While the world of technology continues to evolve at a rapid pace, the fundamentals of solving technology problems and how technology is effective within an organization have changed very little over time. Here is an interesting article on Increasing Effectiveness of Technology Management in Complex Organization published by our Intersearch colleagues from USA.

1. Increasing Effectiveness of Technology
Management in Complex Organizations
While the world of technology continues to
evolve at a rapid pace, the fundamentals of
solving technology problems and how technology is effective within an organization have
changed very little over time.
Certainly the process begins with a sound understanding of the company’s organizational
structure. Where do solid-line versus dotted
line reporting relationships exist? What you
will surely find is that, whatever the reason,
fewer CIOs report directly to the CEO than
in the past which can make IT effectiveness
more challenging. The more direct reporting
relationship the senior technology officer has
to the top, the better.
Consider for example the implications for the
business lines, as well as for the core business, if that senior technology officer does not
have a clear understanding of what the needs
are or how the business works. When it comes
to issues involving technology management,
the #1 senior technology officer – regardless
of the precise title – simply must have a seat
at the table with the entire executive team,
without exception. As a baseline necessity,
this helps to ensure the creation of technology
solutions that benefit the overall business.
This article considers situations beyond merely
purchasing new computers or installing a new
telecomm system or designing a new website.
Rather, it addresses examples of the complexities of technology management that revolutionize complex organizations, plus the elements
that must be in place to help ensure successful
technology management strategies, especially in times of business flux such as merger
and acquisition activities or turnarounds.
Following 35 years serving as a CIO for several large banking institutions, I have identified
four specific, critical tools that are essential
for effectively managing technology changes. Frankly these are not difficult to execute; they just take some advance thought and
planning, plus the discipline to get them done.
During times of substantial change in technology management, complex organizations
must:
1) Design a Decision Matrix
During my career, the failure to design a de-
cision matrix, as well as to designate effective
decision-makers – before beginning any decision process – were the biggest threat to any
technology management effort. This is a must
to ensure that crisp, clear and final decisions
are made.
groups that need to know about the change.
This may comprise technology teams, management, the investment community, employees, board of directors, or international
partners... and possibly many others. The horizontal line includes:
•Who is responsible for the communication
A proper decision matrix should include:
• Timing of all communication
• Who makes the decision
• Format of communication (face to face, elec
tronic, printed documents, etc.)
• Who provides input
• ho implements the decision to get the job
W
done
• specific timeline with dates when deciA
sions need to be made
At First Union, one major sticking point during a merger was a decision about which
branches were to be closed. The valuable lesson learned for me was not determining who
made the ultimate decision; we were a North
Carolina bank that bought a South Carolina
bank, so it was very clear the decision makers
were the acquired company CEO and the corporate head of retail. Rather, the lesson was
about setting expectations and deciding who
gets to have input. That decision needs to be
clearly defined by name up front and communicated to all stakeholders so they know
whom they need to influence. This helps
produce a more informed decision with buyin at all levels. Most importantly, without a
matrix such as this, crisp and final decisions
are not made.
Another vital decision-making lesson to
share comes from my days at Bank One.
When CEO Jamie Dimon recruited me, he had
been there for seven months. At the time I was
in discussions with him and he was debating
over which deposit system to choose between two major banks that had just merged.
When he finally picked one over the other, he
asked if I thought he had made the right choice. My point to him was that the most important thing he did was simply making the decision. People can act on a decision, but they
can’t act on a non-decision. That sort of limbo can be destructive, stagnating and toxic.
2) Develop a Communication Matrix
A second critical tool is a communication
matrix, which serves to answer the basic questions of who needs to know what – and when
– and how it should be communicated.
The vertical line of the matrix includes a
comprehensive list of all the individuals and
It takes several iterations to make sure you do
this right. Scenarios change and conflicts arise, so you learn as you go. Most failures occur
when you don’t make time to properly communicate to all those who will be impacted,
and to think through exactly whom you want
to tell individually in advance of the major announcement. A thoughtful and thorough communications matrix prevents issues that can
arise from not communicating effectively.
If there is a single takeaway from the
communication matrix effort, it is that you
should always tell key people about significant developments in advance of group
communication.
3) Create a Master Technology Calendar
Surprisingly, I was 55 years old before I fully
realized the importance of this simple tool.
Even the most rudimentary master calendar
helps with the management of the myriad
activities involved with running an intricate technology operation, especially when
acquisitions are occurring almost nonstop.
During such a time at J.P. Morgan there were
periods during which we chose to monitor
more than 200 technology projects – and the
timing of each – involving integration issues,
credit card conversions, regulatory matters,
infrastructure issues, and much, much more.
Using a comprehensive master calendar, we
tracked more than 200 technology projects
in the company. Every two weeks, the most
critical 27 were reviewed in detail by top management. It was a tedious process, to be sure,
but the master calendar and review sessions
kept the ever-changing organization on track
and ensured that if there were changes the
impact on the remainder of the calendar was
understood.

