by Peter High, published on Forbes.com
09-23-2013
When Kevin Hart joined Cox Communications as its CTO in April 2011, he had the ideal profile for an IT executive. He earned an undergraduate degree in engineering, and later got an MBA. He spent considerable time as a consultant, solving problems for a wide array of businesses and executives, and then was a CIO multiple times over at companies like Clearwire Corporation and Level 3. Ever the problem solver, Hart viewed his new challenge with Cox Communications as a series of opportunities to harvest, and he took a methodical approach to acquiring knowledge about his new company and its industry, built solid relationships with his fellow business executives, assessed and made relevant changes to his team to ensure that it was built for speed, and then set up metrics to prove progress was being made. The approach that Hart details herein is a recipe for success, and it is no wonder that he has achieved it in the two and one half years since he started.
(To hear the full audio version of this interview, visit the Forum on World Class IT site. This is the fifth article in the “CIOs First 100 Days Series.” The series kicked off with this article. To read each of the preceding articles with the CIOs of companies like Time Warner and Global Partners, please visit this link. To read future articles in the series with the CIOs of companies like Intel, J. Crew, Johnson & Johnson, SpaceX, and AmerisourceBergen, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Kevin, you have been the senior IT executive at multiple companies. Are there certain things that you have found are most important to focus on in the first 100 days of your tenure in your role?
Kevin Hart: I had the good fortune of spending a healthy chunk of time as a consultant, and in that role, I worked with and advised a number of CIOs, COOs , and CEOs in their early days in their roles. I learned a great deal from that experience in terms of what to focus on, and I have boiled it down to five things:
First, you have to understand the company’s goals, and ultimately how it creates value; literally, asking “how does my new company make its revenue?” It is important to understand the business drivers. All too often, IT leaders do not focus enough attention on that.
Second, it is important to understand the customer, and his or her needs. This means speaking with customers and getting their feedback where possible. I did so both with commercial and residential customers. This is great fodder for determining how IT can better serve these customers.
Third, it is critical to understand the competitive landscape. What are the trends in product portfolios and the market more generally? Use this to help craft plans that differentiate one’s new company technologically and beyond.
Fourth, take a hard look at the core team. A leader will only be as successful as his or her team. It is important to evaluate competencies that they have compared to the competencies that we will need. The latter should be clearer after the first three steps. It is also important to take stakeholders’ evaluations of the team into consideration.
Fifth, it is important to boil all of that material together to outline and articulate a multi-year transformation plan. There will be unique attributes of each plan, but there should be people components, process improvements, platform investments for growth and to build out products and services. There should also be a delivery plan. Last, it is important to sell that vision so that a coalition can be mobilized to help achieve these plans.
Additional topics covered in the article include:
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As CIO and Chief Innovation Officer, Ben Allen of Mash & McLennan strives to drive collaboration and synergies across four multi-billion dollar operating companies.
01-21-2013
Ben Allen has had an unusual path to his current role as chief information officer and chief innovation officer at Marsh & McLennan. He rose to the role of president and chief executive officer of Kroll, Inc., which was an operating company within Marsh & McLennan until it was sold by that company to Altegrity, Inc. in August 2010. Soon after the divestiture, Allen re-joined Marsh & McLennan with the first of his CIO titles, that of chief innovation officer. He was the first person to hold that title in the company. A large portion of his responsibilities were centered on facilitating greater collaboration and value creation from across the company. Interestingly enough, that is a role the best chief information officers play, as they have reason to collaborate with leaders of each business unit and division of a company often in ways that those leaders do not with each other. These similarities were not lost on Allen, who assumed his second CIO role, that of chief information officer, less than a year after his return to Marsh & McLennan.
(This is the seventh in the CIO-plus series. To read the prior six interviews with the CIO-pluses from Waste Management, McKesson, Merck, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Ameristar Casinos, and Owens Corning, please click this link. To receive notice about future interviews in the series with CIO-pluses of ADP, the San Francisco Giants, and P&G, please click visit the column’s page. in the weeks to come. To listen to a podcast interview I recently conducted with Ben Allen, please visit this link.)
