The news last month that Tesco’s IT director Philip Clarke is paid a cool £2.2m provoked excited headlines – and not a few envious raised eyebrows. Clarke – whose basic salary is £628,000 a year, never mind the bonuses – still ranks as a mid-level Tesco board member. But the fact that he is on the board and earns that much money must put him very close to the top of the UK chief information officer (CIO) salary league.
Yet most of his peers, while continuing to win recognition from their business colleagues and to be paid well above the national salary average, can probably only dream of reaching such dizzy heights.
The combination of lack of recognition, squeezed budgets and tough hours has prompted at least a few IT leaders to consider their options. Is working as a member of staff and slowly climbing the greasy pole the only answer?
Not according to those who have jumped ship into the seemingly uncertain world of the very senior IT freelancer – with one important proviso: only take this route if you are resourceful and driven enough to make it work for you.
The route in question is interim management (IM). In a world where people can talk with straight faces about ‘contingent labour solutions’ – temporary workers to the rest of us – you would be forgiven for wondering if IM is just a fancy word for contracting. On the contrary, IM is a concept used in many business disciplines to describe high-level, short-term use of exterior talent – you can be an interim human resources or marketing director, even a chief executive, as well as a CIO.
IMs in IT stress that the job is not about cutting code, it is not the usual contractor arrangement, nor is it providing strategic advice alone so does not fit into the traditional definition of consulting. IMs are in some ways troubleshooters – they go in and manage and sort out problems by getting their hands dirty, and then move on to the next crisis.
‘This is about the execution of organisational strategy, not strategic consulting,’ says Jason Knight, a director of global project management company PIPC, and currently filling a CIO role on an interim basis at a major High Street retailer.
Becoming an IM is a serious career option for senior IT directors and CIOs, says Richard Chiumento, head of Rialto Consulting, a firm that places IMs in a number of fields including technology.
‘There is strong demand in the market at the moment as organisations struggle to recruit the kind of permanent talent they want,’ he says.
In the technology context, organisations, mainly in the private sector, are increasingly turning to a pool of highly experienced CIO-level IMs, who are brought in to help for a number of reasons. These can range from covering the IT leadership position while a permanent staff member is recruited, to leading change management programmes, or otherwise effecting changes the current team is seen as unable to deliver.
It is worth noting that IM was traditionally seen as the preserve of only the most senior individuals, but that is changing. According to the Interim Management Association: ‘A decade ago this talent pool comprised mainly of individuals aged 50 and over, who had the financial and personal independence to make this a career move. Now interim management is seen increasingly as a rewarding and challenging career in its own right, and is attracting many more able candidates in their late 30s and upwards.’
Variety and the challenge of the project is definitely an attraction for the kind of executive tempted by the thought of leaving the world of PAYE behind.
One IM, who asked to remain anonymous, has been brought in to steer a FTSE100 organisation through the difficult job of integrating two disparate IT platforms after a major merger, a job he says is fraught with danger but which is ‘incredible fun’.
Another such professional, Phil Crewe, is working as an IM for a big UK charity.
‘My last engagement was fixing a broken IT department in a medical publishing company that was being prepared for sale,’ he says. ‘The task was to make IT an asset and stop it being seen as a weak link.’
Other roles have included ‘changing the face of IT’ at a multinational – just the kind of demanding, senior job a successful IM can reasonably expect to be offered.
But there is unquestionably a change in lifestyle and expectations compared with working for a company full-time. Such challenges mean the IMs who make it are the ones who share a specific set of abilities and aptitudes, say the experts. In many ways these are personality and psychological tools, not technical knowledge or experience in, for example, project management.
‘You can’t want to sit on the sidelines. You must have a need to be leading from the front,’ says PIPC’s Knight. ‘The good IM needs to radiate self-belief and confidence – and a couple of change management battle scars doesn’t go amiss either.’
Competence is just half of it. You also need to be able to sell your biggest asset – you – more or less constantly. ‘It’s a sales and marketing job, of yourself and your contribution to the company audience,’ says Rialto’s Chiumento.
That is not the only requirement. ‘These guys have been through the mill, are geographically very mobile, but also have a combination of pragmatism, energy and enthusiasm,’ says Knight.
On top of all that you need the internal resources and diplomatic skills to quickly deal with the office politics. ‘You will sometimes face resentment from the staff and you just have to push that aside and disarm the negativity,’ says Crewe.
And, possibly even more importantly than for in-house IT roles, the IM is expected to talk the same language as the rest of the business. ‘The focus is on the M part of IM,’ says Crewe. ‘A good IM relates to the business, and you must be able to demonstrate your competence and communicate what you are doing.’
Chiumento adds: ‘Essentially they want you to tell them how they can make money using you.’
And you need to offer a proven track record in major delivery programmes, says Knight. ‘The need is to roll up your sleeves and move the organisation forward. The business is often very nervous about all this so you have to be able to communicate the real impact of what you are doing and manage their expectations as well,’ he says.
There seems to be a choice here. Does the CIO of today stick to his guns, fight the corporate battles and hope to move eventually to the kind of board-level responsibility and reward of someone such as Tesco’s Clarke or the best paid City IT executives? Or does he or she accept a possibly more chaotic but potentially satisfying and challenging gamble, working on a spot basis, fire-fighting and otherwise aiding a wide set of employers?
The choice is yours, of course. If you feel you are up to it, go for it – but make sure you really have the kind of right stuff the modern IM must have.
‘It’s a combination of people management and IT skills at a quick pace, and that can’t suit everyone,’ says Crewe.
‘If a CIO wants to go into this he or she must realise you need, shall we say, some intestinal fortitude.’
reader comments