I am going to start my introduction to this new book by Robina and Brian by quoting Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (2004): ‘Start with the end in mind’, a fairly innocuous but hugely powerful statement once you learn how to truly exploit the meaning of it. We will come back to this later.
I first met Robina early in my career at a point where I had chosen to take redundancy from an IT leadership role I loved, in an organisation that was preparing itself for sale. At that time, I had a choice: to stay and work for the outsourced partner I had selected or to take redundancy. Both paths were unknown to me; each held possibilities but no certainties, and from that moment forwards the one constant in my career, like many others in the IT industry, has been the ability to ‘navigate the grey’ and derive possibilities from planned and unplanned events and opportunities.
While transitioning to my new role I chose to attend a course at Cranfield School of Management, called ‘Organisational Politics and IT’, the basis of which would evolve into what we now know as business engagement or business relationship management (it was, however, many years before the IT profession even had a formal name for it).
The course was led by Dr Robina Chatham and the beauty (and discomfort) of the content was that it took me away from all of the functional skills I had grown up with and been rewarded for in this industry. These were the skills that were highly valued by my then mentors and functional senior leaders: analysis, coding, scripting and devising strategy documents that were like the Encyclopaedia Britannica and would soon become dust-gathering shelfware. From this background and through attending this course I transitioned to a world of personality types, colleague engagement, challenger relationships, building trust, developing business understanding and alignment and developing novel capabilities within IT teams, including myself. Although I didn’t know it at the time, this learning uniquely positioned me to transform a variety of businesses, as well as shaping the career path for myself and many others since.
Back to ‘start with the end in mind’. Robina and Brian in this book reflect on this fundamental principle by posing the question, what does good look like for you, your team, your organisation and your industry? Using their personal experience, expertise and insight, they have created a very practical and useable guide to improving your working environment, increasing the value of your contribution and enhancing the quality of the legacy you leave behind.
This book will support you in creating the right environment, relationships, strategies, thinking, communication material and most importantly the team that will allow you to define your own version of ‘start with the end in mind’. It doesn’t just talk about the theories that can be used; it takes you by the hand and asks you to join Robina and Brian on the journey, but, as with all good things in life, to do it justice you and your teams may have to ‘dig deep’. Throughout the journey, Robina and Brian are there to help you ask the right question, then the next, and the next and the one after that of yourself, your team and your colleagues.
What makes Robina and Brian’s book so powerful is that they tell you ‘how’ to create your version of ‘start with the end in mind’, using their many years of real life experience and the invaluable insights provided by senior IT leaders they have worked with over the years. You may even recognise some of them.
I would always encourage you to create your own vision, but use this book as a touchstone along the way – go be everything you can be. This IT industry of ours has some great leaders but always needs more ‘kick ass’ business leaders who are digitally aware and agile, who are able to navigate the grey, who can build great teams and leave great legacies.
In a future where our opportunities to contribute become limitless and the demands on our businesses increase, we are here to serve, to transform, but most importantly, to contribute as business leaders who just happen to have a digital specialism. Enjoy!
Tanya Foster-Fitzgerald FBCS
Chief Information Officer, Raytheon