Posted by Martyn R Jones on August 15, 2001 at 06:28:07:

In Reply to: Re: CKO Reporting Structure posted by Vaughn P Fox on August 14, 2001 at 13:29:58:

Hello,

My advice to all CIOs has always been “don’t do anything that the business doesn’t want”.

What do I mean by that? I mean that the CIO should ensure that everything is driven by business demand and nothing is provided without a prior business driver. I mean that a CIO shouldn’t act as a Father Christmas figure, delivering expensive gifts to people who never asked for them in the first place, never wanted them when they got them, and will certainly not be grateful for the thought that went into the making and the giving – especially when they aren’t even reliable.

This, in my opinion, isn’t about complex organizational issues, obtuse aspects of technology or convoluted theories of management, this is about a service provider IS (IS, IT, Business Systems, Support etc.) not being sufficiently marketing oriented to actually identify what people want.

Knowing what people want and giving people what they want at the price they are willing to pay for it is clearly more important from a business perspective than just elegance, symmetry and wishful thinking.

As part of the services offered by my team we teach people how to talk to customers in order to find out what they want, we introduce the notion that certain things, such as change is the only constant, are more than just slogans, and that instead of viewing customers as fickle they must be viewed as people and organizations who have a constant need to adapt to the changing environment and the changing business demands. Now this isn’t easy, that’s why money is involved, but this is also essential. No one can survive for long, business, internal service or person, if at least sometime they do what somebody else really wants.

So some of my advice to CIOs over the years has been:

- Don’t give anything to the business that the business hasn’t asked for
- Actively market and sell ideas and solutions to the business
- Understand that CIO must actively participate in strategy creation and enabling – emphasizing key activities such as Strategy pull and Technology/Know-how push
- The CIO and their team must have a formal contract with the business and formal business processes and interfaces – i.e. the CIO must have a sales team (even if it is a shared responsibility and shared role and not a single person)
- Provide a constant stream of strategic, tactical and operational improvement suggestions and proposals to the business
- Ensure that everyone who works for the CIO understands the sales and marketing nature of the organization
- Ensure that systems are in place (that business wants) to ensure the adequate, appropriate and timely supply of information for strategic and tactical decision making
- Ensure that systems are in place (systems that the business wants) to ensure the adequate, appropriate and timely supply of systems for operational support (ERP, In-house apps etc) and information for operational decision making
- Assume your place in the direction of the business - don’t act like the senior nerd

So why can’t the roles and responsibilities of a CKO be those of a CIO?

Personally, I am not convinced that a CKO, High Surveyor of All We Know, Minister of the Tree of Knowledge or Keeper of the True Flame, or however we like to define it, is anything more than a huge exercise in self-gratification so beloved of the preaching (but not practicing) Knowledge Engineering communities of the 1980’s. I just can’t see why there should be more emphasis on job title and less emphasis on roles and responsibilities. By the way, I am not sure how CIO’s evolved elsewhere, but in Europe a CIO of a large organization or administration is typically much more business oriented that tech. than they used to be, and this has been the case for a number of years now.

An IT manager doesn’t become business savvy and strategy oriented simply because they get a new title, maybe that of CIO.

The Financial Director doesn’t become IT literate or systems aware because they are called an IT Manager, or financially wiser or smarter because they are called a CFO.

As for the board of directors and the notion of a utopian KM dream such as “lets just all get along with the knowledge guy and let them do whatever is best”, this is really something that we might see more widespread sometime in the distant future, but maybe not at all.

Regards,

Martyn R Jones
Iniciativa Consulting

p.s. I would like to add quite a few things here but I am pushed for time this week

• txiki.com - the km consulting group

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