Peter High: Ben, let’s begin with your path to the CIO-squared role that you have, as chief information officer and chief innovation officer. You used to be the CEO of one of Marsh & McLennan’s operating companies, Kroll. After that business was divested, you rejoined Marsh & McLennan as chief innovation officer first, and then as chief information officer second. Now that you provide services to your former peers, what advantages have you seen by having walked a mile in their shoes?
Ben Allen: It’s always easier to be successful serving a customer/client when you’ve walked in their shoes. You more fully appreciate what they are trying to accomplish and the difficult trade-off decisions that need to be made. The Marsh & McLennan business leaders know that I’ve run a global P&L and carried the pressures associated with that responsibility. We speak the same language and want the same outcome, and there is no doubt that makes a big difference.
Frankly, I also was a tough customer of the IT function when I was on the other side of the fence. I recall what I liked about it, and where I saw room for improvement. That has given me different perspective and rationale in approaching the second of my CIO roles, that of chief information officer.
To explore other CIO-plus Series articles, please click here.
To listen to Ben Allen’s Forum on World Class IT podcast interview, please click here.
A reflection on technology thought leadership in 2012.
As 2012 draws to a close, I have gathered what I believe to be the best technology writing and interviews from the year. I have divided the articles into the categories of people, organizations, and ideas. As you put your feet up in front of the fire this holiday season, consider giving these articles and interviews a look and listen.
People:
Elon Musk has been called the reincarnation of Thomas Edison. One of his companies is shooting for the stars (or at least for Mars), and another hopes to revolutionize the auto industry. In this Bloomberg Businessweek profile entitled “Elon Musk, the 21st Century Industrialist“, Ashlee Vance provides a solid snapshot of this dynamic leader. (To get an insider’s perspective on Tesla Motors, listen to my interview with Tesla IT head, Jay Vijayan.)
I am admittedly a devotee of Charlie Rose, and there are three tech-centric interviews of his from the past year that are worth watching:
Mary Meeker was an early advocate for and investor in the dot-com companies of the late ‘90s. She is back, and this Forbes profile by Eric Savitz entitled “Meeker: new Job, But Still Queen of the Net” provides interesting insights into where she sees the next big things emerging from her perch at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Organizations:
With all of the articles written about big data, Charles Duhigg’s New York Times Magazine article “How Companies Learn Your Secrets” does an outstanding job at digging deep into the methods used by Target regarding its approach to data analytics to make better decisions.
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Ideas:
I have been interested to see a number of business and IT executives who I counsel gaining a better appreciation for culture. This is not a technology piece per se, but is especially relevant for the department of the company that is most vulnerable to having great people leave for greener pastures. In this Fast Company article, Shawn Parr argues that “Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch.”
As the former EVP of Global Services and Chief Information of Merk, Chris Scalet oversaw the centralizing of IT infrastructure, Human Resources, and Finance, but the devil was in the details.
12-17-2012
This is the fifth article in the CIO-plus series, covering CIOs whose roles have been augmented due to the good work they did first and foremost as CIOs, but also recognizing that the good work translated into other areas. (You can access the prior four articles here) I recently spoke with Chris Scalet, the former executive vice president, Global Services, and Chief Information Officer at Merck & Co., Inc. as part of the Forum on World Class IT podcast series. Scalet developed one of the first shared services organizations at Merck when he centralized infrastructure, yielding a nine-figure savings per year in the process. The CEO of the company was sufficiently impressed that he asked Scalet to do the same in other parts of the company. Scalet began with Human Resources and with Finance, but eventually took responsibility for a wider array of functions. Scalet humbly surmises that the path he pursued should be accessible and achievable by most CIOs, no matter the industry, though he readily admits that the devil is in the details.
Peter High: Chris, you began your time at Merck as the company’s CIO. Your role was augmented substantially as your tenure continued. What was it about the CIO role that lent itself well to this augmentation?
