Great CIOs Are Adept Politicians, by Abbie Lundberg

Guest blog by Abbie Lundberg. Abbie founded Lundberg Media, a communication consulting and services company, after serving as editor-in-chief of CIO magazine for 13 years.

I know for some people that the term "politics" raises all kinds of less-than-desirable, Francis Underwood-style connotations (have you seen House of Cards yet? Chilling). And the current national political scene, with its sequesters, blame shifting and inertia, isn’t much better. But that’s politics gone wrong. Politics done well is all about increasing understanding – of other people’s ideas and interests – in order to effectively wield influence to get things done.

A Role Born Out of Politics

Political acumen has always been important to CIOs. In fact, you could say that’s how the position came about in the first place. According to Paul Strassmann, longtime CIO and technology adviser, the title was created at Bank of Boston in the 1980s to help loan officers get their own minicomputers because the CFO had control over the mainframes. “To legitimize their acquisitions, they got Bill Synnott, then the head of Management Information Systems, promoted to the same level as the CFO and anointed him with the title of CIO for better effect,” he wrote in 2003. 

Of course, the landscape of IT politics has changed a lot since then. The power structure of CFO and line executives seems almost quaint when set against the volatility created by the democratization of technology, putting sophisticated tools directly in every person’s hands and leaving no aspect of the business operating model unchanged.

Of the 500-plus senior executives surveyed for The Reinvention of Business, a research report I wrote for Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, 74 percent said they are changing their business processes as a result of new technologies; 61 percent are changing the makeup of or relationships with employees, customers, and partners; and 50 percent are making changes to their organizational structures. Over 60 percent said that, of all the corporate functions, marketing, customer service and sales will be most dramatically affected over the next three years.

'CIO v. CMO' is Hyperbolic Nonsense

Even so, when Gartner recently forecast that CMO spending on IT will outstrip CIOs’ in four years, it took a lot of people by surprise – and triggered some wild speculation about the future of IT leadership (“CMO v. CIO”; “Is the CMO the New CIO?” “CMO strikes first blood against the CIO”, etc.). This is hyperbolic nonsense. Bob Evans summed it up well when he wrote, on Forbes.com, “If you’re one of those deep-thinking but misguided folks who’ve begun predicting that CMOs are preparing to subsume the roles and responsibilities of the CIO, you might want to consider this news flash from Planet Earth: IT is the primary driver behind half of M&A synergies.”

While it is indeed silly to think the CMO would supplant the CIO, the truth is, power is shifting, and decision making (and budget) for IT will continue to shift as well. What this means is that IT politics today requires a very different approach. It’s less about staking territory and imposing will, and more about exerting influence over others who also hold power. As Art Langer wrote in CIO Insight a few years ago, “Good politics focuses on using forces that help move others to your point of view.” 

Power Politics is Part of the CIO Job

In his article 10 years ago, Paul Strassmann wrote, “The primary job of a CIO is power politics… to manage conflict, to oversee the re-distribution of power and to re-allocate money so that information technologies may support the success of an organization.” Today that means understanding enough about the CMO’s ideas and interests (and the ideas and interests of all the other power players in the organization) to know how to work with and influence them. In a way, you could say IT is shifting from fiefdom to oligarchy to democracy. It will take political flexibility for CIOs to bring to bear the unique knowledge, skills and assets at their command and avoid a state of anarchy.

Have you had to up your influence quotient over the past few years? Learned to negotiate with the CMO or other power players in the organization? What are the challenges, and what have you found works when it comes to swaying others to your point of view? We’d love to hear from you.

For more on this topic, read my column on “The Influential CIO.”