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The Business Trump Card
Despite the department's chronic independence, Roell has not been in a position to scold the head of engineering. "He's above me in another department. What can I tell you?" Roell says. "Since IT has no direct reports, when operations wants to go in their own direction, they go in their own direction." If you want to control IT, "you have to do it by persuasion."
But after calmly salvaging the engineering chief's two rogue projects, Roell gained his respect. Roell also made a point of prowling around the plant more often for hints of rogue activity. "Call it a good lesson learned," Roell says. As for the head of engineering, "Since then, he doesn't even install anything on his computer without consulting me first," Roell adds.
Stanco agrees with Roell's noncombative approach. "If you're going in with guns blazing, you might alienate your business partners, even if you're right. You win the battle but lose the war," Stanco says. For a CIO, the most important thing is having "a good relationship with the business."
When he was Gartner's CIO, Stanco also encountered rogue projects. He didn't simply toss them out -- even if they weren't the best way to solve a problem. He preferred to cultivate trust. "I'd just say, 'I don't want to take it away. Let me figure out how to work with it and make it better.' There have got to be benefits in it for them. Otherwise, it's going to be, 'I don't need you. I'm running fine. Stay out of my business.'"
Months or even a year later, at the start of a new upgrade cycle, Stanco would cash in on his goodwill and persuade business owners to turn the rogue project over to him. Then he could replace the parts that didn't work well or rebuild them to work better with the corporate network. He found patience and humility to be virtues.
Then again, some rogue projects require a CIO to take a hard line. Rich De Brino realized he had to play both good cop and bad cop in a past job. (De Brino is now CIO at Compass Health, a behavioral health nonprofit in Everett, Wash.)
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