Question: are you a propeller-head? It’s an honest question, but before answering know that your boss and the company’s board do not want to have sit-down sessions with a propeller-head who intends to review the minute details of a proposed new data center. What they want to know is how much money this data center will save, how it will improve workflow, and as for the rest, forget about it. Boring, boring, boring. At least that is what the board thinks.
“This is exactly where most CIOs go wrong in talking with senior management and the board,” said Ilya Bogorad, principal of Bizvortex Consulting Group and an expert in helping CIOs learn to talk to their bosses. “Talk technically, which is what most CIOs do, and the board will see you just as the senior IT guy, never as a decision-maker.”
“When technologists talk technology, you can see the room’s eyes pull back in their heads,” adds General Harry Raduege, a onetime armed forces CIO who now is an executive with Deloitte’s Center for Network Innovation.
Fred Mapp, author of Mapping Information Technology to Your Business, agrees: “Use lots of jargon and you will lose your audience.”
If mistake No.1 is stressing technology, mistake No.2 is entirely missing what interests senior management. Which is? “You need to talk in a language the leaders in your business understand and that means money,” adds Frank Modruson, CIO at global consulting firm Accenture. “I grew up loving technology, but as CIO, it has to be all about the business. I cannot let myself get enamored with new technologies. The question has to be: ‘How does it help the company?’ That is what my boss and the board want to hear.”
Listen up: mastering this stuff matters a lot to your career. Silicon Valley headhunter Nancy Albertini who often is asked to fill CIO jobs said Requirement One in her searches is “the client wants a CIO who understands their business. This has become so important, really only since 2000. But today it is crucial.” Just a decade ago, Albertini elaborates, CIOs who knew tech but had little grasp of the overall business probably were the norm. That just does not cut it anymore.
“Today, companies want a CIO who can sit at the executive table and understand what is going on. This transition has been very hard for some CIOs.”
Bottom line: moving up, even just getting a new gig may hinge on how persuasively a CIO projects a business image.
A Soldier’s Course
As for getting there, General Raduege provides a roadmap that kept him on course when presenting to the nation’s senior military leaders—pretty much none of whom cared at all about technology because it’s cool. “What I learned to do is put my presentations in operational terminology my audience understood and I never lost track of what mattered to them. Put presentations in their terms and they will listen.”
Adds Mapp: “Know the business’s objectives, state how the technologies will help get the business there, and you will hold your audience’s attention.”