First 90 Days as CIO: A Proven Playbook for New IT Leaders

One of the most rewarding experiences you can have as a CIO is successfully transforming an IT organization to make a significant impact on an organization. This is one reason why CIOs accept a new opportunity, as they embrace the challenge to take a company to the next level.

The first 90 days for a new CIO are extremely important. They have the attention of executive leadership and an open runway to chart a new course for IT and the company. To chart this course, the incoming CIO needs to define an IT strategy and execution plan. This article will outline an approach to define these items and position the incoming CIO for success.

Approach

The first step in implementing transformation is defining your approach. Your approach will lay out the steps necessary to understand the company, culture, IT environment, challenges and strategic direction the company needs to go.

From my past experience, I utilized an approach consisting of the following phases:

• Assess — Understand and evaluate the current environment, challenges and direction
• Plan — Develop a plan and strategy
• Align — Reach out to executives, business leaders and stakeholders to align and garner support
• Execute — Execute initiatives and measure performance
• Refine — Ensure initiatives are being delivered as planned and refine your plan to address gaps, challenges or dynamic business needs

You most likely received insights into IT's challenges during the interview process. These insights will help you as you assess IT and the organization.

Phase 1: Assess

In order to put together any type of go-forward plan, incoming CIOs need to understand the current state of the company and the environment they are inheriting. Some important areas to assess are:

• IT Organization — Is it organized to sufficiently support the company? Do you need staff? What is the support model?
• Infrastructure — Is the technical environment dated? Is it secure? Is it redundant?
• Applications and Platforms — Are they out of maintenance? Are there redundant solutions? Can they be consolidated?
• IT Processes and Governance — Are processes in place to govern and deliver solutions?
• Vendors/Service Providers — What vendors are you dependent on? Are they adequately supporting the business?
• Contracts — How are contracts managed? When are they set to expire?
• Executives and Business Partners — How does IT interact with them? What are their future plans? How do they want to partner?

IT Organization: The IT organization first and foremost needs to ensure the availability and accuracy of systems, as well as timely support. The IT organization may not be structured properly to provide timely service delivery. There may be lack of resources or skill issues affecting delivery. Help desk tickets take days or weeks to resolve. Enhancements and projects don't get sufficient attention, thereby pushing out due dates by months or even years.

Infrastructure: Often times companies do not invest in their infrastructure in order to keep costs down. This adversely affects maintainability, security and potentially performance. Is the technical environment architected properly? Is the environment redundant? Is it secure? Is there a lot of in-house infrastructure? There may be opportunities to migrate towards the cloud to reduce costs.

Applications and Platforms: If a company neglected to keep their infrastructure current, most likely their applications and platforms are out of date as well. Rather than just updating, incoming CIOs need to take a step back and determine if there is a better, more strategic platform to support the business. With companies that have made acquisitions, there are often redundant applications providing an opportunity to consolidate systems and reduce costs.

IT Processes and Governance: IT processes are required to repetitively deliver solutions to the business. Does IT have the ability to consistently deliver? IT processes encompass more than delivery — there are governance processes, budget processes and many others that need to be assessed. This will become important prior to execution to make sure initiatives can be tracked and measured.

Vendors / Service Providers: External business partners can be critical to the delivery of solutions. Who are the vendors currently providing services? Are they performing as required? Are there multiple vendors providing the same or similar services? Depending on your project backlog, you may need to onboard a vendor to help deliver solutions.

Contracts: Reviewing current contracts with hardware vendors, software vendors and service providers will provide insight into IT's spend, dependencies and contracts nearing expiration. This information may impact the priority and timing of initiatives in the IT strategy and plan.

Executives and Business Partners: Meeting with business leaders, stakeholders and executives will help you understand how IT supports the organization, their strategic initiatives and how IT needs to support them in the future. The establishment of these relationships is critical for the success of the incoming CIO. It is also important to understand the financial parameters and budget you have to work with. Working with the CEO, COO and CFO will provide this information.

Phase 2: Plan

With the meetings and assessment findings complete, the incoming CIO will more than likely have a number of items to address. There will most likely be some critical items requiring immediate attention. For me, it was the absence of a disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity plan (BCP). If an unforeseen event were to occur, the company had no backup plan or way to recover. This was the first initiative addressed and delivered. Unfortunately, we needed to implement it. Faulty battery maintenance caused a short and started a data center fire. We quickly put our plan in place, switching over to our backup systems and sending the sales and customer service teams to an alternate location. Our teams continued to enter orders and our shipments left the docks as planned, without a hitch. I estimate we saved the company $40M that day, as well as their reputation with their customers.

When assembling the IT Strategy and execution plan, remember, Rome was not built in a day. There will be a number of items to address. Business value and critical items will drive execution priority, which will most likely span multiple years.

Phase 3: Align

Now that the plan is defined, the incoming CIO needs to prepare for execution. This will require alignment with executives, stakeholders, the PMO and business leaders. It also requires that the IT staff, vendors and service providers are positioned for execution. Additionally, communications will need to be made to ensure everyone is aware of the upcoming initiatives, activities and commitments.

In my situation, the IT organization was severely understaffed and the business units had strategic initiatives that had not been addressed by IT for a couple of years. The business units were eager to get these initiatives going. The challenge was how to support the day to day work, enhancements and strategic work without affecting the business. For the strategic initiatives, I ended up using outside vendors. For the day to day support and enhancement work, I leveraged our internal teams. The incoming CIO will need to continue to "Run the Business" while working to "Transform" and "Grow" the business.

Phase 4: Execute

This is where the transformation starts to take place. The strategy and plan are set. The staff and vendors are in place to execute. Communications have gone out. Execution and governance processes are in place. Now it is time to execute and monitor each initiative to ensure successful completion.

Phase 5: Refine

As with any business, the needs of the business are constantly shifting. IT has to respond appropriately. The incoming CIO will need to monitor and refine the IT Strategy and execution plan as needed. This will ensure that IT is meeting the needs of the company.

Conclusion

Making a positive impact on an IT organization and a company is extremely rewarding. It takes a well thought out plan to ensure alignment with the business and that focus is on the right initiatives. Hopefully this approach will provide a framework for the incoming CIO and highlight specific areas to address in order to be successful.