CIOs need to shift from keeping business humming and predictable to mastering the art of possible and working with others to create new solutions. How do they reset their hardwiring, develop new skills, and lead their organizations into the new?

Contributors

• • Steven A Marks, CIO, Brooklyn Law School
  • Dr. Jonathan Vester, Vice President of Technology and Chief Information Officer, Nash Community College
  • Kelly Walsh, CIO, The College of Westchester

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Transcript 

Sanjog Aul [00:00:28]:

Hello, and welcome to this segment on CTN. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. And the topic for today is CIO as an innovation leader. So, traditionally, CIOs were expected to keep the operations running without interruption, a smooth sailing boat, and support the business for initiatives when asked. So now the changing expectation is that we should be able to master the art of the possible and work with the business leaders to create new solutions, which is something different, in some cases, fundamentally different than how the CIOs were groomed from the very beginning. So how these leaders can learn to develop these skills and learn new things and hardwire the ones the way the hardwiring and the grooming was, how do we reset that? That’s what we’d like to talk. And I have with me a great panel today. So we have Steven Marks, who’s the CIO of Brooklyn Law School. Hey, Steven. How are you, sir?

Jonathan Wester [00:01:35]:

Good morning. How are you?

Sanjog Aul [00:01:37]:

Good. Great. And we have Jonathan Wester, Vice President of Technology and Chief Information Officer with Nash Community College. Jonathan, how are you?

Jonathan Wester [00:01:47]:

I’m doing great. Hope you are.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:49]:

Very good. Thank you so much. And Kelly Walsh, who’s the CIO with the College of Westchester. Kelly, how’s life?

Kelly Walsh [00:01:57]:

Good. Very good. All going great.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:59]:

Awesome. So let’s start with, Steven. we know that we are looking for innovation in our businesses. And at the same time, we also have customers who are not, I would say, not becoming fickle, but they are evolving in terms of the kind of needs they have, the wants and the fancies and whims, whatever that you may want to call them. And for us to be able to or anyone for that matter to be able to innovate, you need to be able to keep yourself up to date and informed and deeply entrenched in what the business is doing, which is typically not happening or is done in the traditional IT versus business setting. So what is being changed in your department or your relationship with the business that starts happening so you become very intimately close to what’s going on with the customers and the business?

Steven Marks [00:03:01]:

It’s a good question. And you really can’t wait for the business to come to you to fill you in and tell you what’s going on. Everybody’s under so much pressure these days and is so busy that you can’t expect people to stop and think especially of IT. So you really need to insinuate yourself into the process wherever possible and whatever ways are available to you. And most people just don’t really see IT as part of the process until the last minute. So you need to find opportunities to educate yourself and work to people’s self-interest because self-interest always wins.

Sanjog Aul [00:03:36]:

So that’s a great response. Now, Jonathan, I’d like for you to help clarify that if Steven says we go and take the initiatives to start learning. And that’s, of course, the attitude we all need to have. But if the business is not really allowing you the level of exposure that you do need and the accessibility of the resources or the very people or areas in which you want to learn more. Doesn’t it create a handicap and you are not able to get to where you want to?

Jonathan Wester [00:04:11]:

I think that’s absolutely a good point. One of the things that I’d say to echo, it is really get out of your office. That’s going to be one of the first things that you have to do and be comfortable doing that, because if you or your team, as an inapproachable black hole of technology, no one’s going to come to you with their ideas nor they’re going to be open with you on what’s emerging. And so if you have boots on the ground, either yourself or your team proper, being those liaisons or those ambassadors of technology inside the organization, you’re going to have a much better finger on the pulse of what’s coming up and what people are expecting. A lot of times, IT is seen as this department that just takes budget and just chews it up and just as a hole that we just dump money into, because we don’t do a good job usually of communicating things like the needs for security or infrastructure, storage, and licenses, things that are very expensive pieces of the organization to maintain but aren’t tangible to the user. And so, I think that as you build those relationships with your end users and your other C-level peers, they can begin to understand that we’re going to help you innovate, but you also have to understand that you may not see that innovation until quarters or years down the road.

