Hello and welcome to this edition of the Practical IT Manager Tips Newsletter.

This week's article
Put yourself in your CEO's shoes

All too often we as IT people look at what we need to do to manage our technology effectively from a "purist" viewpoint. Put yourself into your CEO's shoes and try to understand the tradeoffs he or she has to make before you start criticizing their business decisions that put a hold or decline your technology recommendations.
Read the article below.

MDE News

IT Manager Institute held in Regina, Saskatchewan Canada
My first trip to Canada was simply great. The Government of Saskatchewan invited me to deliver a compressed 3-day IT Manager Institute for their IT management team. We had 17 managers from different departments of their government to attend so it was a great opportunity for them to get to know one another better and to develop some consistencies in how they manage their IT operations going forward.

The saying in Regina is that, "if your dog leaves you, you can watch it walking away for three days.". Regina truly is very flat where one can see for miles and miles. Great city and super nice people.

Fall IT Manager Institute begins at Belmont University
A special IT Manager Institute began on September 16th for the local business community of Nashville, Tennessee. The Belmont University/MDE Enterprises IT Business Manager Certification Program meets every other Friday for five class dates.

This class includes eleven managers from EDS and the IT Director from Tractor Supply Company, a national company headquartered in Nashville.

Mike Sisco presents to IT Managers of the Govt. of Canada
On October 4th, I spoke to IT managers from the Government of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario. The topic requested was IT Due Diligence: preparing to leverage the merger. The Canadian government has lots of opportunity and challenge in this area so we helped "kick start" their efforts.

It was my second trip to Canada in three weeks and another great opportunity to work with IT managers outside the US.

Put yourself in your CEO's shoes

Do you ever wonder why your CEO or other senior managers do not make a decision to spend money on technology when it is so obvious that your recommendation is the right thing to do?

Everyone in the IT organization understands it to be the right answer but somehow our CEO can't see it, doesn't understand it, or simply doesn't care.

The issue may not be any of these, but as someone who comes from the technology side, we don't necessarily understand what's going on in this so called decision making process either.

Let's take an example. We have just presented a proposal to spend $500,000 to revamp our infrastructure architecture so that our systems are much more secure. It's a simple approach, the cost is affordable and cost effective for what we are doing, and it's the right thing to do to support our company's goals and objectives. 

So, what's the problem? Why does our proposal not get approved?

Can't they see the risk we are taking by delaying this project. It's the obvious thing to do so why do we procrastinate on making a decision. After all, it's a simple decision and we need to start the project as soon as possible. Security is a priority in most companies so why are we ignoring it?

Sound familiar?

Before we start criticizing our CEO or senior managers responsible to make the "go, no-go" decision, we need to take a closer look at what they deal with.

Tradeoffs
Managing a business is about making choices, taking certain risks, and doing the best you can with limited resources. Resources are things like people, equipment, marketing ability, and cash. It's my job as the CIO to develop a plan that supports the business to the best of our IT organization's ability. To do so, some of my recommendations require people or cash to do them.

A CEO has to make tradeoffs. Not only is the IT organization requesting the company to spend money to take care of initiatives they see as the priorities of their organization, other departments are doing the same thing. Operations needs new equipment, must add new offices to grow in new markets, and other things that help them do the job they are responsible for doing to grow the revenue of the company. Human Resources and other corporate support departments like Accounting, Accounts Payable, Payroll, etc. need new business applications or equipment that helps them provide more services and be more efficient in supporting the employees of the company more productively.

At the end of the day, the CEO has much more need from individual departments of the company than he has cash to make it all happen. So, he must make choices. Some of these choices are "what not to do".

Guess where he is going to spend the money if a choice comes down to the IT organization providing a support function or the Operations side who is actually generating the revenue of the company. You got it; he will almost always go with what helps generate additional revenue or that eliminates significant expense in the company.

Tradeoffs are inevitable and we have to understand what gets the clout - it's almost always going to be the areas of the company that is driving business profitability, the true core competency of the company.

CEO's also have a boss
Our CEO is responsible to someone for the viability of the company to operate in a profitable manner. That may be an owner such as an individual or stockholders, a major investor such as a bank or venture capital group, or a Board of Directors. The ultimate owner or governing body of the company looks at the CEO as the primary custodian of the company to meet the company's objectives, and a big part of these objectives are usually profitability oriented.

Prudent CEO's create a process whereby appropriate senior managers of the company look closely and with scrutiny at every major project proposal that requires additional cash and resources. The question to ask yourself is, "If this were my company and the cash was coming out of my pocket, would I want to spend it in this way?"

Tough question, isn't it?

A CEO may want to do the project you are recommending but there may be other investments of cash that are more important for the short term viability of the company. Some of these issues may be critical to help the company retain jobs, even in IT. If that's the case, your CEO doesn't go around and discuss such an issue openly for fear that it might overly concern employees and clients if they learn of the challenges that he sees from a higher level. The issue may be a temporary issue that will pass but for several months cash is simply too tight to go spend the $500,000 you need for your security project.

It's a matter of priority and your "pet project" may not be at the top of the heap for what the CEO sees as the overall company need.

Some risk is warranted
CEO's accept the fact that a certain amount of risk is acceptable. IT managers sometimes view issues as risk as either black or white and that our mission is to eliminate risk to our systems at all cost.

Not true. Hard to believe I'm saying this as an IT guy, but as a business owner it is absolutely the case. Let's analyze this a bit. If we are in the air traffic control business, 100% uptime is required. Otherwise, airplanes do not fly and that is detrimental to our economy and function of business as we know it. In this example, we spend the money necessary to create systems and network redundancy and have the necessary backup generators, etc. so that we are guaranteed to be online 100% of the time.

On the other hand, if we have a $100 million manufacturing company and our Accounting system goes down, we may accept the risk that it is manageable for this system to be down for a day or two, maybe even a week rather than spend the money required to create redundancy for this particular system.

Every company or organization has different thresholds of what it considers to be "acceptable risk". Our security project may solve the issues we believe to be important in dealing with security and stability of our systems, but the senior management team may see this as an optional project based upon the cost and what it does for us as opposed to a required project. Another senior management team might view this same security project as an absolute requirement and priority. Both groups are neither right or wrong in my opinion; it's simply a matter of how one group views their environment versus how another group of managers might view it.

Summary
The next time your senior managers do not give you an immediate decision or say "no", step back and look at the proposal you've just made and ask yourself if this is the best place to go spend this type of money and use the company resources it takes to get it implemented. It's perfectly all right to ask why we aren't getting approval. After all, if you don't have this information you won't be able to push initiatives that will be accepted. You may find that your projects aren't fully understood, don't have the necessary cost justification for what your senior managers want or expect, or the benefits aren't there. You may also learn that it's only a timing issue and that in a few months when cash flow improves there is full intention to have you start the project.

Part of our job as IT managers and CIO is to support our company's decisions. I may not like the decision all the time but that's between my CEO and me. My people need to see me as a manager that supports the company and what they hear from me has to reinforce the decisions we are making.

Look at this issue from a different angle. There are times when your employees and managers who might work for you do not like your decision on a matter. It's quite all right to disagree on issues but the essence of a team is that when the decision is made we all pull together to make it happen. You will want the same commitment and support from your subordinates just as the CEO expects that from you and your manager counterparts in other parts of the company.

Looking at our company from a business point of view versus the technical point of view that's more natural for us can be difficult, but it's necessary for us to see this business aspect in order to become true partners of the senior management team and the business we are supporting.

Best of success.
Mike Sisco

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