Main an ‘Octopus Group’: The brand new CIO mandate

The vanguard CIOs I’ve labored with over time constructed their organizations on trendy ideas of management, group growth, crew constructing and variety. They weren’t solely robust technical leaders, however additionally they excelled at shaping resilient groups and a robust tradition.

A brand new e-book by Phil Le-Brun and Jana Werner with the intriguing title “The Octopus Group” reinforces the significance of understanding the folks and organizational sides of management. 

Le-Brun, now an government in residence at AWS, beforehand served as McDonald’s company vice chairman of world growth and worldwide CIO. Werner can also be an AWS government in residence; she previously led the enterprise transformation observe at AWS in EMEA and digital transformation at Tesco Financial institution.

The e-book is written for CIOs, their CEOs and fellow C-suite executives. In a dialog with Le-Brun, he made the case that efficient CIOs interact immediately with their government groups and boards — each inside IT and throughout the broader enterprise C-suites — to speed up their studying curves. The mandate for a corporation’s high IT professional is to not solely translate the expertise for nontechnical executives, but additionally clarify the way it connects to enterprise outcomes. 

“Our core conviction is that the true potential of expertise will solely be unlocked when the chief management understands not simply the tech itself, however the organizational and management shifts required to change into customer-centric, responsive, and resilient,” Le-Brun stated.

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Werner added, “Our work has a central message for CIOs: You maintain an important function for cultivating the traits — readability, possession and curiosity — that outline a constantly evolving group.”

“Know-how is the brand new management mandate,” which has ramifications for each individual within the C-suite, she stated. “Simply as each government should grasp the language of finance and management, the identical is true for expertise and information. It’s now not an operational concern; it’s a core competency of the C-suite.” 

Werner stated IT and information competency begin with establishing radical readability across the enterprise outcomes expertise should drive. With applied sciences like AI and machine studying, the one elements limiting a corporation from fully reinventing its core worth proposition are its creativeness and the prevailing ability units of its folks. 

The CIO’s job is to foster a tradition of curiosity that relentlessly seeks out these reinvention alternatives, acknowledging that long-term plans and roadmaps usually characterize guesswork disguised as actuality. 

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How is that tradition of curiosity operationalized amid the quickly altering IT panorama? 

The e-book is a sensible information to what works — and what would not — in organizational and other people growth. It captures a lot of what I realized facilitating conversations in #CIOChat on LinkedIn. 

Tin Man vs. Octopus organizations 

The authors illustrate the tenets of their strategy by contrasting two sorts of organizations — conventional, mechanistic “Tin Man” organizations vs. trendy, adaptive “Octopus” organizations — throughout 36 administration behaviors.

For every conduct, they establish what they name anti-patterns and the right way to implement corrective motion. This steering is invaluable for leaders who must shortly assess, adapt, and rework their organizational atmosphere. It ought to show particularly helpful for CIOs, who usually must diagnose conditions after which decide what must be mounted. 

Jana Werner, creator, ‘The Octopus Group’

Six behaviors of Tin Man organizations 

Listed below are the six mainly unhealthy behaviors attribute of Tin Man organizations. 

1. Inflexible buildings. Tin Man organizations are continuously trying to find exterior fixes to function higher. Their enterprise mannequin emphasizes standardization, specialization, management, measuring particular person efficiency, compliance, mass manufacturing and predictable outputs — in different phrases, inflexible buildings. Even late Twentieth-century administration theorist Russell Ackoff warned that this sort of machine-age pondering reduces folks to perform like, properly, machines and sometimes results in reactive or inactive planning.

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2. Brief-term focus. Le-Brun and Werner describe Tin Man organizations as being constructed on permission-based buildings designed to reduce threat and remove variation. This construction, which centralizes management and depends on strict guidelines, makes enterprise structure more difficult and creates extremely managed info movement, as IT actions are sometimes both run or modified by the enterprise. Finally, this inflexible central management ends in short-term pondering and stagnant IT. CIOs have frequently advised me that, as unhealthy because the expertise stack may be, persons are the toughest drawback to unravel. For that reason, it comes as no shock that many transformation failures are predominantly attributable to organizations having this working mannequin.

3. Confused priorities. Tin Man organizations depend on jargon, making a confused workforce, fragmented priorities and wasted assets. Management in these environments is steadily seen as evasive, manipulative and dishonest. Because the authors word, these organizations “whiffle on objective statements laden with buzzwords, leading to an absence of belief, misplaced alternatives, and issue discovering expertise.”

Tin Man organizations additionally flip every thing right into a “technique,” pursuing imprecise, formidable objectives which are disconnected from their group’s objective. Groups, not surprisingly, wrestle to grasp what work actually issues. And since actionable objectives are missing, metrics change into misused — shifting the main target from creating worth to easily hitting the numbers. 

I keep in mind visiting one among Italy’s largest banks a number of years in the past. The CIO put in high-definition screens throughout places of work, particularly within the director and vice chairman places of work, displaying efficiency in opposition to 150 tracked metrics. After I requested what was most essential, the deputy CIO stated, “every thing.” The response spoke volumes. Measuring every thing meant the group had no priorities. 

4. Battle with teamwork. Even worse, Tin Man organizations have points with teamwork. Conflicting agendas, turf wars, failed cross-functional efforts and sluggish decision-making are frequent. For that reason, decision-making slows, priorities are unfold too skinny and productiveness, morale and readability all undergo. Furthermore, an emphasis on customizing processes within the perception this work provides worth is the truth is counterproductive. The authors word the Gartner determine that 70% of ERP implementations fail, actually because inner processes are made unnecessarily distinctive and add no enterprise worth.