Sanjog Aul [00:05:36]:

And that’s a very good point that you make, that you’re setting right expectations. Now building upon your response, Kelly, I’ll come to you and ask you that how or maybe let me make a statement first that innovation is a serious business. Just because you are excited, Mr. CIO or Mr. business, it’s not going to naturally happen on its own. There needs to be some formal approaches, processes, due diligence that needs to be done before you say, yes, we are going in the right direction. But if CIOs are not invited to the party, and even if they themselves are invited to the party, doesn’t mean it’s gonna turn serious and everyone will take them seriously even though you show excitement. And they will not even be invited to the formal approach to innovation. And worst case, if there is no such formal process that exists, why would anyone from business say, oh, because you’re excited. I’d like to come and take the leading role in formalizing the innovation process.

Kelly Walsh [00:06:39]:

Well, you know, that’s an interesting question. Certainly, if you’re not, I would hope in many organizations in an ideal world that the CIO is at the table with all the other C-suite executives. And I have the good fortune of answering directly to our president and being on the cabinet, so that helps facilitate those kinds of communications. But if that’s not the case, certainly, you want to be making those efforts to listen to people, to ask them what their pain points are, what problems need to be solved both with your internal clients and with the organization in our case, our students. And another real key to this can be what are you doing to learn about the overall industry you’re in? So, we’re in higher education. When I came to my school, I had not been in education. I’ve been an IT manager for many years. But I went out of my way. This is about 10 years ago when blogging was starting to blow up, and I went out of my way and started a blog and said, I’m going to use this as an opportunity to share my thoughts, learn things, develop a personal learning network, and hopefully, my boss and my peers will see that I’m going out of my way to really understand the industry. And it opens great doors for conversations about, hey, I heard this school is doing that, and we thought about that kind of thing. So, certainly one way you can open that door to get people to realize that you’re there to listen, you’re there to learn, and you’re there to figure out how you can help the organization move forward and innovate.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:07]:

Now the word innovation is cool, but then, Steven, coming to you, how do you think a business today? Let’s talk higher ed since you’re part of that. Mhmm. How does business see innovation? Is it just the next innovation in the way the customer or the student wants to work? Or do they draw boundaries or say, okay. We are going to just paint on the sky and see what comes out of it?

Steven Marks [00:08:36]:

Well, there’s a process that goes on to your point that we do have a changing student population. The expectations of students in terms of education has been changing. And the profile of the students change, so the needs change. The difference is not always technology. I see technology as an enhancer of innovation. For instance, we’re a law school. So one of our innovations based on student need is an enhancement of our legal writing program, which we’ve greatly expanded. And we’ve built in a technology component that’s not the driver of the innovation, but certainly a supporter of it.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:21]:

So Jonathan, when we look at IT and of course, you may be the most excited person in IT department because you are the leader and you’ll say, okay, let’s help spearhead or contribute effectively towards innovation. But just you yourself cannot be the lone warrior. You have to bring the team along. And frankly, neither you or your team is being directly measured about your performance in terms of what kind of innovation that you contribute towards. You are being looked at by how well do you run the shop and keeps the light on. So, yes, it is a good thing for you to do, but is this sustainable even for a leader or the team?

Jonathan Wester [00:10:07]:

Well, I think one of the things that we have to be very vocal about and make sure that everyone that we work with understands is that we can’t confuse innovation with novelty. There are a lot of really good salesmen out there, a lot of flashy ads and cold calls and conference presentations that make people think that there’s a simple bullet solution to a lot of the problems, and that happens in higher ed spaces, even in technology. This happens when someone sees a commercial or gets a thing in the mail, and they all of a sudden think this is going to fix all our problems. And so that kind of innovation has to be tapped down, but that’s part of what we are supposed to be doing from the CIO table. I think that one of the bigger incentives that I have found for me is looking at my role in avoiding headaches and later complications. If you don’t make yourself available for projects from day one, you really lose the ability to complain about things later on. So you may be snowed in on projects A, B, and C. But when project D comes along, you really have to step into that one too, and take control. Otherwise, it’s going to be really hard to get in front of bad or misinformed decisions because they’re going to gain momentum. And then once leadership or worse, if you’re bored or the public gets an announcement of these things are going to happen, it has life of its own, and you’re not going to be able to get in front of that. And so you really have to know what the trends are inside of your organization, on the outside, and be able to really get your hands around setting expectations for the user. One of the things that I’ve seen happen here a lot, is that the end users and leadership have a bad tendency of oversimplifying really complex problems. And it gets worse, I think, the further up the org chart you go. I had to remind people often, to discuss something that’s easy to say. It doesn’t mean it’s easy to do. And we have had issues in the past with mobile development, as that was emerging, it became a really big problem for me to manage expectations because you see news stories about 9-year-olds with an iPad making a $1,000,000 app in an afternoon. And so I was getting the comments of, if this kid can do it, why can’t your team figure out how to move our inventory for multiple sites onto a handheld application that runs in real time. Having people understand that what they see as a polished product, it may look simple. It’s a single-click button to order stuff from Amazon. But what they’re not seeing is the millions and millions of dollars that get on the back end of that single button click that had to be invested that the institution is not ready to invest that, but they want to see the end product. So the metrics for saying that we have value add to the organization or incentivizing me as a CIO, it’s being able to show the value that I bring to the table and my team brings to the table by kind of keeping a lid on, in the best way possible, the expectations of the organization.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:27]:

