CIO Or Perish

width="284" height="190">In the beginning, there was the EDP manager. Safely ensconced

behind the glass walls of his cabin within the air-conditioned glass kingdom titled 'Data

Processing Department'. Take your shoes off before you enter the shrine, the gentlemen of

the seventies and the early eighties were happy to live in a make-believe land of card

readers, whirring tape drives, and the noisy 600 LPM printers, far away from the reality

that existed on the shop floors and customer service desks where line managers furrowed

their brows, trying to make some sense of the reams of computer stationery that landed

periodically on their desks. Protected by the finance chief, who understood little and

cared even less, the EDP manager counted the years for his next grade change and happily

awaited retirement.

Then came Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, and

the advent of the Mac and the PC shook the EDP manager out of his self-imposed

hibernation. As line managers and even a few presumptuous CEOs started understanding the

difference between data processing and management information systems the questions began

to pour in was about the relevance of the data from glass houses. Thus information

strategy planning exercises commenced in earnest and plans were made by the rechristened

systems managers to incorporate the new buzzwords of Local Area Networks, relational

databases, and end-user computing into the information architecture of the firm.

This forced the still-not-too-old

generation of systems chiefs to learn new tricks and a new breed of whizkids started

sprouting in systems groups network administrators, database administrators who became the

right hand of the systems heads and eventually took over the role themselves.

This led to a logical problem of premature

attrition. The software exports boom was also beginning toward the turn of the eighties

into the nineties and 30-year-old systems managers soon set their sights on foreign shores

or, at the very least, started a merry cycle of job hopping, each time moving to a newer

technology shop and another paragraph added to their resumes. In the last few years, we

have seen many ambitious information technology investments come crashing down because of

the mass departure of the core technology teams at critical stages in the process. The

systems manager has become another anachronism, except in those cases where they have won

the confidence of the CEOs as people with capability beyond just running computers-people

charged with the vision of a truly infotech-transformed enterprise, able to contribute

significantly to the overall business strategy of the enterprise. What's different in the

successful corporations in Europe and North America? The Chief Information Officers (CIOs)

of the larger firms have the stature, self-image, and no doubt the pay packets of any

senior board functionary. This is testimony not just to the value that the organization

places on their role and the importance of the information technology management function

that they perform, but also speaks of the self-worth perceived by these individuals. They

take high-value-high-impact decisions, are feared and revered by the suppliers of all

products and services. The CEO consults them not just on matters that concern technology

but on many other issues of strategic importance to the firm.

How then do we make this happen in India?

The first step has to be taken by the corporate boards themselves by advertising for and

recruiting high caliber professionals with clear independence and the resources they need

to make information technology really play the transformational role it is capable of

doing. And the reciprocal gesture must come from the professional community. There are a

large number of outstanding professionals out there who are capable of standing shoulder

to shoulder with the best of the American CIO community. A little bit of sacrifice, a

commitment to long-range success, and some measure of patriotism and pride in making an

Indian firm truly globally competitive is what we corporate India needs from its CIOs to

march proudly toward the new millennium.