CIO Resolutions for 2009

Gartner, Inc presented its 10 CIO resolutions for 2009 designed to help CIOs excel and deliver better personal and team outcomes beyond their core IT agenda. Gartner’s 10 CIO resolutions for 2009 are as follows:

1. Start building an alumni network: To maintain legacy skills and complex experienced pools of labor, Gartner recommends CIOs establish alumni networks.

2. Stop being the exception that enforces the rules: CIOs should design and adopt two or three key behaviors to match the required direction they want their reports to follow such as turning away their option to upgrade to the glitziest new smartphone. Such signals will cause people to comment and think about their own values and behaviors.

3. Start scouting for key talent: CIOs should identify the attributes of their absolute ideal candidates for the few, most important mid to senior IT positions to open and fulfil during 2009 and discuss directly with the chief financial officer (CFO) and chief human resources manager (CHRO) the possibility of holding just a few senior job slots open in return for a higher reduction target elsewhere.

4. Start preparing for the unexpected: It’s important to challenge and develop the thinking styles and frame of reference of your leadership team as well as yourself.

5. Start using social systems yourself, visibly: CIOs need to start visibly using social networks themselves to kick-start their participation from other staff - lurking in quiet observation is not enough. Gartner advised CIOs to also encourage the leadership team into using social media more openly to communicate internally and externally to rebuild brand confidence.

6. Start taking cloud seriously: Cloud computing is a major new stage in the evolution of commercial IT that CIOs must take seriously but at this stage is confusing. In 10 years, much of IT will be served this way, so CIOs need to start leading their organiszations safely in this inevitable direction, or risk being sidelined by its progress.

7. Stop ignoring people and opting for soft targets: CIOs should not lay off the people they will need long-term and who will be hard to replace just because their work is not an immediate deliverable (e.g. enterprise architects, emerging technologies staff). elsewhere. Similarly, they shouldn’t cut projects in areas which are in the hype cycle ‘trough of disillusionment’ just because they are unfashionable. CIOs should defend them if they will still yield significant value in a year or two.

8. Start offering your vendors a free lunch: CIOs will require vendors to deliver flexibility and cost savings and will need to reset the style of the relationship. At the same time, suppliers will be keen on staying in close touch, working hard to attract CIOs off-site for ‘face time’, so CIOs must resolve to politely decline vendor courtesy trips in 2009.

9. Stop fearing the future; start driving it: Internally, CIOs should also reflect conspicuous frugality but not be defined by it. They should resolve to occasionally and visibly splash out a little – where it really matters to staff moral such as training courses or software development tools.

10: Newer technologies to get experience of in 2009: With so much work to do, Gartner reminded CIOs that they need to protect the time to stay in touch and get ‘hands-on’ with some key technologies in 2009: e-book readers, Google Chrome, building mini cloud applications, YouTube as a default search engine for a day and HD teleconferencing.

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