Media

Layoff survivors (and other gainfully employed IT) unite

This sure was a gloomy week. If you subscribe to any regular newsfeeds, your inbox has probably never seen anything like it. My WSJ News Alerts flowed in like a drumbeat of despair:

Japan’s NEC to Cut 20,000 Jobs, Posts Wider Loss ; (today, 5:34 a.m.);

Kodak to Cut [3,500 - 4,500] Jobs Amid Sales Slump (Thursday, 7:43 a.m.)

Ford Posts $5.88 Billion Loss (Thursday, 7:29 a.m.)

Starbucks to Close 300 Stores, Cut Nearly 7,000 Workers (Wednesday, 4:20 p.m.)

Wells Fargo Posts Loss; Wachovia Loses $11 Billion (Wednesday 8:53 a.m.)

Japan’s Nomura Posts $3.8 Billion Loss (Tuesday 1:51 a.m.)

Worst of all was Monday, which set the tone for the week with 35,000 layoffs announced before I’d had my second cup of coffee. By the time the day was over, the layoff total was something like 62,000, including:

Sprint Nextel to Cut 8,000 Positions (Monday, 8:17 a.m.)

Caterpillar to Cut 20,000 Jobs (Monday, 8:25 a.m.)

Home Depot to Cut 7,000 Jobs, Close Expo Home-Design Business (Monday, 9 a.m.)

Since the downturn-cum-recession began, tech companies have also been in the mix, as have companies of all sizes in many industries — supply chains for financial services, housing/construction, cars, consumer goods, media (especially newspapers) among them. Most of the layoff announcements don’t go into any detail about who’s being let go or why; we all know there’s probably restructuring involved (i.e., layoff survivors Joe and Mary can now do two jobs each, and Sid and Tom will be underemployed for a while) and that the cuts probably involved IT.

In one layoff where I knew some folks who were let go, the IT tally was almost 25% of the reduction in force. Why? Many projects were canceled. In fact, many organizations are finding that their project management office is busier than ever, helping to choose what’s still essential and, sadly, what must go under the guillotine.

How else are organizations hanging on? Recent research by our SearchCIO.com site found that more than 40% of 319 respondents have had budget cuts so far this year. Other organizations are resorting to the kind of outsourcing we saw in the ’90s, like Warner Brothers divesting IT to Cap Gemini, which will hire back a portion of the employees.

As the recession continues, as most experts now say it will through at least most of this year, many of us (layoff survivors and all) are simply hunkering down, making the best of sparse resources and finding creative ways to stay energized and hopeful for the projects that remain. The new administration in Washington may also have something to do with this. How are things at your organization?  What are your survival techniques, innovative shortcuts, techniques for staying optimistic? If anything, community is one thing that will keep us all going, so let’s talk about it here.

All Ears: “Bigger than the role,” how big companies hire top talent

I’ve been talking to a number of CIO headhunters recently for a story about using recruiters to land your next job. The standard line, as you might expect, is if you’re good, they’ll find you. But it turns out there are things you should–and shouldn’t do–to get on a recruiter’s radar. Visibility is important, and the story gives pointers on how to boost your public profile. Becoming a reliable source for a busy headhunter can also pay dividends. Stretching the truth–a big no, no.

To a person, the recruiters I interviewed said they remain busy, albeit listening for the proverbial shoe to drop on IT’s continued resilience amid some pretty awful economic indicators. Companies need good leadership in a strong economy, they said,  and in bad times, well, one could argue they need even better leadership. At any rate, the (mostly) large companies that hire these executive search firms are still looking for CIOs.

It must be OK out there in CIO land. In our annual survey of enterprise CIOs, we were surprised to learn that 67% of you are either mostly confident (44%) or very confident (23%) about your job security. And frankly, we were flabbergasted that 43% of you said you are more likely to leave your job this year than last year for a higher-paying job! Not so the headhunters, who pointed out that the CIO role is regarded as pivotal now at companies and good IT executives should be feeling secure.

“The CIO role in general has moved to the forefront…the requirements, the performance measures and the tolerance for anything but execution and results is zero, and the expectations are high,” said Chris Patrick, a technology consultant at the Dallas offices of search firm, Egon Zehnder International.

“The good ones should be confident because frankly they are probably very solid in their role and probably being approached by a bunch of  people like me and companies saying, “Hey I’ve seen what you can do; come do it for me,’” Patrick said.

Here’s Chris on the perils of not hanging around long enough to do something solid, and his inside scoop on how some of the biggest companies hire top executive talent: 

 

 Chris Patrick, consultant, Egon Zehnder International: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Be sure to check out our recruiting story, complete with pointers, on at SearchCIO.com.

All Ears: CIOs and Winchester Rifles

Question: What do CIOs and rifle heiress Sarah Winchester have in common?

You’re haunted by ghosts and can’t stop building, says Phil Murphy, principal analyst with Forrester Research.

Phil was a keynoter  at  our CIO Decisions Conference last month, a gathering of some 200 CIOs in Carlsbad, Calif. Before giving CIOs a primer — and detailed scorecard — on how to sort out the many competing demands for IT dollars and get the most out of your IT investments, he began with the cautionary tale of Sarah Winchester and her 160-room Victorian mansion.

