A new Chief Information Officer has approximately ninety days to establish credibility, understand the organization, and set direction for the technology function. This is a critical window. First impressions matter. The decisions made in the first ninety days will have disproportionate impact on how the organization perceives technology leadership and on the effectiveness of the technology strategy in the next several years. Too many new Chief Information Officers spend this time writing strategies and making technical decisions. That is a mistake. The first ninety days should be invested in understanding, listening, and relationship building. Strategy comes later.
Priority One: Understand the Business
The most common failure of new Chief Information Officers is that they bring a technology perspective to a business leadership role. Technology serves the business, not the other way around. A new Chief Information Officer who spends the first ninety days trying to fix the technology infrastructure will have little credibility with business leadership. A Chief Information Officer who spends the first ninety days understanding the business will earn credibility because they are focused on what matters.
Understanding the business means answering specific questions. What is the organization’s strategy for the next three to five years? What are the critical business priorities? What does success look like for the organization? What are the biggest threats to success? Where is the organization losing competitively? What regulatory or compliance constraints operate on the business? What are the major capital investments planned? What is the financial trajectory of the business? Is it growing? Flat? Contracting?
A new Chief Information Officer should spend significant time with the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and the heads of major business units. The conversations should focus on understanding their priorities, their challenges, their vision for the organization, and what they expect technology to enable. A Chief Information Officer who can articulate the business priorities clearly will have much more credibility than one who can articulate the technology infrastructure architecture clearly.
A Chief Information Officer who understands the business intimately can make technology decisions that enable business success. A Chief Information Officer who is focused primarily on technology will make decisions that optimize the technology function without regard for business impact.
Understanding the business also means understanding the financial model. Where does revenue come from? What is the margin structure? What are the largest cost categories? What is the capital allocation process? A Chief Information Officer who understands these dimensions will be better equipped to build business cases for technology investments and to explain the financial impact of technology decisions.
Priority Two: Listen Relentlessly
A new Chief Information Officer should not make major decisions in the first ninety days. Instead, they should listen. Listen to the technology team about their current challenges, their perspective on the technology infrastructure, and their capability. Listen to business stakeholders about how well the technology function is serving their needs. Listen to customers, either through external customer interviews or through reviewing customer satisfaction metrics. Listen to the board or board committee overseeing the technology function.
The goal of listening is not to make quick decisions but to gather information. What are the common themes that emerge from conversations with different stakeholders? What problems are mentioned repeatedly? What are the areas of disconnection between what the technology function thinks it is delivering and what business stakeholders believe they are receiving?
A new Chief Information Officer who listens carefully will discover things that no document review could surface. They will understand the informal power structures in the organization. They will discover which team members are trusted and which have lost credibility. They will understand which technology investments are viewed as successes and which are viewed as failures. They will understand what decisions have been made and deferred and why. They will understand the constraints that the previous Chief Information Officer operated within.
Listening also builds credibility. When a Chief Information Officer takes time to understand other people’s perspectives before making decisions, people believe that their views matter. When a Chief Information Officer walks in and immediately begins making changes based on their own vision, people often perceive that as dismissive.
Priority Three: Build Relationships
A Chief Information Officer is only as effective as the relationships they build with business leaders, with the board, with the direct reports, and with key stakeholders throughout the organization. The first ninety days should be invested in building those relationships deliberately and systematically.
In the first ninety days, a new Chief Information Officer should:
- Meet one-on-one with each direct report to understand their strengths, development areas, and career aspirations
- Meet one-on-one with each business unit head to understand their priorities and expectations for the technology function
- Meet with the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer regularly to stay aligned on organizational priorities
- Meet with other executives to understand how technology intersects with their functions
- Meet with the board or board committee overseeing technology to understand governance expectations and priorities
- Meet with key technology vendors to understand the current relationships and contracts
These meetings should be exploratory rather than decision-making. The Chief Information Officer is building understanding and building relationship capital. The conversations establish a baseline of communication that will carry forward. They establish expectations about frequency and format of communication. They begin to build trust that the Chief Information Officer is competent and trustworthy.
Relationship capital is the currency that allows a Chief Information Officer to influence the organization. The Chief Information Officer who invests in relationships early will have much more influence later when difficult decisions need to be made.
Building relationships also means establishing norms for interaction. How frequently will the Chief Information Officer meet with the Chief Executive Officer? What format will regular technology governance meetings take? How will the technology function communicate with business stakeholders? How will technology budgeting and investment decisions be made? These norms are usually implicit in the first ninety days but should become explicit as the first hundred days approach.
Priority Four: Assess Before Deciding
By the end of ninety days, a new Chief Information Officer should have enough information to do a comprehensive assessment of the technology function’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. This assessment should be grounded in data and in conversations with stakeholders. It should not yet be a strategy but it should be a foundation for developing a strategy.
A useful framework for assessment is the SWOT: strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. What is the technology function doing well? What capabilities does the team have? Where is the technology organization weak? What capabilities are missing? What opportunities exist to improve the business through better technology? What threats does the organization face from competitive, regulatory, or market perspectives that technology could address or mitigate?
This assessment might reveal that the previous Chief Information Officer was actually quite effective and that the organization is more capable than external perspectives suggest. It might reveal significant gaps between the organization’s technology capability and what competitors have. It might reveal that the biggest opportunities are not in technology modernization but in organizational change or in how technology is being deployed. The specifics depend on the situation, but the assessment provides the foundation for strategy.
What to Avoid in the First Ninety Days
A new Chief Information Officer should avoid several common mistakes:
- Making major personnel changes: Personnel decisions should be based on understanding the capabilities and fit of the team, not on assumptions made in the first weeks. Most successful Chief Information Officers do significant assessment before making changes to the direct report team.
- Announcing a major new technology strategy: The organization will be more receptive to strategy that is informed by understanding the business and the current state. A strategy announced too early will likely miss important context and will be viewed as the new leader imposing their vision rather than leading with business focus.
- Making large technology decisions: Major decisions about platforms, vendors, or technical direction should wait until the Chief Information Officer has enough information and has built enough credibility to make informed decisions.
- Spending time solving immediate technical problems: The Chief Information Officer role is not to solve technical problems. That is the responsibility of the technology team. The Chief Information Officer role is to lead. Solving technical problems is a distraction from that core responsibility.
- Over-communicating about problems: The Chief Information Officer will discover problems during assessment. Not all problems need to be immediately communicated to the board. Focus communication on the major issues and on the framework for addressing them.
The End of Ninety Days
By day ninety, the new Chief Information Officer should have completed a thorough assessment, should understand the business and the current technology environment well, should have built relationships with key stakeholders, and should be ready to develop a coherent strategy. This is when the work of building an effective technology function really begins.
The Chief Information Officer should be able to articulate:
- Where the business is going and what the most critical priorities are
- How the technology function will support those priorities
- What the major gaps are between current capability and needed capability
- What changes will be needed in how the technology function operates
- What the key metrics will be for measuring progress
A Chief Information Officer who can articulate these things on day ninety is positioned for success. A Chief Information Officer who is still trying to understand the business or who has damaged relationships through hasty decisions is on a much harder trajectory.
The first ninety days are an investment in understanding, credibility, and relationship capital. The return on that investment is a technology function that is better aligned with business priorities, that has stronger relationships with business leadership, and that is better positioned to deliver value. It is the foundation for effective technology leadership over the next several years.
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