So what you mentioned is, the misconception about what innovation is and how anything which they see as a sacred cow or something cool that they find, they expect the business to turn it around overnight. Totally get it. I’ll come back to the question about where we have issues with the team itself. One is the business having unreasonable expectation. Another is for IT and IT team to be willing to jump on the bandwagon. One is to push back on an unrealistic project. Another is for us to jump on it and say, yes, I am interested in this making this cool app if given an opportunity. Business is willing to give opportunity. But even that also is the basis of that is going to be some sort of an incentive, something which will motivate the team, not just the leader, to take part in the innovation process, to go through that journey. So, Kelly, if I were to ask you, what would make your team and you jump at the opportunity when offered one?

Kelly Walsh [00:14:38]:

Well, I think people want to be involved. They want to have an impact. They want to share what they know. They want to learn. And so, just being involved, being part of the communication, being part of the planning for some people is a motivator in and of itself. There’s certainly plenty of things you can do to kind of build on that. I’m a huge fan of getting out of the office, get people out from behind their chairs, get them to talk to peers in the industry, get them out to conferences. It’s just such a great way to kind of free the mind to think creatively. So, I guess the biggest challenge would be when you have those folks who really just are very comfortable doing what they’re doing and don’t want that much change. But I don’t find a lot of that in typical IT staff. I’ve always had the fortune of working with relatively small staff so I can work with them, pretty closely. But there’s certainly plenty of opportunity to embrace them and give them the opportunity to share and be a part of things. The other thing that’s very helpful too is that mindset that if there’s a failure, failure is great, the idea that you let people know it’s okay to fail. We know if we’re not failing every now and then, we’re not trying very hard. But, where I was going originally was that, whatever successes you have, it’s your staff that did it. Make sure that people know that. Make sure that they know that you’re telling your peers that this is my staff. They made this happen. And the failures fall to you. This was my bad, and I’ll take that. So if they know that you’ve got their back, it’s also going to incentivize them to think outside of the box and take chances.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:21]:

Let’s take a quick break. We’ll be right back. And, Steven, when we come back, let’s talk about the bandwidth issue. IT is not known to have breathing room in their schedule. Usually, the plates are spilling versus having enough room for you to do something new or more or different at your will. It’s more handed over and always there are project pressures. So if we are expecting IT and IT leaders and the teams to innovate or rather participate in innovation or lead innovation, we need to be able to make some room for that. How do you make that happen? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:19:11]:

Welcome back. So, Steven, like to take something off the plate for IT to be able to take something on more when we are talking about innovation effort. How do we offer that breathing room to the team when they already have a spilling plate?

Steven Marks [00:19:28]:

Well, it’s really part of the epidemic of our times. Right? There’s a constant need to do more and more and more all the time, and everybody’s plate’s really getting fuller. It’s not just an IT problem. Every department reports the same thing. And a lot of times what they’re trying to do is move their problems to IT to get it off of their plate, and there’s no place for IT to go with that. I don’t think the solution is really getting things off of people’s plates. I think partly it’s a matter of scheduling, but also how do we reduce the stress for our staff because IT is really stressful. And part of that, I think, is really having your IT team be a team and to provide activities for the team because knowing that you have the support of the other people, knowing if you need something and you go to somebody, they’re going to say yes and be there to support you, just like a sports team would, is critically important. My team often has lunch together, and I love seeing that because that’s really time for them to de-stress, to communicate, to build relationships so when things come up that they can depend on each other. And I think that as was alluded to earlier, we really need to celebrate the wins within IT. Everybody’s in such a hurry that we finish a project, they get the success, we move forward, and no one’s really saying, hey, that was really great. Look at what they did. Look what we did. Look at how this came out. And to do that among the IT staff really makes a big difference in terms of morale and relieving that pressure.

Kelly Walsh [00:21:08]:

Absolutely.