2. 4) Establish a Process for IT Change Management, Timeline and Budget
sight with proper processes, guidelines and
parameters in place.
Much of this process work can be done up
front to ensure technology projects are done
on time, on budget, and on scale through
effective and efficient monitoring. This is
an area that is almost always overlooked,
at least initially, in the hype to implement
whatever the latest technology happens to
be. Establishing a process with some builtin flexibility will help. To the best of your
abilities you must consider the costs of
running all the technology changes against
the use of the business resources at your
disposal. When IT professional establish a
process up front it also provides executive
management the opportunity to give direction and establish parameters before the
project begins.
When a similar situation arose four years later at Bank One, we established a rule that
in the aggregate, modifications could not affect more than 15% of the purchased code.
Anyone wanting to modify the system required specific approval from the head of HR and
IT. This solution eliminated the aforementioned issues and enabled us to be on time, and
on budget.
During the 1990s at First Union, the head
of HR and I led an implementation of the
latest version of PeopleSoft. In terms of
change management this was a fairly big
deal, but which was further complicated
when we granted the line managers with too
much leeway for program customizations
at nearly every turn. Admittedly, from the
start the process was ill defined. These costly modifications became so extreme that
it was difficult to stay current with the PeopleSoft releases, which created a host of
additional difficulties and delays. This was
compounded by the fact that the company
was making acquisitions every other month,
and it became difficult to be effective with
an inefficient HR system.
The lesson: major technology projects like
this require executive sponsorship and over-
Conclusion
The tips and examples included here are
meant to provide illumination and insight
for senior technology executives who find
themselves in the position of leading thorny
technology management projects within
their complex organizations.
To conclude, however, I have one last piece
of advice concerning longevity in an IT career. The average tenure of CIOs used to be
the shortest of any C-level executive – often
just about two years – so it’s not unusual that
I’m often asked how I survived 35 years as a
technology executive.
I can say with certainty what does not
matter: personal ego, the best technology
objective, having most power, nor having
the biggest technology team. Rather, longevity and success come directly from
possessing an understanding of all the
things that go into running the agenda of
the business, focusing your efforts exclusively on supporting those things, and then
translating your performance metrics into
customer terms.
At J.P. Morgan, for instance, website availability was a crucial metric for our retail
business since so many customers were just
beginning to move to online banking at that
time. Our website availability actually seemed quite impressive due to a robust network that ensured the system was available
99.98% of the time. Even so, in customer
terms this availability metric meant that every month 250,000 customer attempts were
unsuccessful. The point is that technology
people usually think in technology terms,
not in business terms. By flipping this seemingly positive technology metric to examine it from the business side of things, it actually becomes disappointing and downright
unacceptable.
So our objective became finding ways to
reduce the number of customers impacted,
instead of celebrating the rather meaningless
99.98% availability rate. By reducing the customer impact number – and tying that success directly to annual bonus payments – we
helped inspire goodwill, facilitate business
and management alignment on projects, and
drive behavior by helping people work together because they were motivated toward a
common goal.
I can report that the head of retail felt extraordinarily good that we shared common
goals – because his agenda of providing
exceptional customer service was our agenda as well.
There aren’t many better ways to define success, in my view.

About the author
Austin Adams joined Cook Associates in October 2012 as 35-year banking veteran – with experience in senior technology roles and
as a former CIO – with exceptional expertise in financial services and information technology. Adams spent most of his career overseeing technology and operations during dramatic consolidation in the financial services industry. He retired in 2006 as Corporate
Chief Information Officer of JPMorgan Chase, where he was responsible for technology and operations, as well as managing nearly
28,000 employees and a multi-billion dollar budget.
About Cook Associates
Founded in 1961, Cook Associates provides retained executive search and board advisory services to multinational corporations,
midcap, privately held and family-owned businesses, as well as venture capital- and private equity-backed firms. Cook Associates is
the InterSearch partner in the USA.
www.cookassociates.com
About InterSearch
InterSearch Worldwide is a global organization of executive search firms consistently ranked amongst the largest retained executive search practices in the world. InterSearch is currently operating in more than 45 countries, staffed by local professionals
selected for their experience and reputation in their own markets and their ability to operate internationally. For additional information, please visit www.intersearch.org