“Hitting the Ground Walking”

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“Hitting the Ground Walking”

7/11/2005

By Brian D. Voss, Chief Information Officer
Louisiana State University

I joined the ranks of CIOs in April of this year, taking up my first CIO appointment here at LSU after nearly 20 years in IT at Indiana University. After my first two months in the role – yes, all of two months! – I’d like to offer a perspective to those of my colleagues to whom this might be useful. For those ‘more seasoned’ CIOs perhaps this will offer you a bit of nostalgic entertainment. Or a chance to chuckle, “Hey, look at the newbie talking the talk!”

I assure you that I have been – quite literally! – trying to walk the walk.

As I parted company from my former CIO, and as he quickly made the transition from on-a-pedestal-boss to mentor, he offered to me a great piece of advice: “Brian, walk about the campus and meet everyone you can before you do much of anything else.” While this thought didn’t seem at all revolutionary to me, turns out it was the most sound and concise counsel I’ve ever received.

Having just completed that initial walkabout, I see first and foremost that his advice provided the impetus for me to meet, face-to-face, with a significant portion of the community here on my new campus home. It’s one thing to meet people in the course of business over your first months on the job, or to see them in the audience of an auditorium as you’re giving a talk. And it’s quite another thing to walk across campus to their offices, visiting them in their “homes,” and getting acquainted over a cup of coffee or a bottle of water (a staple in every accommodating Louisiana campus office suite!). You learn a lot this way. And people are genuinely impressed that you’ve reached out to them first. And, of course, it provides the exercise the doctor is always ordering.

But aside from the benefits of making a good first impression, seeing things for myself, and sweating off a few pounds, I also extracted a great metaphor for a broader paradigm I should consider as a new CIO: Walk, Don’t Run. Let me elaborate with some anecdotes.

Recently, a vendor included a response to some off-the-cuff comments I had made during our first meeting, wherein I had said I eventually wanted to have a program encouraging student ownership of laptop computers. I made that comment trying to draw some broad-stroke outlines of potential initiatives I was sure would eventually come out of an IT strategic planning exercise. But she took me quite literally and walked in with a 5-point program all written up for my consideration, including mock-up Web pages. “Brian, we can get this ready for you in time for Fall semester!”

The same day, I was approached by someone on campus, who asked me – all of 44 calendar days into my role – if I was ready to make the “big changes” in my organization that everyone always expects when a new CIO takes over. “Can I get an early look at your new org chart, as I’m sure you plan to publish it any day now?”

And then, the next day, I was asked by another vendor [note to self: cut down on vendor meetings] what my major initiatives were going to be, and how quickly I anticipated getting results from them. “You look like the kind of person who wants to hit the ground running, Brian!”