Advice to CIOs: A View from a Marketer

By Romi Mahajan

CIOs are an enigmatic group. Though conferred with a “C”-level title, they are rarely given the accord that other C-levels are. There are clearly exceptions (The CIOs of Fedex and General Motors being two widely recognised ones) but by and large, they are relegated to the “backroom.” This might not seem strange prima facie but when one considers the degree to which all companies refer to information technologies as their future and all hew to the notion that “innovation” should be a mantra—and further than innovation is a matter of the right application of technology—then the lack of respect for the CIO appears terribly ironic.

Why this irony? Why such a divergence between the rhetoric and the reality when it comes to CIOs? This oversight is a function of both prevailing perceptions of IT and IT leadership but also of the fundamental lack of communication and marketing emanating from the IT department.

Let’s start with the external reasons, namely the perceptions of IT amongst non-IT people. For most in other parts of the organisation, IT is a black box, an ununderstood place where geeks reside; IT is seen as “a culture apart,” a hermetically sealed department within the organisation. “IT folks are not like us” is the articulation of this perceived “distance” between IT and the rest of the organisation. Furthermore, IT is often typecast as a governance organisation and few indeed recognise the enabling role IT plays in running the business. My own creed – marketing professionals—carries the same perceptions and rarely recognises the degree to which marketing roles would be rendered useless if it weren’t for the enabling power IT provides us. This miasma effects not only the IT Professional but IT Leadership as well.
The issue of governance versus enablement is a deep one. For years in many organisations, IT was seen as the place you go to be told “no.” The fundamental bent of humans is to remember the times they were denied something vocally and to forget the times they were given bountiful gifts though silently. The fact that knowledge workers have more access to tools and procedures that give them productivity and reduce the “busy work” than ever before is lost on most because great IT is often “silent” IT. So when for reasons of policy, compliance, security or cost people are told “no” they immediately cast IT as big brother. No doubt there are still IT departments that act that way but they are few and far between.
How indeed does the CIO work to change this perceptual barrier? Doing so is important not simply for aggrandisement and fairness but in order to improve the working relationship between IT and the rest of the organisation.

To a hammer everything looks like a nail and perhaps to a marketer many problems are seen as ones of marketing and communication; that said, I believe that CIOs and their organisations need to adopt some elemental rules of my profession:

Tell Your Story– IT has a profound narrative of creativity, proficiency, and enablement but CIOs rarely tell these stories. As the cliché goes, however, if you don’t tell your own story someone else will create their version and spout it; in large organisations especially, people need to understand the degree to which IT has become singular with the business and the biggest champion of this story-telling must be the CIO.

Never “Justify” Only Discuss– The CIO is too often called upon to “justify” expenses, new investments, and requisitions for resources. The language of justification is the “guilty before being proved innocent” problem that plagues IT. CIOs must not accept the logic of justification and must simply discuss their needs as would anyone else in the organisation.

Cross Pollinate – CIOs must inspire their teams to cross-pollinate. One simple way of doing it is to ensure that IT folks attend team meetings of other parts of the organisations and that IT invites people from other divisions to sit in on theirs. The empathy and common-cause this builds will tear down the barriers that exist today.

Technology and innovation have become watchwords in business all across the globe. As such, the role of the CIO is of elevated importance and is key to the sustainability and dynamism in any organisation. That the CIO is not accorded the necessary place in the pantheon of executives however is a sign that companies have no aligned their rhetoric to their reality. This must change soon and the CIO and his team must be the focus of and beneficiary of these necessary changes.

Romi Mahajan is an author, marketer, investor & board member for multiple start-ups.