Students

Championship IT: 10 business culture ideals to live by

The Department of Information Systems Executive Advisory Board is a team of CIOs and top level IT professionals who assist the department in evaluating and improving curriculum and making important program decisions. They also serve as the department’s eyes and ears, enabling us to stay on top of the latest IT trends. At the fall 2011 meeting, the board started work on IT “battle cries:” a set of business culture ideals that current students and graduates of our programs need to personally exemplify and live by. The result was 10 mantras that resonate as simple, proven and effective.

2012-03-06

By Michael Goul Chairman, Department of Information Systems Each semester our faculty meets with our Executive Advisory Board — a team of CIOs and top level IT professionals who help us evaluate and improve curriculum and make important program decisions. They also serve as our eyes and ears, enabling us to stay on top of the latest IT trends. In our fall 2011 meeting, the board started work on a unique proclamation of what we called at the time “battle cries:” a set of business culture ideals that current students and graduates of our programs need to personally exemplify and live by. It was decided that these mantras must resonate as simple, proven and effective. They need to be top-of-mind when doing business, similar to ‘Play like a Champion,’ Notre Dame’s slogan that is written on the sign that football players slap as they run from the locker room into the stadium. These battle cries should stick with you — become codes to live by. The result was 10 mantras that resonate as simple, proven and effective, listed below. Computerworld’s February 27, 2012 issue featured quotes from magazine’s new 2012 crop of premier IT leaders, and these ten themes were frequently echoed.

1. Get IT doneJoe Touey, senior vice president for North American Pharmaceuticals at GlaxoSmithKline: “IT has to keep pace with the clock speed of business. You can’t say it will take two years to get there if the CEO wants to transform in six months.”
2. Process + technology = business valueKraft Foods CIO Mark Dajani: “The technology, the business processes harmonization and the ever-consolidating world are really changing how we can deliver services to our company.”
3. Lead the future: innovate through ITWilliam Chapman, vice president and CIO for Global Services Businesses at Arrow Electronics: “We train (staffers) on how to innovate, what to capture in innovation, what’s patentable and what’s not. Sometimes the innovation is on the leading edge of where the process takes place.”
4. Information IS the answerDavid Webb, CIO at Equifax: “We are on the cusp of a revolution with data. This revolution will allow Equifax to deliver more extensive insights into customer behavior that the firm’s clients can use to make better risk and marketing decisions.”
5. Embrace, evaluate and manage risksBhupesh Arora, senior director of new technologies and IT effectiveness at Avery Dennison: “When you charter new territory, you have a high level of risk, but you also have a high level of reward.”
6. Inspire, collaborate and competeDiane B. Comer, senior VP and health plan business information officer: “I started as a ballet dancer and ended up in IT. There are interesting parallels between the two. As a core member of a ballet company, you are completely aligned with a team – you know your role and you succeed by watching and supporting one another.”
7. Seek out and grab opportunityPuneet Bhasin, senior VP and CIO at Waste Management: “(I) made a bold proposition to install ruggedized tablet computers on every truck to capture real-time data that could improve operational efficiencies and customer service. It was a very significant investment — hundreds of millions of dollars. A lot of work needed to go into convincing people, and communicating to everybody … (I) won over skeptics by explaining the project’s economy of scale.”
8. Challenge the status quoDan Traynor, CIO Tennessee Valley Authority: “(I) pose questions to our (company) leaders like ‘Does it make sense to spend money on something that might be useful for only a year or two?’ Or, ‘Would it be better to solve the problem for the long term?’ Getting people to be rational about that is always a risky proposition. It’s trying to get beyond the emotion of the moment and think clearly.”
9. Deliver excellenceJimmy Z. Wang, VP and CIO at Teva Pharmaceuticals-Americas: “Delivery is key for us. We partner with business, understand their challenges and come up with a technology and deliver a solution. That’s part of our DNA.”
10. IT is the futureJames Robertson, VP of technology infrastructure and broadcast transmissions: “The company has realized the true importance of having IT as a component in the whole analysis of the life cycle. It’s no longer just a business life cycle, but what is it going to take for us to be successful from a technology standpoint? That’s a big change.”

The department’s next steps include getting the message out — to convey these 10 bold assertions to our students, faculty and academic professionals. We fully expect culture change will be subtle. There might first be a few jokes about the whole idea, then a student will point to another student and say, “But you didn’t follow number 2 or 7 or 8.” Then we’ll hear a group working together with someone asserting, “We need to be sure we’re on the same page – this is in fact a Number 5 issue.” Then faculty might announce in class — “This case we are about to discuss deals with Number 9.” Once we’re at that point, the vision of our Executive Advisory Board will be within sight — it will have become part of the natural conversation. Hat’s off to our board! As Stephen Covey said (author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People), “Principles are deep fundamental truths ... lightly interwoven threads running with exactness, consistency, beauty and strength through the fabric of life.”

KnowIT