Sanjog Aul [00:21:10]:

So Jonathan, when you look at the breathing room question I asked Steven, and of course his idea is to give them the motivation. Without having enough room or enough time in the day, do you think people will stretch themselves? Is that where the bandwidth will come from?

Jonathan Wester [00:21:30]:

Well, I think that that is one of the aspects of it. But I think that you also look at things that can be leveraged inside the department that has a ripple effect throughout the institution, when it comes to time-saving tasks or automated pieces, because a lot of times, the innovations are not focused on a narrow goal. You want to make sure that it has a pervasive impact. One of the examples that we’ve done here is we were spending a lot of time with the technicians deploying desktops or doing break-fix with the end users when they were having problems in their stations. And so we implemented Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, as we normally call it, SCCM, which allows you to set up things like software updates, or even whole station or lab deployments as inventory of images. And so, you conceptually do this kind of like you would do virtual desktop deployment, where you have a master template for, however you want to do, either an update or a station configuration, and then you push that out over Active Directory. And so that saves hours and hours, even, I would argue, days of single deployments of stations. Or if you have a configuration that needs to be fixed in an environment, an office or a classroom, through SCCM, you actually configure that image one time and push it down. And so that innovation may not be something that’s going to make the newspaper or get a gold star from anyone in the board meeting. But for your team, you’ve allowed them to do something really new and exciting when you get down into the weeds of what SCCM can do. But you’ve also now freed up a whole lot of time and that bandwidth and ability to do work, by saying take this task that’s really mundane and now push that out to be managed by the infrastructure that you’ve invested in. You need to use that infrastructure to the best of your ability, and that’s an innovation that happens inside the department that allows you to grow and do new and better things.

Sanjog Aul [00:23:41]:

So you are promoting automation or finding ways to optimize what you do to create the bandwidth and then take that and consciously or intentionally reallocate that towards innovation. Do you think that flies in real life?

Jonathan Wester [00:23:58]:

Oh, I think that’s one of the things that we had to do. It’s incumbent upon us from the leadership standpoint because we know we’re not going to get more people on a whim or more budget just because we asked for it. So we have invested lots of money and time and effort into building these large enterprise systems, and it’s just taking the time to figure out how to use what we’re all already paying for. SCCM is part of the enterprise Active Directory setup. So we were already paying for it. We just weren’t using it. And so that’s the investment that we can make. We already made the investment. So now invest the time to use what you have. So now you’re not only being innovative with your technology, it’s also being innovative with using your resources and funds available to you to free up your end users and your team from having to do mundane tasks over and over again. Automation’s going to help ease the burden of the time on task for a lot of people, including your IT team. Yeah. So, Kelly,

Kelly Walsh [00:25:05]:

I couldn’t agree more. We did the same thing. And, I mean, if we can’t automate our own processes to try and benefit what we’re doing, then how the heck are we going to help everybody else, right?

Sanjog Aul [00:25:17]:

So, Kelly, when you say this though, on the ground, were you able to actually do this and were you able to find the room for people to work on innovation and not every time innovation has results written in front of it that you will indeed get results? So it becomes like a sandbox time or sandboxing time? Were you able to explain that?

Kelly Walsh [00:25:40]:

Yeah. Well, to be honest, no. We don’t have, like, that 20% time or something like that that Google has. But it certainly starts with how do you free up people’s time so that they can work at a higher level. And that has certainly been something we could do. So the automation, as Jonathan was saying, thinking about what not to do is really important. Taking the time to say, hey, of all these things we have going on, what’s not really bringing value? What can we eliminate? But another thing that just goes to the overall ongoing healthy development of staff and allows everybody to keep kind of improving in terms of what they have the time to do and what they have the skills to do is to push down to constantly think, okay, how can I give this staff member the opportunity to work at a higher level, learn some new skills, and in doing so, free up some time for their supervisor and set the stage for them to demonstrate their capabilities so that if there is an opportunity down the road, we know we’ve already seen them demonstrate that they can work at that next level and maybe they can get that bump up? But when you have that kind of constant thing churning, it has a lot of benefits including giving people a little more time, a little more breathing room. And the other thing I’ll say, I know I’m repeating it, but it’s just so important. Get them out of the office. It’s one of the most freeing things you can do in terms of that idea of breathing room. I’m always amazed how, I’ll go to a conference and not only are you learning from the people around you and who you’re talking to in the breakout sessions, but all of a sudden your mind just opens up and you just got things popping in your head and you’re making notes about, oh, yeah. You put these dots together that you wouldn’t otherwise. So, let people get out of the office and go to other types of professional development situations, and it has a great mind freeing ability.