Winchester was heiress to the Winchester Repeating Arms Co. business in New Haven, Conn. Her only child died as an infant. After the death of her husband in 1862, she was left with an extraordinary income of $10,000 a day and an unshakeable feeling that the family she had married into was cursed. She sought guidance from mediums, one of whom obliged by saying the Winchester family was indeed under a black cloud — cursed by the spirits of the people killed by Winchester rifles.

To break the curse, the widow was told to move to California and build a house for herself and all those spirits. If she stopped building, she would die, so work continued 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year for the next 38 years.

And the resemblance to CIOs and IT platforms?  You can listen to Phil spell it out in this blogcast excerpt from his keynote.

 

 Phil Murphy on CIOs and the Winchester House phenomenon: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Meantime this tidbit from the  Wikipedia entry on Sarah’s building boondoggle gives you the idea.

Due to the lack of a master plan and constant construction, the house became very large and quite complex; many of the serving staff needed a map to navigate the house. The house also features doors that open into walls, staircases that lead nowhere, the recurring number 13, and windows that look into other walls.

Check out an aerial view of the place here.     

All Ears: Hurricane Warning

A reminder, gentle reader, as you head into the holiday weekend that the summer months can bring ungentle weather. The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season started June 1 and promises to be above average. And that isn’t good.The latest forecast from hurricane experts Philip J. Klotzbach and William M. Gray of Colorado State University puts the probability of a category 3, 4 or 5 hurricane hitting the U.S. coastline at 69%, compared with the average 52% for the last century.

We called up Harriett Kummer, senior director at SunGard Availability Services Consulting in Alpahretta, Ga., for her thoughts on what CIOs need to be thinking about as they fine-tune their disaster recovery plans.

SunGard worked with more than 200 businesses hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The “consistent theme” in their recovery stories, Kummer said, was they had not done enough to prepare the people directly involved in the recovery efforts. They told Kummer they should have practiced the recovery plan more; assigned backups — key people will be unavailable; and made sure funds were available to lodge employees near recovery centers. Other lessons learned? Families need to go along when recovery efforts stretch from days to weeks. There needs to be at least three means of communicating with employees, because the most obvious mode — cell phones, for example — can fail.

Listen to Harriet talk about putting people first:

 

 SunGard's Harriett Kummer: Put people first in the event of a disaster: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

For the story of how Shane Loper, COO of Hancock Bank, oversaw the Gulfport, Miss., bank’s recovery and construction of a new $16 million data center, click here.

Have a happy and safe July 4.

“The brain is built for video”

Channeling Marshall McLuhan, James McQuivey of Forrester Research has a report out about how video will take over the world and - no surprise here - suggests a new name for the phenomenon. The world’s most powerful medium, TV, is about to evolve into a form Forrester is calling OmniVideo, OV, for short. Oy vey! According to McQuivey, OV is bigger and better than TV because it:

•1) Displays on many devices. (PC viewing accounts for 16% of video viewing in a typical day.)

•2)  Can be made by anyone. (Indeed.)

•3)  Is never finished. (In the OV era of mashups and annotated content, “final cut” becomes meaningless.)

•4)  Multiplies itself (comes from anywhere, seen everywhere, it will dwarf TV viewing).

The OV explosion rests on three pillars of technology, says McQuivey: IP video delivery, mega storage and cheap display screens. But the reason OV will take over the world is because… “The brain is built for video … We are alive today because millennia ago, our species adapted to rapidly integrate complex visual stimuli.” Make no mistake, the aim of the report is not scientific but mercantile. Proclaims McQuivey:

“All video product strategists - whether at the TV networks, cable networks, TV service providers, over-the-top TV providers, or video device manufacturers - must take note: OmniVideo is about to explode, driving up total video viewing time from 4 hours per day to 5 hours by 2013, increasing your and your competitors’ market potential.”

McQuivey, a former communications professor at Boston University’s College of Communication,  predicts that the 25% growth will be accompanied by a shift in how we view OV: By 2013, video viewed on demand will account for 45%, up from 20% today; video delivered over IP will jump from 10% to 35% of all viewing; video consumed on a mobile device, from 8% to 15%, and personal video consumption (cell phone cameras, social networking sites), from 2% to 10%.

All Ears: Susan Cramm on ITopia

Earlier, I wrote about Susan Cramm, former CIO of Taco Bell turned “leadership” coach, talking about how IT and the business could — should! — function in 2015. Cramm was the keynote speaker at the fifth annual CIO Decisions Conference earlier this month at La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, Calif. As promised, here is a podcast of her talk.

The conference is hosted by our sister site, SearchCIO-Midmarket.com, which covers IT issues of particular concern to CIOs at companies that do up to $1 billion in revenue. I’m guessing Cramm’s view of IT in 2015, however, will resonate with big company CIOs, too.

Click on the player below to hear an edited version of Cramm’s keynote (complete with clinking silverware, paper shuffling and the murmurs, throat clearings, sighs and chuckles of the 200-some CIOs in attendance). A guide to her remarks follows:

0-2:23: Welcome to ITopia!

2:23-4:11: IT as an enterprise asset in 2015

4:11:- 11:45: Today’s big, ugly road to ITopia

11:45- 14:51: “Why has IT sucked for 30 years?” Hint: The IT job is too big. Says Cramm: “Everyday that I spent as a CFO … was easier than any day I spent as a CIO.”

14:50-16:40: One more analogy: The Brady Effect … or business people need to learn how to be skillful drivers of IT

 

 Standard Podcast [16:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download