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Dealing with an old school CEOHere's a question from one of the online forums: Q: I am a new CIO to a company of under 100 employees. The #1 project now is business process re-engineering. How can I gain the respect and confidence of the department heads and my CEO (old school and anti-tech)? Oscar Jim: Oscar, I'm intrigued by your comment about the "old school anti-tech". If this truly is the case, and you want to stay in your position and be successful, you must figure out WHY your CEO is not a fan of technology. You mention "business process re-engineering" and the fact that you've less than 100 employees. In my experience, that sounds like a project that better have the absolute, unqualified commitment of the CEO, or it's going to fail. Other projects probably won't work out either unless they're small and don't require much corporate change. Let's talk about your CEO. Why is she anti-technology? Does she not understand technology, and is therefore afraid of it? If this is the case, you've got to make her comfortable. That means education and some solid, low cost, high return successes. Does she think that all of this ecommerce, email, ebusiness, e-etc. is just a bunch of hogwash? Does she insist on having a manual typewriter in the office? Does she have her assistant deal with her email? If so, you've got a major uphill battle on your hands. You also have my sympathy. I'd suggest moving on really quickly before you have to account for the time you've spent at this company on your resume. But, if she's smart and has managed the company pretty well so far, then it's more likely that she has just been burned too many times. Your predecessors probably promised all kinds of wonderful things with bells and whistles, improved productivity, dramatic increases in sales, and massive cost savings. All she had to do was sign that little bitty PO for $100,000. There were probably too many of those little PO's and too little, if any, tangible benefits that showed up on the bottom line. So my suggestion is to spend some quality time with the CEO. You've got to think like a salesperson. While there are few good salespeople out there, the good ones LISTEN. Don't regale your CEO with how "cool" it's going to be. That's what she's heard before, and if you just talk and don't listen, she's going to wonder why she hired you. You MUST spend the time to find out what business problems are REALLY vexing her, and then figure out how to effectively solve them with measurable bottom-line impact. This means listening to her, other department heads, and so forth. It means NOT going into this with the idea of implementing the latest things you've read about in CIO Magazine (a fine publication, by the way). It means solving REAL business problems, not imagined ones that a computer columnist says you have. And it means IT projects that WILL increase sales and reduce costs, with you taking the responsibility to make sure those goals are met. Finally, ask yourself two questions. Is this re-engineering project solving your CEO's biggest problem? Is there a definite payback that you can measure? If the answers are "no" or "I don't know", why are you working on it?
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