PJA Blog: The Complex Brand

An interesting article in June’s CIO Asia points up a fact that still goes unacknowledged from time to time: just because a bunch of executives sit in over-sized offices along a cosseted mahogany row called The C Suite doesn’t mean that the communicate well or even see eye-to-eye on most matters.

It shouldn’t be so surprising, but when you consider that CEOs often come from Sales, CFOs from Accounting, and CIOs from the IT department, they just won’t magically shed their former belief structures and be able to speak clearly in some C-neutral language.

Here are just a few CIO verbatims from the Australian study referenced in the article:

* “Having now reported both directly to the CEO and through the CFO, I am now of the opinion that for an organisation to get the best from their IT department, it needs to report directly into the CEO, regardless of the strength of the relationship between the CFO and CIO. Reporting through the Finance area does not provide sufficient visibility and portrays IT from a finance-centric view.”

* “I believe the best organisational structure is for the CIO to report to the CFO, which assists in the management of costs and assignment of priorities for the best cost/benefit outcomes. Unfortunately, where I work, the CIO reports to the CEO so decisions take forever to be made, often due to a lack of knowledge.”

* “Little understanding has led to little concern over the fiscal management of high value assets because they are not understood. There is a willingness to spend extravagant sums on fixing problems that are high visibility, but no value placed on robust support for daily tasks.”

* “Finance has the overwhelming desire to curtail new investment or replacement investment until the last minute, and as a result, poor outcomes, and high costs result.”

Another interesting finding: although most CEOs in the survey said they were satisfied with their CIOs’ performance, most had no real idea what they did, as it turns out. Sounds a bit like the Tower of Babel illustration on the cover of last week’s Economist. Any CIO wanting to get ahead (and get a better budget) clearly has to make their case in terms of business strategy, but also speak to the CEO’s pain points.

How important is versioning the offer in BtoB marketing? Just last week we presented an email campaign for fewer than 5,000 healthcare executives that had six different offers, one each for the CIO, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Marketing Officer in both homegrown and third-party vendor technology environments. We look at this versioning not only as a way to keep the audiences distinct, but also to bring them together by showing each one how we are communicating to the others. It will be interesting to see what kind of participation we get.