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Benefits of Peer Interactions and Perspectives
Darren Ash, CIO, NRC
I returned recently from the largest gathering of Information Technology (IT) officials from public, private, non-profit, and international organizations. This was an annual symposium that attracted over 7,500 attendees this year, including over 1,900 Chief Information Officers (CIOs). The benefit of the symposium was that it is vendor neutral–by that I mean it is not focused on a particular product, software, or company. While there were some great keynote speakers, Chief Executive Officers representing some of the largest publicly traded IT companies in the U.S., the real benefit was two-fold: First, networking with peers, particularly peers whom you would normally not interact with because they are in an industry unlike your own (example, during one of the lunches I attended, I sat next to the CIO for a private-label company that makes gift wrap); and second, learning from the latest research, trends, best practices, and issues. Some of my takeaways were:
- The CIO for a private, non-IT company often faces the exact same challenges I do. They too struggle with aging legacy applications and software, trying to make a decision about how and when to use the “Cloud,” grappling with staff use of smart phones (such as the iPhone) and tablet PCs (such as the iPad), and focusing on the business goals of the organization, e.g., how to be more agile in response to changing requirements and the business landscape.
- One of the broad themes this year had less to do with technology per se, and much, much more to do with the softer skills: growing and enabling your IT staff, being a better leader, and change management.
The change management discussion in a variety of workshops and general sessions reinforced my own perspectives on the topic. What is change management? In the context of the workplace, it is how we focus on something very human—people naturally and often resist change. It could be something as simple as changing the paint color on the walls, a new manager, or the introduction of new/updated software staff need to do their job. Change for staff requires new learning, such as how to use the software. It can also include resistance to the software because staff believes the old version worked just fine. Changes can also affect organizations—think mergers, consolidations, loss of control, increased responsibilities, a physical move to a new location, etc.
There are plenty of great books on the topic by many different authors, each with their own thoughts and suggested strategies to manage, explain, and cope with change. My simple takeaway is that no matter the change—small or large, new software, new strategies, etc.—if we haven’t thought through change management at the start, and choose to wait until much later to tackle it, the chance of failure is significant. For me personally, it simply means I need to ask my staff much more often about change management and how we can help people accept change and ease the transition.