Sanjog Aul [00:27:33]:

So, Steven, when we look at the hardwiring, I wanted to touch this is because we were traditionally groomed into getting the things done right, which means this is a box. This is a framework. We have to make sure that we cross every t and dot every i, and it’s done as per expectation. That’s where we were groomed. That’s how we were groomed. That’s how we were developed. Now we are saying, let’s do the right things and also do it without a box or what box, essentially. What fundamental reset is needed for you as a leader and for your team for them to be able to do justice to this innovation. It’s maybe the motivation is there. Maybe the zeal is there.

Steven Marks [00:28:26]:

Yeah. And there is a real reset that’s needed also that as we’re doing more faster in a more freeform way, we can’t lose the structure that you described because that’s the way to really get projects done successfully. But there’s also a personal reset that’s needed as we’re talking about getting out of the office and partnering with the business more and having these conversations with non-tech people. That doesn’t really come naturally for tech people. We tend to be introverts. We don’t really love large groups. It’s tiring rather than energizing. Talking to other people is sometimes awkward, that we’d rather focus on the machines and focus on the tasks, which is great because that’s really how you become an expert in your field. But now we’re really asking people to do more and get out of their comfort zone and learn new soft skills as well as learning new hard skills as things change. And that’s a big difference and it’s uncomfortable for people to do that. When we tell people go get out of the office, talk to people, that’s not an easy task. You’re not saying, oh, great. I get to spend some time out of the office with people who are different than me. They’re going, oh, crap. How am I going to do this? I’d rather just sit at my computer and everybody leave me alone. And so we need to be aware for our staff and we need to be aware for ourselves that this is new territory and it could be uncomfortable. I had an engineer who came to me and said that there’s something new going on and I said, well, we should talk to that person. He says, okay. I’ll send him an email. I said, no. Go see them. He said, well, no. I’ll text them. He said, well, no. Just they’re right down the hall. Go see them. And finally, I said, look. This is going to work out. I know it’s uncomfortable for you, but just go stick your head in their door. Here’s what to say, and then come back to me afterwards and tell me how it went. And he came back really radiant. He says, yeah, I was really nervous about that, but it was so much better than doing like 10 emails. But we don’t do that because we don’t think of things that are beyond our comfort zones.

Sanjog Aul [00:30:37]:

So, Jonathan, when you are looking at this whole space of innovation, and we spoke about some of this reset that we have to do, are there specific things you would fix in people like at your level? Like, CXOs as you may have seen people demonstrate certain way of thinking and way of approaching things. Let’s get to the fast facts. What would those be?

Jonathan Wester [00:31:07]:

I think one of the primary changes that needs to happen in leadership, especially at the C-level leadership and all the way down really is humility. I think that’s been missing a lot inside of leadership and particularly IT leadership. But I think in general, humility is something that’s a real skill and that has to be learned and accepted to move forward. Yeah. As part of the orientation I do with my employees when they come on board, I remind them that there was a time they knew less than the person they’re supporting. And so it’s okay to go to our colleagues and if they have a question, say, I don’t know, but I’ll find out, because that’s a much better response than making bad assumptions about possibilities. One of the things that I also do with my non-IT peers in leadership, is as we sit down and talk about projects we want to do is to think about not how great it’s going to be when it’s done, but what could go wrong. So you have, we all look like what a postmortem is. If something happens and you sit around the table and you all point fingers and find out who’s going to get blamed for it, I do what’s called a premortem with either my team or with the other leaders and say, okay. Here’s the thing we want to do. Let’s back into what could go wrong. What could keep us from getting to the place we want to be? And then do we have the resources, or can we mitigate these things somehow to make sure that when we do actually kick off the project that these things aren’t going to happen. But that goes back to the humility piece of you have to be willing to accept that you’re fallible. You can make mistakes, but you gotta own those mistakes and learn from them, and not just commit yourself to being the smartest person in the room, and no one’s going to tell me otherwise. That’s one of the things I think that we have going back to what we said earlier about the ego of IT. As technologists, we’ve enjoyed many years of being seen as some of the smartest people in the room. And that just shows no one really understood what we did. I think we have to accept that’s not always the case and that our peers possess intelligence and talents that we lack. And so, no one likes to be wrong or proceed to be inadequate, but overcoming that ego with humility should be a priority for anyone in the organization, and particularly technology leadership.

