Ben Fried, CIO of Google, discusses the challenges and opportunities of being the CIO at one of the most successful technology companies of our time.
by Peter High, published on Forbes.com
07-22-2013
One might think that being the CIO of a legendary technology company would be like aTale of Two Cities: the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, one need not ever make the case that technology needs to be thought of as a strategic weapon in the arsenal of the company, as many IT executives still must do in their companies. On the other hand, there are many people throughout the business who feel they can do the job of CIO better than the actual CIO can. For many of the company’s engineers, CIO seems like the easiest of the executive positions.
Google’s CIO Ben Fried’s job is far from easy, but he focuses more on the best of times scenario, recognizing that by being surrounded by some of the best technology talent in the world inside and outside the IT department, there is no dearth of opportunities to pursue. In fact, even the issues turn out to be opportunities. As he says, “At Google, we are programmed to think that if you see an opportunity or a problem, we need to do something about it.”
When Fried joined Google roughly five years ago after more than 13 years at Morgan Stanley, there were a great number of opportunities to chase down and a reasonable amount of issues to resolve. This is typical for an organization that has been through such tremendous growth as has been the case for Google. The company’s core services such as search, Gmail, YouTube, and Maps have grown tremendously, and the company continues to grow through acquisition. The complexity is exacerbated and the opportunities multiplied by the company’s continued desire to strive for moonshot ideas such as Google Glass or the driverless cars emerging out of Google X. Fried’s team’s ability to react quickly to these opportunities earned it a reputation for being experts with the tactics. They could seize upon an opportunity or squelch a problem as soon as either was identified.
A couple of years ago, Fried wanted to plant a flag figuratively to declare what IT stood for, however. As the company continued its tremendous growth, the demands on IT would grow accordingly, and without a filter to judge certain kinds of ideas so that some would be de-prioritized would mean the department might be crushed under the weight of growing needs and expectations of the rest of the organization.
IT missions typically sit above the strategy of the organization and they should not change as often as a strategy will, and therefore should offer a lasting initial screen to help determine whether a given idea is worthy of pursuing or not. The IT strategy and the portfolio of projects connected to that strategy will get to the next level of granularity closer to the transactional level of the business.
As a result, Fried and his leadership team defined Google IT’s mission as “To Empower Googlers with World Leading Technology.” This is a bold mission, and it clearly states that average is not good enough. Fried and his team embraced this mission because it complemented the company’s mission as a whole, which is “To Organize the World’s Information and Make It Universally Accessible and Useful.” One ambitious mission deserves another to support it.
There are a few things that are noteworthy about this plan:
First, it requires that IT develop tight collaborations with colleagues outside of IT, so that the IT department truly knows what “Googlers” need to be successful. Fried had a valuable arrow in his quiver: he had some of the deepest engineering talent in the world, and in many case his team could seek the counsel of colleagues who invented significant aspects of the Internet, technology infrastructure, and computer languages. IT needed to develop stronger ties with these experts earlier on in the development of new technologies…
Additional topics covered in the article include:
To read the full article, please visit Forbes.com
To explore the recent Beyond CIO Series articles, please click here.
To explore the recent CIO-plus Series articles, please click here.
To explore the Technovation Column library, please click here.
To listen to an older Forum on World Class IT podcast interview with Ben, click here.
