Steve Hanna, CIO of Kennametal, talks about what it means to be a CIO today. He touches on how to break down barriers in the C-Suite, how to build a culture of innovation, and what advice he would give to aspiring CIOs.
Watch the video or read the transcript below.
I get up every morning and I try to find ways to work with our business partners to drive innovation and to drive better results to our company. You know people work hard all the time and I say, 'thank you for the hard work but we pay for results,' and I am all about driving results for our business, working in cooperation with the rest of the leaders of the company.
How do you break down barriers between the CIO and the C-Suite?
I would say truthfully, it was me spending, initiating somewhat, getting them more involved in, not so much IT decisions, because it's not IT decisions anymore, some of the decisions we make drive the entire enterprise. And that has been true in finance, in HR, in marketing and ISC organization, integrated supply chain and logistics also known as manufacturing, and they become better partners and quite truthfully, as they read new articles and they see things, because the consumerization of IT is at every level. And so, they come to me and say, I have just read this article, what are we doing around this, how can I be more engaged? How can you bring this to me and we spend time talking about that in our sessions and our one on one sessions that are set up formally. And we also have informal discussions, something will come up and we will go talk to people and say what do you think about this, is this something we should go drive.
You know a couple years ago, I would have said that the lines were blurring between technology and some of the business applications. Today I think that line has been demolished, quite truthfully.
How are you building a culture of innovation?
The first way is, I love to play with new technology. I walk around, and I challenge people and show people what I have been working on and what I have been thinking about. I get them engaged in some of those discussions. I also look across the company any where in the world for people that are early adopters of new technology. And we just had a young engineer that did a terrific job with SharePoint and he posted it out on Yammer, which is our internal social network, some capability that he found that nobody else was using, and tons and tons of people have adopted that. So that is the second way. And the third way is we really engage our strategic suppliers and we have them come in on a periodic basis, show us what they are working on, and then we try and apply those solutions to our business to drive better results.
What advice would you give aspiring CIOs?
I think the first part is really around understanding the business. And taking time to understand it. I was originally an hourly guy working on the Chevrolet engine line. I went to school, and put myself through school working that engine line. And I knew all about the business. So when it came time for me to do work, I knew as much or more about it than the people who were actually doing the job. And I think that is critically important for all IT people to understand the business and how technology can be applied to that.
Read our CIO Roundtable Part I: Crossing the Gap from CIO to Business Strategist.
