Moving The CIO From Fire Marshal To ExCo Member

In the early 1990’s, I was a fresh entrant into the ICT space with all the hubris and arrogance that goes with the innocence of youth. A feature which is surprisingly human rather than a bug.

This was the time when the PC was making a name for itself enabling the move from dump terminals days on Xenix, Unix and DR-DOS to the early graphical user-based terminals. Which meant that one did not need major training to become proficient in utilising ICT to become more productive. Since I was young and driven to learning it made no sense to me why the “old” people who we were trying to get to utilise the technology were so resistant resulting in many being declared redundant.

It was only until I too became old that I realised resistance was not a flaw, but a built-in feature, by Mother Nature. She hard-coded paths in our brains to reduce the amount of energy they consumed.

One of the clients I was exposed to happened to be a young bank headed by a team of three young men and one older one, all looking to disrupt the sector. During a strategy meeting, the chairman, who was not a career banker, asked the stupid question; “Why is it that a cheque needed to be handled by not less than four people before it was paid?”

Let me backtrack for historical insights. For those who never used a phone booth, a cheque is a piece of paper that is as good as cash. Like the SMS you receive – mainly from m-Pesa – and believe that you have received cash.

Back to my human feature analysis, the chairman was told that it was to reduce theft and that with four people in the line; one to verify the signature, another to confirm cash in the account, another to record the ledger entry and another to approve the pay-out, collusion was reduced.

After the value of the likely theft over a year was quickly calculated by the Head of Risk and the finance person threw in the cost of the four, it was agreed that we provide the cashier with all the relevant information to do the work of the entire back office.

This was so radical that it is rumoured that the industry incumbents put together a sting operation to have the bank shutdown as it was forcing them to destroy well established hard-coded neural paths and develop new ones. A process which I have come to accept over the years is more painful than a root canal without an anaesthetic.

So what does that have to do with getting the CIO away from being a fire marshal whose greatest skill has become fighting fires?

Most IT departments have become so comfortable with handling fires that some have even come to anticipate the next fire, going further to develop skills and tools to deal with the fires. This way when someone shows up, such as yours truly, with a way to prevent the fire from starting in the first place, one encounters resistance worse than that of the back-office staff in a bank.

In the same way we eliminated four people from the cheque-paying process, is the same way many fire fighters within the IT department will soon find themselves eliminated.

As you finish reading this, I will leave you to ponder whether you want to create new neural pathways or place your order for day old chicks.