Sanjog Aul [00:33:32]:

Kelly, anything you want to add from the resetting for the leader and for the team?

Kelly Walsh [00:33:39]:

Sure. Absolutely. Jonathan brought up a great point there. And, to some extent, you gotta walk that line carefully about proactive risk assessment — it’s very natural for us, but I think our peers sometimes hear that as negativity. When one of the things we do right away is think about why something can’t work. So we just have to be careful about how we communicate that. We need to do it, but we need to be careful about how we communicate it. In addition to that, it’s really important that we — so Jonathan was talking about how we’re being perceived as the smartest folks in the room and they don’t understand what we do. IT leaders have to talk in business language, not in tech language. We have to go out of our way to make sure we’re making our cases in ways that go directly to the business problems we’re trying to solve and be careful to avoid dragging people into the weeds of too much discussion about the technology itself, when we’re working at a high level and trying to sell people on the directions we want to go. Another thing that is important too in terms of kind of resetting something that people get used to is requirements are going to change and it can be very frustrating. It matters to some extent which side of the shop you work on; typically on the operations side when you’re doing maybe infrastructure projects, the end goal tends to be clearer than perhaps a software development application where you’re going to iterate more as you go through it. So it’s important that we be open to the idea that, as we help the people we’re working with understand the possibilities because of the technologies, both they and us are going to come up with ideas that are going to change the scope. I don’t want to get lost in scope creep and have things go haywire, but you got to manage that. At the same time, you got to be open to the idea that requirements are going to change, good plans are going to change, and you can come up with a better end result by being open to those changes.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:38]:

Let’s take a break, and why don’t we come back and continue this discussion? Okay. So listeners, please stay tuned

Sanjog Aul [00:37:43]:

Welcome back. So we were talking about a couple of things here. And, Steven, why don’t you take it away?

Steven Marks [00:37:50]:

Yeah. I wanted to agree with Kelly’s point about tech talk — it’s a hard habit to break, but you know when you’ve done it because you see people’s eyes glaze over. And we really need to learn as technology leaders and train ourselves. When we’re talking to business people, we need to learn to speak the language of business. Otherwise, we lose them. I’ve sat in meetings with finance people, and they start talking in their language. I feel my eyes glazing over, and I realize, oh, this is how people feel when they’re talking to us. It’s really rude in a way that it’s like if you’re French and you’re coming to work in the US and you talk French to everybody and make them do the work and remember high school French to try and get a gist of what you’re talking about, you’re really doing a disservice. We’re here to support a business. We really need to learn the language to communicate and translate what we know into their language.

Kelly Walsh [00:38:51]:

And it’s just a great skill for staff to have too, to learn how to speak the language of the business because now you’re connecting more effectively to everybody and it really helps to develop your abilities in general.

Sanjog Aul [00:39:06]:

Now let’s go to the next topic here, which is about gaining trust. So, Steven, come back to you about this topic again. So one is to show excitement and say, yes. I want to participate in the innovation effort, and I would like to even play a leading role if I want to. But then for that, the rest of the world should want to be led by you, which means they ought to be able to trust you. You are new to the subject matter. You are not professionally developed in that area. It’s a brand new area, and you say you want to lead or play a leading role. How would anyone trust you?

Steven Marks [00:39:51]:

Well, that’s a good question because trust really takes time. It’s an iterative process, and there’s not a magic formula for it. Part of it is really just having the contact, and since they’re the subject matter experts and we’re trying to create a product that meets what they’re trying to do, we need to keep coming back and say, is this right? Is this in the right direction? We can’t expect business people to be able to give us a fully formed idea from scratch; they really need to see our results and say, oh, well, yeah. I like that and that. But over here, I meant this, and I haven’t thought of it, but we need this third thing. Work on the process and really focus on small gains rather than trying to get the whole big bang. Also, we’re not doing this in isolation; we’re developing innovation with and on behalf of the business. So it’s really a partnership, not so much a leadership. We might be taking the lead because we understand the process. We understand the technical difficulties. But if we just kind of run ahead and nobody’s with us, then we’re going to cross the finish line alone and nobody’s going to be happy with the results as a result.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:14]:

That is true. And Jonathan, building upon that point, if I’m running and nobody is behind us, that means nobody wants to be with me in the races because they don’t feel it’s their race — there is no connection to why you’re running in the first place. I’m just trying to say that you would be a lone warrior if you said I’m excited about it, so I’m going to start running. You guys please join me and there’s no trust. Then it’s not going to lead us anywhere because you need everyone, the business and technology teams to come together for the innovation to even gain ground.

