It’s really your people that fire you
Most IT leaders are very concerned with effectively managing their stakeholders and boss. Of course that makes sense. But an incident this week reminded me of just how important it is to really listen, and be responsive to, the people who work for you.
Last week I heard from Charles*, a former client and now the divisional CIO for a $600 million division of $14 billion entertainment and media concern. He called to share with me his great relief that his boss, Donald*, the global CIO had been fired. Now, this isn’t a simple case of schadenfreude (delight in another’s misfortune) there is a back story.
The story begins about two years ago when Charles was first recruited into his current role. Although he reported to the president of the division for which he served as the CIO, he also had a straight-line reporting relationship to the global CIO. Shortly after he joined his new employer, he began to experience problems with the global CIO.
As Charles reports it, Donald was on a real mission to adopt, implement and enforce a set of hardware and software standards across all nine operating divisions. He was all over Charles and his peers about getting in line with the standards for a particular server, OS, and version of IE and Office to name a few.
Early on Charles heard some of his peers grumbling about the boss but he did his best to comply and to see the righteous aspects of his boss’ requests. He figured it was nothing more than typical IT office politics. But as time wore on, he told me how Donald’s ways became more and more intrusive and of less and less value to the business.
Edicts regarding which collaboration tools could be used and which not pushed Charles over the edge. He had sourced and customized a very effective collaboration platform to meet the specific trading needs of one of his key business groups and was told to scrap it and move to SharePoint at a cost of over $600,000. But beyond the cost, the fact that the SharePoint solution would be inferior to the existing solution really soured Charles on Donald and his standards.
About a year ago Charles approached some of his peers with a plan to help Donald see the negative impact his standards crusade was having on the operating divisions and on his reputation. Unfortunately, their efforts met with little success. It was at this point that Charles basically gave up and adopted the strategy employed by the other divisional CIOs in dealing with Donald–avoid, ignore and conceal.
Along with that strategy came an obvious shift in Charles’ attitude toward his boss which was easily discerned by his people. And while Charles never spoke poorly of his boss, it was clear to everyone down the chain that Charles didn’t hold Donald or his standards in very high esteem. Not surprisingly this attitude was pretty common in the IT groups in the other divisions as well. And that’s where our story finally comes to a head.
About 10 days ago, the global CFO of the concern (Donald’s boss) was visiting the US and was having trouble with his laptop. One of the support technicians in Charles’ organizations was dispatched to his hotel to provide tech support. As fate would have it, it turned out to be a very technically-oriented employee who had no idea who the executive was. Apparently he thought it was just another manager from Europe.
As Charles tells it, the tech chatted happily with the CFO explaining to him that the source of his problems were the crazy and unnecessary standards regarding what browser version could be used and what versions of Java were and were not allowed and so on. In short, he told the global CFO that because of some crazy ideas, “we are spending millions of dollars and wasting every body’s time.”
The next day the global CFO asked Charles to have lunch with him at which time he shared the above story. At first Charles was concerned that he was going to be fired for having such an impertinent employee but instead the CFO asked Charles his opinion about the matter itself. Figuring he had little to lose since the cat was already out of the bag, he leveled with the CFO. He explained the challenges his group faced as a result of the standards and provided similar examples from other divisions.
The CFO asked Charles if he had ever spoken with Donald about this issue and Charles relayed the story in full including his attempts at fixing the situation. The CFO thanked Charles for his time and told him that he would look into it more carefully.
Less than a week later, an email arrived from Donald addressed to all the divisional CIOs saying that after a very rewarding career at the company he had decided to move on and to take some personal time to figure out what he would next be doing.
Most of the time the story doesn’t end quite so well and certainly not so quickly. And while I feel badly for Donald on a personal level, on a professional level it’s hard not to rejoice that the good guys won. More importantly, it’s an important reminder that while it may be your boss that delivers the message, it’s really your people who fire you.
May you always see clearly like Charles and avoid the fate of Donald.
To your success.