Tin Man organizations additionally create and reinforce silos by specializing in native inefficiencies as a substitute of enterprise-wide enchancment, leading to fragmented worth streams and unpredictable outcomes. These organizations hoard info, leading to poor selections, lack of aggressive benefit, a tradition of mistrust and an lack of ability to regulate outcomes. In flip, this causes these organizations to lean into frequent reorgs, which lead to misplaced productiveness and shifting the main target from clients to organizational survival.

5. Breed worry. This atmosphere breeds worry. Workforce members hesitate to take possession, voice considerations, share concepts or admit errors — fueling disengagement and missed alternatives. Making issues worse, administration in Tin Man organizations really upholds poor management. This contains creating gatekeeper approval processes that cut back agility and sluggish time to market.

Le-Brun and Werner declare that Tin Man organizations fetishize processes. Right here, course of overwhelms judgment, decision-making turns into perfectionistic and accountability blurs. 

In the meantime, poor hiring practices compound the difficulty, as people are valued over groups and incentives are misaligned. I keep in mind at HP, the emphasis on particular person efficiency as soon as led to me receiving an outsized bonus. Frankly, it was embarrassing — it signaled a damaged system, not distinctive efficiency.

6. Pursue the unsuitable issues. Tin Man organizations prize attaining preset objectives and avoiding failure. As a substitute of listening to clients, they usually depend on proxies, inflicting them to overlook alternatives and waste assets. The authors cite Basic Magic for example. A former colleague of mine — Apple’s sixth worker — was on Basic Magic’s management crew. The corporate created good expertise, however it stumbled throughout a interval when its leaders had been satisfied they already knew what the market wanted. I later suggested one other firm shaped by three CIOs with deep market data however no design companions. They, too, missed the mark, by no means fairly delivering a minimal viable product.

Making issues worse, Tin Man organizations keep away from onerous issues and difficult conversations. Their groups are homophilic, and their leaders defer to simply measured information quite than significant insights. They separate expertise from the enterprise, specializing in programs of report quite than programs of engagement. In the meantime, they downplay expertise growth and solely fake to innovate.

3 traits of Octopus organizations

Octopus organizations, in contrast, have the next traits and behaviors: 

1. Adaptable. Octopus organizations, in distinction, prioritize adaptability, decentralized possession, interconnectedness, and steady studying and experimentation. They foster connection, distinctiveness, problem-solving, company, ecosystems and long-term pondering. Importantly, they’re able to pursue a twin technique — intertwining working the enterprise and altering the enterprise.

Octopus organizations construct various groups and use language that fosters readability by way of shared understanding and collective objective, possession and curiosity. This creates an genuine and sensible objective that conjures up groups. On the identical time, it drives sharp deal with a number of sturdy buyer wants that generate distinctive worth. In so doing, Octopus organizations select the place to play and the right way to win.

2. Make technique a steady course of.Octopus organizations interact in vigorous, ongoing debate about organizational tradeoffs. This helps them establish strategic inflection factors early. One other important conduct? Octopus leaders pay attention greater than they speak, guaranteeing objectives align with buyer worth and development. A key a part of that is understanding the why earlier than setting objectives. After which ensuring objectives are particular, comprehensible and clearly owned.

Their measures join on to worth and objective, which accelerates studying. By enabling actual collaboration amongst friends, groups ship better enterprise worth. They do that by ruthlessly prioritizing and deprioritizing — embracing “a much less, however higher” philosophy. This frees groups to deal with differentiation.

A key enabler of that is enabling crew members to immerse themselves within the buyer’s world to establish and hone differentiating capabilities. On the identical time, Octopus organizations rigorously select what not to do, specializing in the movement of worth from thought to buyer. They deal with bottlenecks throughout your complete worth stream, not simply inside departments. They keep away from hoarding insights, as a substitute making them accessible to all, creating transparency that fosters innovation.

3. Resist paperwork. Organizationally, they resist paperwork and bloat, as a substitute prioritizing each structural stability and flexibility. They convey about reorganizations early and ask onerous questions on their investments. They attempt to develop psychological security and lead with empathy, humility and curiosity — remodeling management from a task right into a conduct. With clear tenets and guardrails, they exchange checkpoints and empower self-sufficient groups that cut back dependencies and improve productiveness.

To make this work, they dismantle paperwork and speed up innovation by asking whether or not work may be eradicated or simplified. They favor “adequate,” reversible selections that promote pace, studying and development. They worth studying agility and lived expertise over credentials. This produces high-performing, cross-functional groups and cultivates possession and mastery — the strongest supply of intrinsic motivation.

Merely put, Octopus organizations pursue speedy, worthwhile studying, which, in flip, minimizes threat. They’re obsessive about understanding actual clients to make sure long-term relevance and worth. Finally, they forge new futures for patrons and reshape markets. They love issues, make investments deeply in understanding their root causes and use that perception to ship superior options. By tackling the toughest, riskiest components of initiatives first, they be taught and validate quicker.

They use constructive dialogue over superficial concord, strengthening crew efficiency. They improve problem-solving by way of cognitive and mental variety, making data-informed selections that respect human expertise and enhance outcomes. By investing in information and digital literacy, they bridge divides and unlock innovation — turning “purple folks” (technologists) and “blue folks” (area specialists) into “purple folks,” making innovation everybody’s jobs. 

40 fixes to implement as we speak

The authors present CIOs with a set of concrete recommendations for rewiring their organizations for achievement. Right here had been the important thing ones that I’d advocate to the vanguard CIOs I do know.

Whereas CIOs might not at all times have the great fortune of working in Octopus organizations, they’ll construct one inside IT. After all, it’s actually a lot simpler to operationalize this construction if IT and the enterprise are on the identical web page. Savvy CIOs will discover the precise group by which to work. For these prepared to start the journey, this e-book provides not solely clear contrasts but additionally the tangible steps for CIOs to drive significant change.