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The New CIO Mantra: Shut Up and Listen

The rookie executive who walks in to a new job spouting off opinions about what’s wrong has the political equivalent of spinach in his teeth.

By Susan Cramm

March 15, 2002 — CIO — For the next three months, keep your mouth shut and don’t do anything.

This advice was given to me on the first day I worked as a CIO. It sounds simplistic, but it’s great advice for new CIOs or experienced CIOs who have just joined a company. The underlying premise is sound: You can do more harm than good during your first 100 days on the job by making decisions without the necessary facts and relationships.

The rookie executive who walks in to a new job spouting off opinions about what’s wrong has the political equivalent of spinach in his teeth. By the time somebody tells him to shut up, listen and learn, he is facing a major deficit in the credibility bank.

This profile is pretty black and white?none of us would commit this type of faux pas, would we? Well, in real life there are a lot more shades of gray. Here are some true examples of smart people who did some stupid things.

• To meet an HR deadline, the CIO of a financial services company hustled to give performance reviews to the employees he had inherited. He worked hard to collect 360-degree feedback, but he was unable to achieve the ultimate goals of the reviews—namely, agreement on future performance expectations and development plans—because he could not analyze and convey the information in a way that was credible to his staff.

• A CIO new to another financial services company fell into the trap of determining the rollout strategy for software with a spotty track record even though she lacked the appropriate information. As a result, she is being held responsible for implementation problems that were not created by her but that she had allowed to continue.

• A retail industry CIO pushed the "reorg" button too early. He felt the need to make hard decisions when head counts were doled out to avoid losing out in the budgeting process. A subsequent reorganization was necessary, which he had to sell to a much more skeptical audience.

• A CIO of a transportation company listened well to his clients but forgot to spend time to get to know his staff. When he started to roll out his leadership agenda, he was stopped dead in his tracks by an organization that wasn’t on board.

All these miscues have a common ingredient: CIOs who stopped listening too soon because they felt forced to take some action. Forced because they wanted to fix what seemed (to them) so obviously wrong, to make a quick impact, to meet a schedule or to avoid disappointing an important client.

 

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