OC CIO Roundtable Minutes 12-13-07

1993-2008
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
December 13, 2007 meeting

Present: Howard Eaton, Bob Nishi, Jeff Hecht, Rich Hoffman, Esther Delurgio, Jim Sutter, Sean Brown, Dave Phillips

The minutes of this and prior breakfasts are available online at the Peer Consulting Group’s website, www.peergroup.net, with links to the host’s presentation material, when available. Please provide us with the “url” of your presentation materials.

We welcomed Howard Eaton and Bob Nishi, R360G, to the OC CIO Round Table, and thanked them for making the journey down from Santa Barbara. It was unfortunate that several members who had indicated their intentions to attend the meeting were unable to do so at the last moment. They missed a very interactive session.

We also thanked Sean Brown, RJTCompuquest, who at short notice made their conference room available to the group. Sean has joined the group as a permanent member.

Topic – CIO effectiveness / 360 measures

Before introducing Howard to the group, we talked about the evolving role of CIO and how he/she has to be effective in relating to the executive group, in dealing with his senior management peers in the organization (the VPs of Operations, Sales, Marketing, Distribution, etc.), as well as managing a service organization providing reliable and effective IS. Now as the product or service content involves more and more technology, the CIO also has to interface with clients and their organizations.

Howard 1st slide dealt directly with the evolving role of the CIO from a tactical provider of services to one of providing more and more strategic leadership. In fact, in his view, the CIO is in one of the best positions to provide strategic leadership to the organization, and warned against being smothered by the service role. The CIO will be assessed for both roles – meeting user expectations in the provision of services (lagging indicators), and providing leadership in the strategic role for a better future organization (tapping into the wisdom of the organization). Bob mentioned a book worth reading called “The Wisdom of Crowds”, by James Surowiecki. Jim and Rich were not sure that being the agent of change is necessarily a long-term employment strategy for the CIO. Esther argued that it is important for the CIO to provide ideas for change to the CEO/COO, and related some of her history. The group noted that even though the CIO may be heavily involved with identifying opportunities and the project management, the leadership/sponsorship of change must come from the top. Howard went on to talk about various 360 assessments – ones that measured leadership, and other key competences; ones that focused on team building; others on emotional IQ and EQ (executive quotient). He mentioned one that Zehnder International had developed and used to evaluate 25,000 CXOs. He then focused on how the CIO can effectively leverage his/her position for the greater betterment of the organization. He believed that a CIO has both the opportunity and responsibility to do so. One way to do so is to promote the use of an organizational 360 assessment of all units that comprise the enterprise, which provides reports that detail the gap between the strategic and tactical systems. Follow this up with working sessions that identify and prioritize the issues for C-level revue and approval, and manage the implementation. Again the group warned against IT/CIO becoming the sponsor of such an effort – that has to come from the executive branch of the enterprise – but the CIO could become a catalyst and the energy behind the scenes. Howard’s last slide showed the result of such a assessment for one of his clients that showed the differences, in 9 dimensions, between how the CIO/IT group saw themselves versus other C-level departments in the enterprise.

This was a topic that the group could relate to with passion and we ran out of time to hear individual experiences with using 360 type assessments in their organizations. In assessing a CIO’s effectiveness we have to define what success means to the individual – longevity in position? Change agent? Promotion to CEO/COO? The group felt that if profit/expenses were the primary issues, the CFO is promoted to CEO. When the primary issue is sales, the SVP of Sales or Marketing is promoted. When the issue is legal, the SVP of Legal tends to get promoted.

Several other books were recommended as worth reading:
“The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson (why the future of business is selling less of more);
“Blue Ocean Strategy”, which promotes the importance of using ‘fair’ processes for change.

Good session – thank you, Howard and Bob.

See you on January 10, 2008 – 7:00 a.m. in the RJTCompuquest conference room at:

940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260. Attachment A
December 13, 2007
1993 - 2008
Southern California/Orange County CIO Breakfast Round Table
Notes

Purpose: To provide a forum in an informal setting for senior IS executives to ex­change ideas with their peers on key issues of interest to the group.

Goal: To get to know each other and to feel comfortable discussing issues and solutions.

Format: Select one topic per meeting; have one member be responsible for a 30-minute introduction, and have each participant come prepared to pre­sent not more than 5 minutes on how they are approaching the issues in their environment.

Time: 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.

Place: The RJTCompuquest conference room at:
940 South Coast Dr., Suite 260, Costa Mesa, CA 92626.
It’s opposite the Carl Strauss Brewery on South Coast Dr. If you are driving N on the 405, take the SOUTH COAST DR EXIT, and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. If you are driving S on the 405, take the FAIRVIEW EXIT, make a LEFT over the freeway and turn RIGHT on South Coast Dr. Turn LEFT on Greenbrook, and immediately right into the parking lot of 940. Proceed to the 2nd floor to Suite 260.

Date: 2nd THURSDAY of each month

Schedule for the meetings through August 2008:

DATE INTRODUCTION TOPIC

1/10/08
Chris Andreozzi, Knowledge Centrix
VoIP
2/14/08
Jim Sutter, Peer Consulting Group
Web 2.0
3/13/08
John Buccola, OnCure Medical
favorite gadgets/"favorite websites"
4/10/08
John Pringle, RCM Technologies
Attracting / Retaining IT talent
5/8/08
Rich Hoffman, HISNA
Productivity - does where you work from matter?
6/12/08
Larry Godec, 1st American
Business Continuity Planning
7/10/08
Omar El Sawy, USC
Future of IT
8/14/08
Tim McClain, The Irvine Company
IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

(See voting spreadsheet for other topics to consider)