Mentoring

Background

Business expects IT to bring down costs, while providing excellent support, while building new business capabilities, in a constantly changing environment.
 
These requirements contradict each other because there is a inherent tension between delivering service, reducing cost and reducing risk. In order to meet these business expectations the CIO and his or her management team needs to be proficient in skills different from traditional IT expertise. A recent CIO survey indicates that the three key skills required by the CIO were the ability to communicate effectively, strategic thinking and planning, and the ability to lead and motivate staff. These three skills all scored over 50% in the survey, while technical proficiency was ninth on the list of ten key skills at 10%.

What’s bothering CIOs?

We keep a constant watch on trends and issues which concern CIOs, via our access to world leading research, including the Datamonitor business and technology research database, the Ovum research database, the ButlerGroup Review and Information Economics Journal as well as the rest of our extensive research bases to provide relevant insight and timely guidance to CIOs.
 
In 2010, apart from the technical issues facing CIOs, they are challenged by the competing expectations of business:
 
 
To meet these and many other challenges, the CIO needs to be more than a technical expert. He or she needs to be a business influencer, a people manager, financially competent, a skilled negotiator, and a clear and compelling communicator. To combat the $44Bn marketing and sales effort of vendors that is directed at CIOs, he or she also needs to have a well developed ‘drivel-dectector’.
 
To equip the CIO, we have developed our CIO Advisory programme to accommodate business expectations of the CIO and his or her management team, and to allow them to meet their commitments – both explicit and implicit.
 
The CIO Advisory programme takes the CIO and the IT management team through a structured journey in acquiring and applying leading practice IT management expertise. The programme is supported by domain expertise and over 700 international Datamonitor, ButlerGroup and Ovum analysts.
 
We conduct ongoing CIO-relevant research and use this in support of the programme. Further, the book “What Business Really Wants from IT”, written by one of our strategic advisors provides a framework for the application of the research in the applicable areas of competence for the CIO role.
 
Our clients have unique requirements based on their organisational and business priorities and at the outset the programme is customised to address these needs and priorities. Thus the programme takes IT executives through leading practice understanding in a context that is relevant to their organisation.
 
The programme is designed to provide an intensive knowledge and competency information development programme for one or more executives. This requires a set of business and technology leadership competencies to be identified and conveyed through the delivery of research material, providing appropriate insights and affecting a move to a more business focused IT organisation. Essentially the acquisition of the information and gathering of these insights is a journey. This journey may take anything from 6 months for some executives to 18 months or more for others.
 

Our approach

Coaching, mentoring, and education

There is a difference between coaching, mentoring and education
  • Coaching is indicated where the recipient/s is in need of guidance through various issues and problems, towards specified goals. Largely the individual has the knowledge and experience of their domain, but needs to structure this thinking and advance their agendas
  • Mentoring occurs where the recipient needs skills and knowledge additional to that which they already have. An experienced mentor imparts that knowledge through a structured programme, again directed at goals determined by specific issues and problems being experienced by the individual
  • Education follows a specific curriculum, aimed at bringing the individual’s knowledge up to a specific level across a broad range of topics.
There is an overlap between the above as follows:
We provide all of the above services.
 

Summary

  • We will provide a competence building journey for the CIO and/or senior IT management team, focused on individual priorities, within the client context
  • Competencies will be targeted in the IT management and leadership domain, with pure technology only being addressed if relevant to the management journey
  • We will conduct a start-up workshop/ meeting with all participants to set the scene, identify the business (and your) priorities and define the generic journey and approach
  • We will initiate one-on-one programmes with each participant to undertake the journey. Typically these take the form of weekly or bi-weekly meetings with e-mail backup in the interim times. We find that individuals have specific challenges, which we uncover during meetings, research during the interim, and provide input at the next meeting.
  • We set three goals to be achieved by each participant, and structure the programme around these individual goals. We usually work with the supervisor of the participant in setting the goals.
  • After each weekly session, the participant will have ‘homework’ to do to, which is checked against the goals at the next session
  • Where applicable, we will provide research reports, white papers and briefs to support the journey content
  • We will set goals and track individual journeys and prepare a monthly report for your consideration
  • Typically this programme lasts three months, but time-frames do vary and can be accommodated

Overview

The objective is to provide a competence building journey for the CIO. The IT executive team can also be included in the journey, but it must be understood that their priorities are often more focused and require greater depth. Therefore should the client require both CIO and IT management team journeys, these will be mapped in a way that common themes are capitilised on, while specific requirements are met.
 
A sample leading practice CIO competence agenda is presented as follows:
 
These competencies represent leading practice abilities for a CIO in a large organisation. Because of the breadth of best-practice information available to us, we are confident that CXO Advisor will meet the requirements of the specific CIO agenda identified by the client. It is important to note that the competence framework is role appropriate and focused at a strategic level in the first instance. The depth of competence relevance along the journey will be guided and directed by the team through content and priority feedback.
 
