Chief Information Officers and Technical Communication

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Chief Information OfficersandTechnical
Communication

• Mark P. Haselkorn
• Department of Technical Communication
• University of Washington
• markh_at_u.washington.edu

Haselkorn 2003
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Overview

• Introduction and Thesis
• ICT System Management
• The Role of the CIO
• The CIO and Technical Communication

Haselkorn 2001
Haselkorn 2003
Haselkorn 2003
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Introduction

• Standing Technical Communication on its head
• Thesis When the role of Chief Information
  Officer (CIO) is properly understood, the
  training and experience provided in the field of
  technical communication, augmented by additional
  training and experience in management, best suit
  the demands of this position.

Haselkorn 2003
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ICT System Management

• Not primarily a technological activity
• Dynamic, open systems
• System integration goes far beyond technical
  issues
• Balancing cross-organizational tensions

Haselkorn 2001
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ICT System Management

• Toughest problems occurred not within areas under
  responsibility of an ICT manager, but rather
  within areas that cut across those
  responsibilities
• These more holistic problems arent about hard
  machine issuesinvolve integration of and
  communication across the entire system of systems
  that constitutes how an organization knows what
  it knows and uses that knowledge to help achieve
  its mission
• For example

Haselkorn 2001
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ICT System Management

• Balance central management and local execution
• Consider evolution of ICT issues over time
• Clarify ownership of and responsibility for ICT
  systems
• Consider the impact of local diversity on ICT
• Consider the role of local autonomy in ICT
• Build trust between local ICT administrators and
  central managers
• Strengthen horizontal ICT relationships across
  the organization

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ICT System Management

• Overcome funding disincentives to working across
  organizational boundaries
• Assure that central ICT guidance is at an
  appropriate level
• Address cross-boundary issues in life-cycle
  management of ICT systems
• Tackle the informational effort needed to support
  management of integrated ICT systems
• Address issues of organizational culture that
  impact ICT

Haselkorn 2001
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The Role of the CIO

• Since the mid 1990s, CIOs have increasingly been
  charged with managing an organizations
  information and knowledge systems, but there has
  been considerable uncertainty as to the exact
  nature of and appropriate skills for this
  position.
• What is enterprise-wide management of an
  organizations information and knowledge systems?
  
• What does an entity devoted to this activity do?

Haselkorn 2001
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The Role of the CIO

• CIOs office initially seen as an extension of
  already influential acquisitions and system
  development function
• Technology the central component of an
  organizations information and knowledge
  activities
• CIOs primary role as owner and manager of that
  technology
• Activities centered on standardizing and keeping
  up with new information and communication
  technology

Haselkorn 2001
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The Role of the CIO

• But as the list of system management tasks
  demonstrated, enterprise-wide ICT management is
  not primarily about functionally organized
  technology
• If the CIO owns anything, it is the space between
  these nodes of responsibility
• CIOs focus needs to be on the conversation and
  interactions that link the functional parts into
  a strategic whole

Haselkorn 2001
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The Role of the CIO

• Distinguish functionally bound ICT issues from
  enterprise-wide ones
• Where issue resides within a functional
  responsibility, role is greatly minimized or
  non-existent (But often an incorrect assumption
  that a cross-functional issue is bounded within a
  particular functional responsibility)
• When an ICT issue is identified to be
  enterprise-wide, take ownership

Haselkorn 2001
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The Role of the CIO

• Ownership means assuring a single point of
  contact providing consistent guidance at the
  appropriate level
• Under normal circumstances, ownership does not
  mean that the CIOs office should be that point
  of contact or own the problem parts
• The CIO owns the space between the partsthe
  space that makes it a cross-enterprise issue
• Primary role is to identify relevant
  organizational perspectives, determine best
  available representatives of those perspectives,
  and then link, guide, and empower those people
  and units to manage the issue

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The Role of the CIO

• Under the CIOs guidance, a cross-boundary entity
  defined to represent the relevant organizational
  perspectives on an issue becomes the point of
  contact
• Only such an entity, acting with the guidance and
  authority of the CIOs office, can balance
  competing organizational goals that surround a
  cross-boundary ICT issue
• CIO is the fulcrum in this balancing
  actteam-building, facilitating cross-boundary
  communication and activity, assuring that ICT
  activities are aligned with organizational goals
  and strategies, and institutionalizing desired
  change

Haselkorn 2001
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The Role of the CIO
Given the high risk for failure of teams, the
CIOs who lead collaborative groups require
business, technology, team-building, project
management and communication skills to be
effective. Jessica Lipnack, co-author of
Virtual Teams
Haselkorn 2001
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The Role of the CIO

• At special times, CIO must go beyond the
  fulcrum role to one of greater authority and
  stronger leadership.
• At critical times like mergers and during
  security threats, CIO may be required to assure
  speed and flexibility in the face of slower, more
  traditional methods
• Serve as a single point of contact for ICT
  coordination outside the organization

Haselkorn 2001
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The Role of the CIO

• But during normal times
• the CIO is not an owner of functionally organized
  technology rather the CIOs office is the glue
  that integrates the many facets and perspectives
  of an enterprise-wide ICT system
• the CIO works partly through central authority,
  but more commonly through the creation and
  ongoing support of cross-functional entities
  focused on cross-boundary ICT issues

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The CIO and Technical Communication

• The fundamental skills the CIO must employ to
  achieve these ends include communication,
  facilitation, team-building, and creative use of
  information toolscentral skills of technical
  communicator

Haselkorn 2001
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The CIO and Technical Communication

• CIO generally needs to adopt a perspective
  focused on strategic goals, the use of
  information to achieve those goals, and the role
  of individuals and information tools to
  facilitate that use
• CIOs perspective must consider the boundaries of
  organizational lines and functional distinctions,
  even as it works to remove their potential
  negative impacts on cross-functional information
  issues and objectives
• Again, this recognition of multiple audiences and
  communicating to achieve multiple purposes is the
  primary perspective of the technical communicator

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The CIO and Technical Communication

• CIO is owner of the information space between
  functional nodes of an organization
• CIO is a communicator, a facilitator, and a
  politician
• CIO is a technical communicator with extremely
  high-level management skills
• Technical communication needs to partner with
  related fields to produce these people. They are
  sorely needed throughout industry and government

Haselkorn 2001
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• We are a culture that values mastery and
  control, that cultivates self-sufficiency,
  competence, independence. But in the shadow of
  these values lies a profound rejection of our
  human wholeness. As individuals and as a culture
  we have developed a sort of contempt for anything
  in ourselves and in others that has needs, and is
  capable of suffering. It is not a gentle world.
• As life becomes colder and somehow harder, we
  struggle to create places of safety for ourselves
  and those we love through our learning, our
  skills, our income. We build places of security
  in our homes and our offices and even our cars.
  These places separate us from one another.
  Places that separate people can never be safe
  enough. Perhaps our only refuge is in the
  goodness in each other.
• In a highly technological world we forget our own
  goodness and place value instead on our skills
  and our expertise. But it is not our expertise
  that will restore the world. The future may
  depend less on our expertise than on our
  faithfulness to life.
• The solution to the destructiveness in this
  world is not more technical knowledge. Repairing
  the world may require us to find a deep
  connection to the life around us, to substitute
  the capacity to befriend life for our relentless
  pursuit of greater and greater expertise. It has
  been said that it has taken us thousands of years
  to recognize and defend the value of a single
  human life. What remains is to understand that
  the value of any human life is limited unless
  there is something in it that stands for the
  benefit of others and the benefit of life itself.
• Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.