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How To Talk Like a CIO
itwbennett writes "Today's CIOs speak business-buzzwords as a second language. And there's a good reason for that. There is a trend among CIOs to distance themselves from being regarded as technologists and to put themselves forward as business strategists. It boils down to one simple rule: Just as you should never be the first to mention compensation in the interview process, you should never be the first to break out the tech jargon in a business setting."
Just memorise all these and mix them up as you see fit:
http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html
Today, I went to the EMC/VMware event in Baltimore. me, twentysome 50-60 year old C-levels, no technical information that could be gleaned, but a bunch of salivating million dollar budgets. I asked the engineer-presenter about his replication's bandwidth demands, he was not prepared to answer... the C-level guys asked questions like "what color is the box it comes in?" want to sound like a CIO? forget everything you know about object oriented programming, IPv6, and OSPF and Linux,, and mimic a sales-evangelist from EMC.
Actually, I always try to be first to break out the jargon. I find it makes the C*O's eyes glaze over, and the meeting is cut short. That's a win for me.
.nosig
CIO's don't talk tech jargon because they don't have a fucking clue about the actual work... That shit's beneath them.
It's paramount that this endeavor not fail. We need all teams to focus on the tasks at hand go create an environment conducive for business to business relationships. I spearheaded our Service Oriented cost savings initiative starting from the top down using synrgies afforded by hiring the best of the best to reduce dependence on legacy systems. Using off the shelf products is not a viable option.
The senior VP had serious technical chops, but he wasn't about to demonstrate them in front of his peers. He feared, justifiably, that if he did so he'd get classified as a techie and taken out of consideration as a possible future CEO.
For any /.er working in an environment like that, I'd like to think this would be a sign that it was time to get the hell out.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
...You should never be the first to break out the tech jargon in a business setting."
"So guys, our, umm, magic glowing rectangles have been, uhh, a bit less magical this week. Apparently an, umm... black box that communicates using, uhh... a special language... er, well, stopped speaking with another black box that's just like it, except not ours. So we, uhh, asked our engineers to look into that, and yeeeeah... they're ah, still doing that now. It's been about four days, and uhh, they're not exactly sure where the problem is, so if we could, you know..."
(Engineer bursts into the room) "It was the router you bleeping idiots! If you'd just told us your network was down we'd have fixed it in TWO MINUTES, but your work order was blabbering on about magical boxes and glowing rectangles and we thought you were all drugged or somesuch and called 911 instead. It was only after someone in the NOC got back from their smoke break they saw the line was dead and dispatched a tech."
(sounds of approaching sirens)
"You deserve this," says the network engineer, storming off.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Was there anything at all about CIOs, or was that just another pop-psych regurgitation of 'Primate Power: use these hackneyed verbal tricks to pretend that you are the monkey with the biggest cock in the room!' as seen far too often in the various 'self-help for the painfully mediocre' columns that run in various media?
Even under the (probably quite generous) assumption that this advice is true, it's the kind of thing that you aren't going to learn just by reading, any more than you can become a good actor just by skimming a few scripts.
Why exactly should you never be the first to mention compensation in an interview process? That sounds like a recipe for a wasted hour.. if there is a serious mismatch of expectations, I'd rather know earlier rather than later.
"Strategize, Visualize, Conceptualize."
C-Speak takes what could fit on a 2 x 1.5" sticky note and expands it to fill entire books.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
That about covers it. We get this nonsense in the government too. Senior management does their "lean six sigma strategic planning" for the year, and comes up with a giant poster on the wall of the department priority plan.
It's got lots of lovely sounding buzzphrases and fuzzy things, but absolutely nothing that anybody who does any of the real work can actually do. So it's totally useless. Business goes on as usual, and we kind of nod politely when they're in the room and wait for them to leave so we can get back to work.
If you want to get by as a "leader" these days, the goal seems to be to offer no actual leadership, no firm plans, and no position on anything.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
the people with the power do absolutely none of the work
Fixed that for you.
But on a more serious note, I work above a warehouse for an import company. The owner is a multi-millionaire Chinese ex-pat. It's pretty damn sobering to see him weeding, sweeping and driving a forklift when he has time. He doesn't have to, and he's not doing it to motivate his staff. For him, it's just the right thing to do.
Restepca
They had to have done something, or we'd probably be a recently freed territory of great britain today. These people were not of the same culture as what we have today.
A nice anecdote, but, really, he's still not in the same situation as his employees, mainly for the reason you stated: he doesn't have to. He doesn't have to answer to anyone, he doesn't have to do those tasks to get paid, and he doesn't have to tolerate any passive aggressive attempts at manipulation in order to keep his job.
Just sound like the world's biggest douche bag and say, "Cloud ... blah blah .... Cloud"
Only a Sith deals in absolutes!
Great CIOs, demonstrate a balance between understanding the business and understanding the technology in their communications. Fortunately I've worked for a couple of these in my career. Few and far between.