Chris Scalet: There are four factors that come to mind. First, most CIO’s have a strong business mindset. They have a strong tendency to focus significantly on the business processes that underpin the operations of the company. Throughout their careers, they have likely digitized the majority of these processes and have developed a broad and deep understanding of how they fit together as well as how they flow to move the business.
Second, CIO’s today are strategic in their thinking. They have been forced to be in both a business and a technology sense. Both business environment and technology are changing quickly, often at paces that are considerably faster than in the past. Reacting to change is no longer acceptable. To be effective today, CIO’s must anticipate where both are going, make choices, and put actions in place that make sure the two are effectively aligned.
Third, CIO’s are operational thinkers who are organized and methodical in their thinking. They can break down complex business problems into simple tasks, and work to solve each simultaneously. They are also effective risk managers who can see around the corners and ensure proper contingency plans are in place to manage the business.
Finally, CIO’s are generally very good influencers up, down, and across the organization. They have developed the appropriate skills to set a vision and sell the vision across the organization.
To listen to Chris Scalet’s Forum on World Class IT podcast interview, please click here.
In an installment of the CIO-Plus Series in Peter High’s Forbes Technovation column, Chris Laping, SVP of Business Transformation and CIO of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers talks about how to be a change agent from the perch of an IT leader.
12-03-2012
In a recent article, I mentioned the trend in companies around the US and beyond of expanding the CIO’s responsibilities based on the translation of good work done in IT into other divisions and departments in the company. I refer to this phenomenon as the CIO-plus role. I kicked off the series last week with an interview with Puneet Bhasin, the Senior Vice President – Technology, Logistics and Customer Service, Chief Information Officer of Waste Management. (Past articles in the series can be found here) This week, I am delighted to continue the series with Chris Laping, the Senior Vice President of Business Transformation and Chief Information Officer of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers (NASDAQ: RRGB).
Laping has what I believe to be the ideal background for a CIO. He has an engineering degree as an undergraduate, an MBA, he spent time as a consultant, and though he is not yet 40, he has been a CIO for ten years. He joined Red Robin as CIO in June of 2007, and after transforming that organization, added the role of SVP of Business Transformation to his title in February of 2011, noting that the company hoped that his “transformation” activities would not be limited to IT. Now it seems that each analyst call that Red Robin CEO Stephen Carley leads features initiatives that Laping and his team leads or co-leads, such as the development of the Red Royalty customer loyalty program that he oversaw in concert with the company’s CMO, which has contributed substantial sales lift in those stores where it has been fully implemented.
Laping does not hide his desire to take on even greater responsibility in the future, and he pays much more than lip-service to this ambition, as he continues to drive value from his CIO-plus perch within his company.
Peter High: You have been a Chief Information Officer since your late 20s, Chris. When you started as CIO, what did you hope to do in that role?
Chris Laping: If I honestly reflect on my goals at age 29 as a CIO in the GMAC world, it really boiled down to a few things: 1) be a leader that focused more on WE than ME; 2) be transformative and care about my company’s business more than my passion for technology and; 3) innovate in new ways that weren’t just limited to the technology toolbox.
Ultimately though, the number one metric I used to understand if I was succeeding was progress. I’ve never believed that people expect perfection or the total solution overnight; they are happy if you are making meaningful progress on a daily basis.
To listen to Chris Laping’s interview on The Forum on World Class IT, please click here.
Peter High and Chris Laping, CIO of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, speak with XChange Events at their Midsize Enterprise Summit 2012 in San Antonio, Texas after their on-stage interview for the Forum on World Class IT.
Meet the new IT leader—an executive intensely focused on building out an unparalleled IT core while increasing the business value of IT. Those two initiatives are what motivate the next-gen CIO. This session will unlock the secrets to breaking through by sharing innovative ways to manage projects, forge partnerships with internal departments and influencers and execute on a vision for driving business value and change. No matter what the critics say IT is uniquely equipped to drive change and foster innovation.
This interview is with Chris Laping, who is not only the CIO of Red Robin Gourmet Burgers but the Vice President of Business Transformation and Peter High, President of Metis Strategy.
To watch Chris’ full video interview with Peter, please visit his interview page on the Forum on World Class IT.
