S'engager dans des «conversations qui comptent» CIO-CxO: une entrevue avec Peter Keen (document en anglais)

Q1: I have heard you say more than once that CxOs are not interested in “IT.” Can you explain what you mean by that?

Peter Keen, The chairman and advisor of Keen Innovations, answered this question very clearly, where he stated that it is important that CxOs know the importance of information systems in their company and how it can extend and integrate relationships between the companies processes. For the majority of CxOs, knowing the innards of an information system is not as crucial as knowing how the plateform developed is used and how it can increase the performance of a company. He talked about Facebook where he showed how 300 million people use it daily but don’t know how the plateform works, they just use it for communicating with people. “CxOs are tuning out, and the more comfortable they are about the value of IT, the less they want or need to tune in on the old technology discourses” said Peter Keen, which means that even when CxOs start using IS in their company and giving it importance, they don’t regret it and think that is enables more business capacities. “Over the last five years, the whole business has become much moreIT-aware and IT-literate, and sees the need to get more involved in IT so that business benefits are delivered. As a result, It has become more influential and more proactive., and has driven an increasingly an entreprisewide culture.” (Andrew Mullock, CIO, BNP Paribas)

As far as CIOs are concerned, Peter Keen thinks that their role in the corporation is as important as the role of any other CxO, sometimes even more important. CIOs know exactly what is going on inside the comany, and through information technology they know how to solve problems in a very efficient and effective way. CIOs should be among the decision making commitee inside the company; their influence on strategical decisions could be very important and fruitful.

Peter Keen thinks that business-savvy CIOs are the ones who know how to communicate with other people inside the company, from the CxOs to the emloyees in the IS or IT departement. Key skills of today’s CIO include the ability to translate Board requirements into solutions. He needs to talk the language of the Board and the investors. All innovation in our industry will be technology- led or technology facilitated. (McGill, 2011)

As I see it, CxOs and CIOs are interdependant in an organization, they should all work in a harmony that will enable the company to perform better in terms of solving inner problems that will eventually enhance profi making and more revenues. It is illustrated in the example Peter Keen gave by saying that and General is not an army without his subordinates. In this case, the general are the CxOs, and the subordinate are the CIO and the people working in the IT department. To put it in a nutshell, companies should not think that It is involved only when there is something not working weel inside the company and work is not well synchronised.

Q2: As you look back at the last 30 years, how do you think that the role of the CIO has changed in terms of its focus on the operations mission vis-a- vis business strategy, and what does that suggest for CIO role changes in the future ?

For Peter Keen, the role of the CIO nowadays compared to 30 years ago underwent some changes. Before, a CIO was just a technology shop manager that is considered one of the costs to be controlled; but years later, the role of the CIO has changed to be a crucial part of an organization, that is now responsible for many tasks such as cost containment and operations liability. Insourcing and outsourcing is also one of the tasks a CIO is responsible of, and it is bringing competitive advantage to organizations. CIOs have got a lot of attention recently despite the economic turdowns in the recent years. CIOs have some skills and capabilities that can help comapnies concentrate on business operations and help them solve some cross-functional problems that still confuses many entreprises. “For yesterday’s CIOs, and many of today’s as well, it was enough to have two out of three key capabilities – personal leadership, technology leadership and business acumen. Tomorrow’s CIO will need all three.” (Brumby, 2010)

I think that CIOs should be in charge of more strategic tasks. Being a CIO and evolving well inside the company is difficult and requires certain skills that not all CxOs have. As for Peter keen, he assumes that the CIO’s role will have more importance and gets more attention within time in the future.

The following diagram illustrates the role of a CIO in an organization and how it works.

(IBM, 2008)

Q3: At your ICIS 2009 presentation you talked about “conversations that matter.” Could you expand on that?

Peter Keen in the answer of this question focused most on innovation, and how the CIOs innovation can better help an organization. Besides, Professor Keen talekd about the importance of use of the appropriate language to between CIOs. He also pointed that for a conversation to be effective, the things that should be discussed are things that are worth sharing, questioning and arguing about rather than shop-talk and social chat. For Peter keen, some intersections that are between CxOs, CIOs, IT proffesionals and educators’ dialogs, are the kind of discussions where CxOs are present and that are never cancelled anr successful because there is someone high up in the organization who cares about them as personal and leadership priority. In these intersections, some irreversible business decisions are made, where most fruitful discussions are about how to enter a market overseas and other important subjects. CIOs are usually present in those conversations for the aim of bringing somme innovation in sloving some issues like costs of operations and not discussing them.

Few years ago, moving IT as a profession towards business awareness has well progressed as CxOs came late to see that IT is a great opporunity for them to evoluate the coordination of technology for thei company, saying that they were unimaginative ever before. As I see it, companies have been losing or badly investing in some things that are worthless relatively to what IT has done in the business

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