Hunting Bad CIOs In Their Natural Environment 112
onehitwonder writes "Bad CIOs are a blight on the IT profession, the organizations that employ them and the IT staff who toil under them (usually cleaning up their messes). Yet bad CIOs manage to migrate largely undetected — like the mythic Big Foot — from company to company. In the process, these bad CIOs lay waste to businesses and information systems, destroy staff morale, pillage budgets and imperil shareholder value. To help rid the world of this scourge, CIO.com has compiled a list of behaviors common among bad CIOs that recruiters, hiring managers and IT staff can use to identify them during the recruiting process."
Thats website is a f*cking mess (Score:1, Informative)
Article in a nutshell (Score:5, Informative)
then a sublist....
Behaviors observers should note when the CIO has settled in his new habitat.
and then there is a sublist within that second main list (in case you werent confused yet):
MORE SIGNS OF BAD CIOS
Just a Bad Manager; Move Along . . . (Score:4, Informative)
"Nothing to see here folks. Move along." -- Leslie Nielsen in Naked Gun
He? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A point of disagreement with TFA (Score:2, Informative)
Societe Generale's 4.9 Billion Euro loss was attributable to someone who allegedly still
had access to middle-office systems after moving to the front office, along with
the skills to BS senior managers over his positions. Failure in process.
They failed to remove access and they failed to follow up on sketchy stories.
Same with the recent extortion attempts at two different banks in Lichtenstein;
former bank employees pulled data and then extorted or attempted to extort
bank customers. This time failure of process that has nothing to do with technology -
you just employed people that ultimately could not be trusted. Their access was
required as part of their job -- what firewall can protect against that?
(Answer: none, firewalls can only allow or deny access,they don't make
context based decisions on intent, i.e. no firewall says "gee normally this guy
pulls 10 customer records, but today he pulled 1,000! What's up?)
Re:Here's a summary... (Score:2, Informative)
Nobody dares give bad references anymore, for fear of being sued.
Re:A point of disagreement with TFA (Score:2, Informative)
sorry but replacing that Linksys router with a WatchGuard Firebox is a good idea. MOST companies and Schools have a Joke for their infrastructure. And upgrades ARE needed.
What about bad CEOs? (Score:3, Informative)
An outfit I worked for a few years ago had a good CIO and IT department, when measured against other companies IT departments. But we were (and I stress were) a great engineering and manufacturing company. IT was, in times past, only a tool used in that busiiess process.
At some point, the folks on mahogany row became bedazzled with the culture of information and forgot exactly what it was that we were supposed to be doing. In corporate speak, they neglected their core competencies. The IT department did a great job in standardizing processes and tools and upgrading systems where cost/benefits warranted it. But this was all measured with metrics viewed from the information systems side of the house, not the production side.
Pretty soon, we had cheap and efficient IT systems. But the engineering and production systems suffered where their requirements didn't meet the IT template. Processes that had been developed to give our company an edge over our competition were dropped in favor of using industry standard tools.
I'm certain that our CIO will receive the respect and admiration that he deserves along his career path. He did what he promised, within schedule, budget and with quality. But our profit margins and market share suffered as we became a commodity.
Unless your business is the IT business (Google, Microsoft, etc.) they are just tools folks. Far too many CEOs and BoDs were dazzled by the shinney server racks.
Interesting note: About a decade ago, when we were looking for better ideas and processes, our managers traveled to Japan to see how companies like Toyota and others achieved their efficiencies and profits. Along with lots of good process ideas, they brought back an interesting observation. The Japanese hadn't really bought into big enterprise-wide IT systems. Some of their best processes used clip-boards and paper.
Re:A point of disagreement with TFA (Score:3, Informative)
i.e. no firewall says "gee normally this guy pulls 10 customer records, but today he pulled 1,000! What's up?
Yeah, that's a tripwire activity - if you log record access, you can identify common usage patterns and alert when the numbers get out of whack - if 10 is normal, set alerts at 20 and 40. It's still a human process after that; computers are good at filtering, though.