In his book: “What business really wants from IT”, Terry White identified that business executives want the following from IT:
“Deliver IT without fuss, get involved with business improvements and give appropriate leadership”
 
IT people have to have different competencies to deal with each of these areas. The following figure depicts the types of competence required by individuals in four roles: IT supplier, IT Operations, IT business facing role, CIO:
 
 
It is clear that in order to provide the kind of expertise needed by business, the IT management team needs to be well versed in management and business competencies, with only enough stress on pure technology to be able to manage technologists and suppliers. This is the emphasis of our mentoring and coaching program.
 
The objective of the CIO Advisory programme is to direct the focus and depths of competence in IT to represent a more business relevant role profile. This profile also varies at different organisational levels:
 
 
CIO
Dept Heads
Managers
Technical
 
ITWF
IBR
IL
ITWF
IBR
IL
ITWF
IBR
IL
ITWF
IBR
IL
Conceptualise
6%
9%
18%
8%
10%
6%
9%
5%
2%
0%
0%
0%
Strategy and plan
3%
6%
12%
8%
10%
8%
7%
5%
2%
8%
4%
4%
Architect, design, commission
3%
6%
6%
6%
6%
6%
7%
7%
9%
12%
8%
4%
Operate
3%
3%
3%
2%
4%
6%
5%
9%
12%
24%
12%
4%
Monitor / measure/ communicate
3%
9%
12%
4%
6%
6%
9%
7%
5%
12%
4%
4%
 
18%
32%
50%
29%
38%
33%
37%
33%
30%
56%
28%
16%
Figure 5: Leading practice activity levels within the three roles of IT
 
It can be seen that the CIO competencies need to be deeper in the Information Leadership role, while his or her reportees are more balanced across all three management roles.
 
Our approach to the IT competence journey is to strengthen IT management competence within the context of the wider IT and business objectives.
 

Outcomes

The anticipated outcomes from this programme are:
  • IT competency focus on a more business relevant profile informed by;
    • Up-to-date information (in digestible amounts) on the latest business and IT trends, issues and developments in both business and IT
    • Opinions and insight into issues relevant to the client and their business
    • Clarifying concepts for leading practice competencies
    • Detailed knowledge where appropriate
    • Demystifying IT terminology
  • Clear guidance for the journey
    • Provide the means to develop the competencies to be effective
    • Contextualisation of the information and concepts relevant to the organization and include these in the journey
    • Setting of organization relevant goals and the ability to track progress towards achieving these goals.

Benefits

The anticipated benefits of these outcomes are:
  • Client will receive immediate benefit through the provision of:
    • Leading practice CIO and IT Management knowledge
    • Leading practice roles and role clarification within IT organizations
    • A clear roadmap for the CIO and IT Manager competence journey, in support of a wider business relevance
  • Relevant leading practice business and IT information
    • Filtered through the CIO role-competence map
    • The three role model provides an overview of the required depth of information at different management levels within the client organization
    • The filtering of information through the above two models ensures that the CIO and the IT management team is not overwhelmed with information along the journey. The CXO Advisor approach ensures relevance, timely uptake and practical applicability
  • Business and IT information
    • The research databases provided by DataMonitor, ButlerGroup and Ovum ensure that both business and IT leading practice information and knowledge are provided as appropriate to the client’s requirements
  • Briefings provide distilled and role appropriate information
    • Information is filtered through competence profiles for relevance
    • Briefings give the opportunity for communication, prioritisation and feedback so that the programme remains appropriate to existing needs and challenges
    • The client has the opportunity to test, discuss and absorb leading practices
    • The briefings are critical to the success of the programme as they impel participants towards developing competencies in their area of need
  • CXO Advisor provides relevant information
    • We filter all information through the relevant competency profiles to ensure appropriate information is delivered
    • We select leading practice information based on the competency journey
    • There is no skewing of information due to current activity profiles in the three roles. This means that we drive competencies towards business requirements as appropriate to the journey

Scope and deliverables

Scope

The programme is linked to the journey of the specific role of CIO and the IT Management team. Should the client wish to include more roles, new journey programmes will be formulated for those roles. Stage one of the journey is to assess where each participant is, what organisational priorities exist, what participant expectations and goals are, and development of participant specific journeys.
 
The scope of the work is flexible dependent on individual requirements and usually takes the form of delivery of weekly briefing sessions lasting for one hour per session per delegate, including question and discussion time; and the delivery of the relevant research material supporting the briefing sessions. CXO Advisor Advisors are available via e-mail for specific questions between briefing sessions.
 
Should a briefing session be cancelled or postponed on the request of the client, it is the responsibility of the delegate to reschedule the briefing session at a time convenient to all parties, provided that CXO Advisor will not be prejudiced unreasonably due to an overall extension of the duration of the programme.

 

Deliverables

Weekly mentoring/coaching sessions:
 
A session lasting 1 hour, delivered once a week for a period of 3 months by a CXO Advisor Business and Technology Advisor. Each session will review previous content and journey progress and will then move onto the next stage of the journey, allowing for discussion and questions.
 
Applicable Research Packs:
 
Relevant research reports in line with the agenda of the overall journey, are delivered by e-mail to the individual on the programme either before the briefing session or after it depending on the circumstances.
 
Duration
 
The CIO Advisory programme is expected to last for three months and is extendable based on participant requirements.
The CIO Advisory offering ensures that leading practice information is relevant to the journey by mapping the journey against the CIO competencies and including feedback and priorities in the future information selection.