-- Jimtown Kelly
This is the example I use of how NOT to communicate at my company:
Each individual stakeholder must focus on the downward flow of delegation to ensure timely deployment of critical deliverables and the achievement of key milestones. Without cross-functional deployment of synergistic competencies, we risk significant schedule slippage and may miss key dates that we have agreed to with our core customers.
I much prefer:
"Everybody, get your shit done on time and work together to avoid getting stuck, or we won't sell our shit and we won't get paid."
Sums it up nicely.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes!
Isn't the term "only" itself an absolute?
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I want my company's upper management to be clear and concise, rather than vague and full of shit. Sadly, the trend is to communicate as little as possible.
Hope he's good to work for, too. Usually the higher the position the less inclined they are to deign the actual working floor with their presence, which just means they have absolutely no fucking clue what's going on in their company beyond the boundaries of their office and water cooler.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
was that just another pop-psych regurgitation of 'Primate Power: use these hackneyed verbal tricks to pretend that you are the monkey with the biggest cock in the room!' as seen far too often in the various 'self-help for the painfully mediocre' columns that run in various media?
Hmm, not working for you? Try one of the other columns:
Ten hot buttons to drive your CEO wild.
Managing the Managers Managers for Fun and Profit.
Is your CTO spying on you? Find out using this one weird trick.
Not getting any at home? "Borrow" it from the supply closet.
How To: Turn Heads in your next Teleconference.
Lie with Numbers without getting caught: It's not you, it's them!
Lingo Bingo: Generate More Buzz with less Words.
The cloud is where we want to be, regardless of the technical evaluation proving that the cloud doesn't make sense for the environment.
Your technical evaluation is easier if you ask me what the outcome should be.
Increasingly CIOs don't even understand the tech jargon, regardless who uses it first. They're an MBA with a CIO label on them. Congratulations businesses who have a CIO who can speak business, but is objectively way behind the curve with the IT professions he's supposedly chief of and they're not impressed.
It would make sense if it was a Sith saying...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
We build stuff and it better damn well work. So....
Our CEO is a physicist. All of the people in upper management have degrees in science or engineering, including sales and marketing. Yeah, you have to use business jargon, but if you don't talk tech, you don't get to participate at a strategic level. The less you know, the lower in the pecking order you are around here.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
The thought may have been there, but you didn't quite rise up to the occasion.
the people with the power do absolutely none of the work
But on a more serious note, I work above a warehouse for an import company. The owner is a multi-millionaire Chinese ex-pat. It's pretty damn sobering to see him weeding, sweeping and driving a forklift when he has time. He doesn't have to, and he's not doing it to motivate his staff. For him, it's just the right thing to do.
What you're seeing here is the difference between a "boss" and a "leader".
A leader will get things done, even if it means he has to do some dirty work. A boss makes excuses why others didn't get things done.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That's precisely why it's a nice anecdote. Weeding and sweeping especially are shit jobs that people do because they have to. Finding a millionaire company owner who's still willing to get down-and-dirty is a good sign that he isn't full of himself. Buy the man a beer.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
As a fairly experienced technologist with increasing responsibility over the last several years, and who has had a certain amount of success and gathered some decent ideas along the way, I do actually think of myself as either a future CTO or future business owner.
But I almost NEVER think of myself as a future CIO. CTO definitely. But you can *have* CIO.
As a CIO, I viewed my job to be the opposite of everything in this article.
Of course it is good to listen. It is good to be able to interact with anyone on their level of technical expertise and understanding. This advice holds at every level of an organization.
It is also occasionally good to be capable of being demonstrably the most technically competent person in the room. Effective organizations do need the person who can actually ensure there exists an implementble strategy to accomplish the things the CEO is selling the world, and the things the client wants, and who can articulate to vendors exactly why their magic bullet isn't quite what you need. And in many ways as a CIO, your role is to be the one person at that level of management who really understands the ins and outs of how the technology works, how things can improve and how you can adapt to meet the challenges of the organization as a whole.
Sometimes that means being the voice of reason as the curmudgeonly technology guy, but more often it means trying to steer management towards implementable solutions and being able to suggest things that give the other CXO types options they didn't know existed.
Whether facing inward within the organization or outward to clientele or vendors, you need to be able to communicate effectively. One thing this article omits is that when facing outward, it is often good to know when to overload the vendor to get to someone who is more competent to address your concerns, and somewhat more judiciously to be able to out-tech a client's technical guys as well.
Sometimes it _does_ pay to be the smartest person in the room.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
Let me be the first to say, "Bullshit". I'm not in that interview chair because I enjoy the process. I'm not planning on working there because that's how I want to spend 9+ solid hours of my day ( although I do enjoy my work ). I'm there to earn a check.
