Ron Blitstein

100 Day Ramp-up Plan for CIOs

If you're a new CIO, either new to the organization or completely new to the role, there is a high likelihood that you'll be gone before four years is up. So how can you beat the odds? By knowing exactly what sits beneath every single rock. Understanding the lay of the land right from Day 1 is critical to your success.

At its core, the first 100 days is when you need to focus on building trust and faith in your leadership.

Cutter's 100 Day Ramp-up Plan for CIOs, developed by Ron Blitstein, Director of Cutter's Business Technology Strategies practice, a former CIO and advisor to senior executives at several Fortune 500 companies, is structured around developing a meaningful agenda that takes into account the perceptions of 7 key constituencies:

1. Your boss
2. Line of business heads
3. Functional heads, like HR and Finance
4. Key vendors
5. IT leaderships including your direct reports and their immediate subordinates
6. IT employees, and
7. Shadow IT groups

Through a series of conversations with you, interviews with members of these 7 groups, and optional assessments, Cutter Consortium will help you understand just what you've inherited, the obstacles you face, and the opportunities that are open to you, making it possible for you to:

1. Truly understand the corporate strategy and assess how well IT is aligned with it
2. Identify key success factors for IT from the perspective of all business unit and functional heads
3. Communicate your goals and leadership style to your team
4. Structure your time to create short-term value while preparing a plan for the long-term
5. Get a feel for team dynamics and get to know individual team members
6. Establish productive relationships with influential people and lay the groundwork for coalitions
7. Understand the historic and current relationship between IT and each business unit and corporate function
8. Target early wins that matter to your boss
9. Negotiate the terms for success with your boss
10. Identify the informal networks in the organization

Ultimately the question you must ask yourself, and that Cutter will help you answer, is: How do I maximize shareholder value while still ensuring my continuity in office? With the support of Cutter's 100 Day Ramp-up Plan for CIOs methodology, you'll be able to thoroughly examine the 11 critical areas that must be understood before useful IT strategies can be formed:

1. What is the business' vision?
2. Is technology a component of the business plan?
3. How do executives obtain information?
4. What goals and values define the current technology organization?
5. Are technology best practices and standards followed?
6. How does the enterprise select and acquire technology?
7. How effectively does the current portfolio of application support the business?
8. How does the enterprise implement technology?
9. How does the enterprise manage and maintain technology assets?
10. How does the enterprise manage security, privacy, integrity, and compliance?
11. How does the enterprise measure performance?

The clock is ticking; if you want to your tenure as CIO to extend beyond the typical 4-year mark, you need to make sure you know where you and your IT organization stand - strategically, technically, politically, and culturally. With guidance from Ron Blitstein, you'll be able to focus on the issues and build the coalitions that will help ensure longevity in your new role.