Most CEOs and presidents get a charge from leading. That is how they got to the position in the first place and that skill is a significant contributor to their success.
They like the idea of guiding a company or a team of people through difficult challenges and making important decisions, sometimes quickly. Many “see” better than most and that helps them know where to go next when everyone else may be mired in the details or stumbling around in the dark. However, this leadership skill, which serves so well when it comes to men, machinery and markets, will often fall short when dealing with technology direction.
Most of today’s top managers made their way through their respective organizations before much technology was available or widely used. They came from the intuitive-school and learned the business from how things felt at the jobsite or in talking with project managers or estimators. Making decisions about systems, technology strategy and direction was never imperative. If forced to make a decision, it was more of an isolated purchase for an individual department and the primary consideration was cost. However, as these managers have made their way to the top, the field of technology has gotten increasingly complex while growing in importance to the organization. It might be the equivalent of the president of a heavy/highway contracting company not knowing a backhoe from an asphalt spreader and being asked to develop an equipment strategy for the next five years.
Thankfully, the answer to this problem is fairly easy and does not require the CEO to learn all about technology including a whole new vocabulary. Most construction companies have someone in an IT management role. The role can range from the network manager to chief information officer (CIO) (though few can afford the high-end officer-level position). Having someone at least in charge of technology reduces the challenge to one of communication rather than knowledge. The communication challenge revolves around the level at which the CEO or president can articulate business direction to the IT manager and the extent to which the IT manager can grasp the business issues and organizational concerns and convert them into technology initiatives.
The most important resource the CEO can bring to the issue is time. Presidents and CEOs rarely spend enough time with their highest level IT manager trying to set direction. Somehow, there is this unrealistic hope that the issues will take care of themselves.
Some CEOs avoid the conversation with IT because they fear there is an expectation that they address bandwidth, Internet protocols or network-attached storage devices. An IT manager that is communicating in those terms needs coaching away from that communication style. Further, the IT manager should not be looking to the CEO to solve IT problems; that is the IT manager’s job or the job of their department. However, the IT manager should be seeking out direction on organizational issues, company policy, budgeting and strategic initiatives from the CEO.
Like the CEO, the IT manager should also spend his time differently. The IT manager needs to be able to answer two questions easily: What are other contractors (or other businesses our size) doing relative to technology? And what should we be doing? The answers to these questions are not technical and will not be found somewhere inside a manual.
As well as being available for deeper conversations with management, the IT manager also needs to do more networking with peers, attend conferences and research market and technology directions. If all of the IT manager’s time and attention is spent focusing on user issues, help-desk matters and installing new PCs and printers, there will be no time left for looking “up and out,” which is where the answers to these more important questions can be found.
In addition to time, there is commitment. Sometimes management sincerely wants to make changes in their organization, but they expect systems and/or technology to accomplish that change. They give direction to IT like “let’s automate the estimating function…buy some software.” However, after purchasing the system, they do not provide the backing to ensure that everyone understands the importance of both the move and why they (the users) need to get on-board. Management often presumes that the purchase of the technology will force the change. They expect the IT department to solve the technical issues as well as non-compliance within the user-community. This places IT in an unfair position and keeps the communication gap unnecessarily wide. Management needs to provide back-end support to ensure the users’ commitment to the new direction/technology.
Once time has been committed, research done and expectations set a little more properly, here are some questions for both sides to get the process started:
| CEO to IT | IT to CEO | |
| 1 | Where do you see our greatest exposure (risk) from a technology and systems perspective? | Where do you see the business going within the next few years? Offices? Services? Markets? |
| 2 | Where do you think we need greater organizational support for the use of the systems we have? | Do you want technology to be a support service or a competitive advantage? If competitive advantage, where? |
| 3 | What do you view as the top three to five largest technology initiatives for the coming year or two? | What do you hear from your management team relative to the way in which technology is deployed within the company? |
| 4 | How would you change the staffing of your department if you had the chance? Why? | Are you expecting greater efficiency from technology than we are currently getting? Greater control over risk? |
| 5 | Have you adequately considered outsourcing some of the functions you or your department do today? | Do you think your management team has ready access to the information they need? In the format that they need? |
| 6 | Are we spending more or less than our peers or competitors on IT? How? Where? | What do you see our peers or competitors doing with technology that we are not? |
| 7 | Do we have any legacy systems that need to be replaced? | What do you see in terms of our current customers or target customers and their expectations of us relative to technology? |
| 8 | What are your personal career development plans for the coming year? | What is the most significant mistake we have made in the last couple of years with respect to systems and/or software? |
| 9 | Are we gaining competitive advantage anywhere in the organization through use of technology? | How would you like me to communicate our IT direction to your management team? How often? |
| 10 | As CEO (president), how can I better support you in your role as CIO or IT manager? | As IT manager (CIO), how can I better support this organization? You as CEO |
This is easily a two hour dialog with many smaller tangential conversations that are likely to take place. One thing to notice about the questions—they are not all about cost from the CEO and are not overly technical from the IT manager. Yet honest answers to these questions from both sides will provide much clearer direction for IT and better expectations from management. The next step is involving the IT manager or CIO in strategic planning sessions, if they are not already.
Construction Busieness Owner, March 2008