Likewise, they aren't interviewing me because I'm an insightful and witty bastard ( although I am ). Neither are they going to hire me because looking at my pretty face is the highlight of their day. They want production out of me.
Now, that won't be the first thing out of my mouth, but I certainly will not hobble myself in an interview by letting them dictate what we talk about, when. Once I feel satisfied that I can do the work they want, and further, I think they feel satisfied I can do the work they want me to do, compensation becomes the next point of topic. If they don't bring it up, I will.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
The anecdote said the guy was the owner. That doesn't necessarily mean he has an executive position. Maybe he owns the company but hires other people to be the CEO and fill all the other management positions. He holds no position in the company but sometimes he just likes to waltz in and help around where he can. It's his company, so what's wrong with him being able to do whatever he likes with it?
Dropbox drops it like it's hot.
The point of the article is that if you want to rise to CIO, you have to understand the company and how its buisness operates. This means having to transition from skills that are helpful in IT (detailed oriented micro thinking) to skills that are used in business (macro based "big picture" thinking). The article says not to use jargon because managers at the high echelons do not care about the nuts and bolts of how something gets done. They care about the end result and other non-technical drivers (cost, ROI, etc).
Understand, these are typically skills that do not make for a good IT worker. Someone good at IT is detail oriented and laser focused on specific tasks. It is difficult training one's brain to think in a different manner. And in the IT real, people are quick to discount those who don't think as they do. The sad part is those that "think differently" in this case happen to be those who sign the paychecks.
Ironic that an article about avoiding jargon uses "CIO" - I've no idea what that means...
You make a good point, some individuals wake up one morning and find themselves owning a thriving business, they built it from the ground up and pride themselves on being able to competently perform any and every role (yes, in many cases these people are delusional). However....
Here's another anecdote along similar lines..
I drove taxis for a few years, the guy I worked for had one of the biggest taxi fleets in the city (Melbourne), his personal wealth was around $AU30 million, he also sat on the board of the city's taxi directorate. He was normally at the depot 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, he and his son did all the repairs and servicing of the cabs, his standard attire was a pair of oily green overalls and steel cap boots. New sales reps often wandered in and asked him where "his boss" was.
His work ethic set a great example, he worked harder and longer than anyone else in the company, consequently he knew the industry inside out and top to bottom. The only job he would no longer do was driving. Unfortunately the rest of his personality was that of a complete *arsehole, he used his depth of knowledge and experience in the industry to bully his son, his workers, other board members, the local council, basically everyone on his radar. Any driver with half a brain avoided the old man and dealt with the son for shift changeover, but if you wanted your overheating cab back on the road fast then you went to the old man with the big screwdriver hung on his right thigh like a six-shooter.
*arsehole - He was a smart, honest, hard working guy, if these traits had been weaker I suspect he would have been "top dog" in a prison somewhere. I'm now roughly the same age as he was when I knew him, the "suffer no fools" attitude has its uses but it just doesn't scale to accommodate people who firmly believe everyone else is a fool.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
How much money does the company lose when he's sleeping?
Come on guys, grow out of this monachist divine right bullshit. This "born to rule" idiocy is exactly how people like Rupert Murdoch (utter bastard that he is) could cut a swathe through clueless American managers that thought they just needed the right connections, an MBA, and sit isolated in a little tower to run things.
..it's a technical term...aaaRRRGGGHHHH...dammit
self-bukake?
"The network is down, ETA?
Sent from my iPad"
0 1 - just my two bits
This has been an ongoing issue since America transitioned from a capitalist society to a manamentist society sometime in the 40's. This book outlines some of this and laments the way the management class has seized power, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500881h.html
Cheap storage VM.
When confronted with technical jargon they don't understand, execs need a language they can fall back on to make themselves feel better and impress their tech underlings.
Thus was executive speak created, it's like a secret handshake that reassures themselves and their peers that they all belong to the same, exclusive club that specifically does not include techies.
I bet he learns a thing or two by being on the floor with the worker bees. If nothing else they'll be less likely to fuck off.
You're picking a case where you're assuming that transport is independent of everything else. If everything were like that then, sure, managers wouldn't have to know anything, and MBAs might actually make the best executives.
In many real cases, parts of the business are all connected and there aren't necessarily dividing lines. For instance, if you're having labor trouble, perhaps a fleet of trucks will be more vulnerable to strikes than rail. But perhaps your product will spend more time sitting in a hot car with real, which could be an issue if it's heat sensitive.
These are just example to fit in with your car analogy and may not be plausible. But in real life there are often cases where there aren't clean interfaces between problems, and a CEO who knows the details can ask better questions and better anticipate problems.
Maybe you are right about the psychology in some cases, but there seems to be a simple response to this. The ideal is to know (not just think you know) the techology AND ask the right questions.
Trust should be rational. If you have no idea what your people are doing it'll be harder to trust them.
"Hurf derrrf I have cocks in my mouth!"
Nailed it.