Gornish, our CFO, isn't a warm and friendly human being. Nor will he tolerate listening to what he considers nonsense. Glancing at Kratmeyer, he turned to Phil and said, "Regardless of who builds a system and how much effort is put into it, I know from experience that you run a risk when you depend on computers, unless you have a good audit trail. Good audit trails prevent a lot of shenanigans."

Perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps my irritation with Kratmeyer's comment, but I interjected myself into the conversation. I commented that our concerns with hacking were inconsequential compared with what we would open up with Internet voting. Nodding toward Sid, I said you need a good audit trail, but the better the trail, the harder the job of guaranteeing privacy in the voting booth. I added that we would have more success educating voters, developing electronic voting machines that printed a paper confirmation that the voter could see, and concluded by stating that we could very well make a mess of things by trying to be too ambitious technically.

Kratmeyer ignored me and announced, "You know, Phil, problems get fixed by seeking innovative solutions, not by fixating on potential flaws."

Immediately, Gornish turned to Kratmeyer and said in a flat voice, "Incorrect. You should run national elections the way you should run a business operation: make sure that the rules are clear and then be as certain as you can that they're followed."

The room suddenly got quiet. Gornish and Kratmeyer have had their differences in the past, but they've always maintained the polite cordiality that senior officers show to each other. For some reason the "omerta," the code of silence among the big boys, had just been broken.

As I took another sip of wine, I wondered what had transpired to cause the sharp exchange. I knew one thing for certain: It wasn't a disagreement over Internet voting.

Herbert W. Lovelace shares his experiences (changing most names, including his own, to protect the guilty) as CIO of a multibillion-dollar international company. Send him E-mail at lovelace@home.com and read his online column at informationweek.com where he will provide real, and sometimes whimsical, answers to your questions. Herbert W. Lovelace shares his experiences (changing most names, including his own, to protect the guilty) as CIO of a multibillion dollar international company. Send him E-mail at lovelace@home.com and read his online column at InformationWeek.com, where he will provide real--and sometimes whimsical--answers to your questions.