Jonathan Wester [00:41:52]:

So how do you adapt that? Yeah.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:54]:

Go ahead.

Jonathan Wester [00:41:55]:

With consistent small and large successes, I think that gains the trust of your peers for them to get behind you when you say, here’s this idea, or I’ve got this initiative I want to do. I want you to come along with me, because you’re demonstrating the competency to lead your team through various challenges that are before you. It may be a finance problem. It may be a records problem, but you’re demonstrating that you know how to coordinate your team with a various mixed bag of projects. I think if you get in the habit of overpromising and underdelivering, which is a trap that much of us in IT can fall into, you’re always going to be in a position to try to regain that trust from your peers. One of the things that I tell my team a lot is that you’re only as good as your last mistake, because it takes a lot more time to rebuild those relationships than to establish them and then to maintain them. So I think that being realistic about helping your peers set reasonable expectations allows you to have some control over those perceptions of success. And so when you do have that time to pick up the banner and start heading towards the next thing you want to do, people will say, okay. I’ve seen them demonstrate the ability to manage these things that are really complicated. I trust in their abilities and their talents as a leader. I’m going to get behind them, and we’re going to make this thing be successful.

Sanjog Aul [00:43:22]:

Kelly, if I were to ask you to go into a new organization or go to a new department where you’ve never supported before, even though you’ve had successes in your past stint or with a different department, are you expecting that new department to invite you with open arms and say, okay, run and help me innovate in my department?

Kelly Walsh [00:43:45]:

Well, you got to start by embracing the folks, listening to them, finding where they need help, where they want help. If you can build on a couple of small successes to have them see that you can indeed help them, that’s a huge step forward. One thing that we haven’t talked about in this particular discussion is transparency. So as you go forward, make sure that they know where you’re going. So for example, I have what I call a projects dashboard. So every year, I’ll put out this — typically, about a 2-page PDF that looks kind of like a Gantt chart that here’s all the projects, here’s the basic timelines, and on a quarterly basis, I’ll update it to show how our progress is going. And when I send it out, I’ll highlight, and we use a green, yellow, red coloring. So you can see this project’s in trouble. This one’s been canceled. And as I send that out to Cabinet and what we call our functional leaders group, I’ll share what’s going on. Hey. This particular effort is struggling. We could use some help and encourage questions. So transparency is another huge way to kind of build on that trust once you get your foot in the door and start to embrace your colleagues and start to solve little problems.

Steven Marks [00:44:56]:

This is Steven. Trust has to start before the project; you can’t come in and say, okay, we’re going to do this new project with a bunch of strangers. As you had alluded to, social opportunities are a great way to build some lubrication into the process before you even get to the point of a project. I was the CIO of a large law firm that had 40 offices around the world. And I used to regularly travel to those offices to sit with the senior people in those offices, not so much because I was trying to pitch them on a project or do something, but when the time came to do the project or there was a problem, we had already developed a relationship that greased the wheels and made everything much smoother.

Kelly Walsh [00:45:47]:

Yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, building on that as you work with folks and you begin to undertake efforts, be sure to give credit where credit is due. Go out of your way to say, hey. She or he brought this idea to us in the first place, and we just built on it.

Sanjog Aul [00:46:03]:

So, Steven, let’s talk about the skills. So one is the mindset reset, and, of course, you get some trust and you are ready to roll. You and your team were not groomed in that area. Do you bank on consultants, or do you go out to a university for a course? Where does that skill set come from?

Steven Marks [00:46:25]:

Well, it depends on your organization. And it’s funny that we’re talking about grooming IT leaders because this is really a new concept. What’s really crazy is that IT leaders start out as engineers of one sort or another, and you do a good job, and your reward is you get promoted to management where you have not the temperament, skills, or personality for it, and then there’s no training, and you’re expected to be successful. So we’re kind of creating our own version of survivor to see who can gain the skills fast enough before you get fired, which is a very common outcome from that kind of system. Businesses have tried different things around it. It’s like they’ve tried putting business people into IT leadership roles primarily because they speak the language, but it doesn’t work out because they can’t relate to the IT staff. They can’t understand the IT process or how things work. In large organizations, there are often executive training programs for high-potential people. And that’s a really great way to get a grounding in leadership management. But even more so, you get to build friends in other departments. You build a network of war buddies who will grow with you in the organization. And later on, you can depend on them for a point of view outside of IT and understand better how the business works. Organizations that don’t have that often are very open to having executive coaching for individuals. It’s a great thing to do before problems come up. Often, it doesn’t happen until problems come up. Still useful. And lacking that, there’s also programs through our trade organizations that we belong to. IT support organizations are starting to have more podcasts, programs, and at conferences, leadership lines to help people develop the skills. And so you can really draw on all of those, and it’s important too. Even if you look at professional athletes, like LeBron James, who spends $1,500,000 of his own dollars on his own training, nutrition, support in order to maximize his potential.

