All change

Business transformation is still high on the agenda for many chief information officers (CIOs), as they seek to rebuild their IT organisations along service-oriented lines, adapt to new technologies and deliver business agility.

It can be difficult, particularly when many experts believe the main keys to successful transformation are culture and processes, which the CIO is generally unable to change without the support of senior business management.

A concern I often hear from CIO Connect members is that IT people are in command of the technology but not all the other facets of a successful business.

As a result, the skills to effect full transformation are wider than the IT director’s remit. And in a recent CIO Connect poll on leadership, only 27 per cent of members thought their organisations had the culture and processes in place to encourage an agile business relationship.

But, are CIOs up to the job of leading business transformation? A majority (60 per cent) think they are.

CIOs in many large organisations have dealt with a massively altered technology landscape in the past 10 years and in my experience have better change management skills than many business leaders.

Unfortunately, the demands on a leader of change are high and most employees working for CIOs feel differently. The same poll showed 74 per cent of CIOs’ team members agreeing that most technology leaders lack the skills needed to transform the business.

Facets such as communication, distributed management, relationship management, creativity, financial know-how, innovation and agility in managing change are crucial to the role of a leader who wants to transform any business.

CIOs will need to take a fuller account of the impact of planned changes from different perspectives.

IT leaders need to understand the impact of change on others. To instil effective changes in behaviour calls for a range of skills.

CIOs must actively fortify their leadership skills ­ either through a training programme or simply by recruiting or seconding people into the IT leadership team with supplementary skill sets.

Softer, more social capabilities are called for, rather than the analytic and project management competencies for which IT is best known.

At CIO Connect, we believe there are several critical success factors for change projects and these help illustrate the types of skills needed by IT leaders if they are to drive change programmes:

* Manage perceptions and expectations ­ people do not necessarily share the same beliefs in a project
* Project leadership and accountability are vital
* Pay attention to team building and inter-team communication
* Fight organisational politics
* Spend more time on requirements and ensure that projects have
effective business sponsorship

IT leaders can place themselves at the heart of the organisation by driving through change management programmes, but only if they recognise the need to develop their teams, and their own people-management skills.

CIOs will remain at the centre of change and those who have invested in their leadership skills will be heading cultural change projects.

Nick Kirkland is chief executive of IT leader network CIO Connect.

Read the blog at: http://cioconnect.computing.co.uk

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