Sanjog Aul [00:48:46]:

So Jonathan, when you look at this whole area of development, do you think we can be proactive that this is the area we’re going to go to innovate ourselves or help in innovation for the business? And so I’ll start 6 months prior. I’ll try to formally train myself and my team before I reach out to that business leader. Do you think we are that planned? Or our IT work is that planned? Or our business requiring innovation is that planned that far out?

Jonathan Wester [00:49:20]:

It would be great if we could do that. And I do encourage my team when they’re in conversations with the users to make them think of a yes-and conversation, like, you want to do this, and what else could — the scope-creep nature of planning is something that I have to remind my staff about. You have to develop that listening skill set. You have to want to listen and stick with the user in the conversation. And I think that goes back to building the culture within the organization at large that the IT department is looking out for the organization and the users — that it has interest and not their own. I tried to develop within my staff, everyone from me as a CIO down to the part-time PC technician, that they have to understand they’re part of the service department, and that means they have to like working with people. They have to like talking to people, getting involved in their problems. We work in the environment of problems that accept that we are the people that people call when there’s an issue. Rarely does someone call my office to say things are going great. My computers are working fine. That normally doesn’t happen. So we have to have team members that feel confident about people coming to them with their issues, people that are queuing on the staff that aren’t defensive about things when they go wrong, because in that way, the innovation that could happen and the crystal ball that they would need to help the users think through what’s coming up on the horizon, all gets pushed aside because you begin to be this defensive support staff that is just trying to keep your head above water doing break-fix, and you’re never really getting involved in the organization proper. You’re just this third-party tackle into the organization that just fixes the computer when it breaks.

Steven Marks [00:51:16]:

Is this Steven, that’s a really good point that I try to train my people to never say no. So if you can’t say yes, escalate it.

Sanjog Aul [00:51:24]:

Kelly, one final question. A minute or so to go. If you were to change the organizational culture and structure for it to be most conducive where the technology department and its leader can very effectively contribute towards innovation, what would that look like?

Kelly Walsh [00:51:45]:

Well, I think collaboration is huge, and I think we’ve touched on that quite a bit as we’re going through this. The more we learn to be speaking with each other, both in purposeful situations where we’re trying to tackle a problem, and then on the other end of the spectrum, even in social situations, we have to have those lines of communication open. Innovation is a culture. If you want that kind of culture, you’ve got to get everybody to know these things, many of which we’ve touched on: failure is okay. It’s going to happen. We’re all in this together. I saw one of the greatest speeches I’ve ever seen, at a university business UBTEC conference just the other day. Nido Qubein, the president of High Point University, just gave a great speech and one thing that really rang in my head is that part of the culture he’s developed is let’s find a way to yes. Right? So when somebody has an idea and it makes some sense, let’s figure out how to make it happen. And when you start to have that kind of mindset and keep coming back to it, you really can influence the culture and open people’s minds to these things. The other thing that’s just huge and can’t be overemphasized is learning, learning, learning. Talk to your peers. Listen to great podcasts like CIO Tech Talk. Read what’s out there. A lot of times, an innovation that’s new to a particular institution, you may not have been the one who created it. But that’s fine. If you go out and learn about something innovative that’s happening elsewhere, bring that into your institution. And that’s only going to happen because you’re out there and learning. You guys have probably heard of George Couros’ The Innovator’s Mindset — great book. In there, he’s got that quote, we rarely create something different until we experience something different. So we gotta get out and learn from the world around us and then bring that stuff back into the institution. 

Sanjog Aul [00:53:40]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you all, Steven, Jonathan, and Kelly for sharing your thoughts and insights about how CIOs can evolve themselves and their teams to become innovation leaders. Thanks so much.

Kelly Walsh [00:53:54]:

Thank you. Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:53:56]:

And, listeners, hope you enjoyed. Got some nuggets out of this. Please like us on Facebook. Search for CTN CIO Talk Network. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn group. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CTN. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week, take care and God bless.