Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack jumped over the candlestick. You might ask: "What does a children's nursery rhyme have to do with IT." It sums up what companies now look for in senior IT talent. Shawn Banerji, managing director of Russell Reynolds Associates' global technology sector, says, "Today's CIOs have to be agile enough to react to unexpected situations or challenges without getting burnt." Banerji's firm is one of the oldest executive search firms specializing in recruiting CIOs for clients such as General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, and Toyota. He says, "We have done several hundred CIO searches. In 1996, we recruited Ralph Szygenda away from Bell Atlantic to become global CIO of General Motors."

While at the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium 2009, enterpriseleadership.org sat down with Banerji, a speaker at this venue, to talk about job prospects for CIOs and their direct reports. Banerji has been with Russell Reynolds since 1999. Here is what he had to say:

EL. Can you explain how your firm works?

SB. We are one of the oldest retained (contingency) executive search firms in the country. Client companies pay us to help them identify, assess, recruit, and retain qualified talent. About two-thirds of the candidates we source currently hold executive management positions. Their employers recognize

the value they provide to the organization. We use our network to go after these candidates and then introduce them to our clients' opportunities. About one-third of the candidates we source are proactively looking for positions and have reached us through their own network. If these people meet our clients' criteria, we will engage with them about our recruitment process. Unlike some firms, we don't shop candidates' resumes around to multiple companies. We recruit for specific positions and get paid if the client company hires one of our candidates.

We operate with the C-suite. For technology, we recruit mostly CIOs, CTOs, and their direct reports, such as a vice president of applications, a vice president of infrastructure, a chief enterprise architecture, or a chief security officer. We don't touch the layer below these executives.

We deal with some of the largest companies in the world. We also recruit for privately held companies with anywhere from $100 million to $400 million in revenues.

EL. What is the corporate attitude right toward IT?

SB. We see two schools of thought evolving. Some organizations value IT more so than ever for two reasons: governance and efficiency. These companies say, 'I need to do more with automation and efficiency in my business. How do I drive my operating model to a shared service model? How do I automate all of these manual processes so I can cut some of my staff?' When it comes to governance, organizations need to have a more transparent view of what is happening inside the company, especially within the critical business lines, such as finance. It is not enough for the right hand to know what the left hand is going. The fingers on each hand must work in concert. Companies need to have strong IT leaders who know how to upgrade and will continue to invest in the existing environment.

EL. So, what kinds of IT leaders are companies looking for at this time?

SB. Companies are looking to turn people over and go after transformational leaders who can demonstrate the business impact of IT. Companies don't want IT managers of the status quo. For example, CIOs have historically measured themselves by two primary criteria: head count and budget. How many people work for me and how many dollars do I control? Those metrics determined the importance of the CIO's role and contribution to the company. Companies have turned this around by creating a new paradigm of the business information officer. This individual aligns better with the commercial interests of the business. This individual focuses on governance, as well as operational efficiency, and knows how to drive that kind of change in a meaningful, substantive measure. That individual does not look at headcount, but focuses on business contribution. He or she looks at their role in setting the company's governance policy. Creating business value by leveraging existing resources is another key area for a transformational leader focuses. How do I do a better job of selecting and managing key vendors? How do I free myself up from running the daily operational aspect of IT and contribute more to the senior leadership teams? A transformational leader strives to answer these questions.

EL. Are there reasons why a company might turnover its IT leadership for new players?

SB. I don't want to sound harsh, but some companies look for a new CIO because of return on investment. Not all companies value IT in terms of governance and efficiency. Many companies value IT as it relates to what the IT spend contributes to the organization. For example, if the largest line item on the balance sheet is technology, then the return on that technology investment better yield ways to increase revenues or to attract new customers. Some times, companies might replace a highly paid CIO with someone who makes far less. It's not worth paying something an exorbitant amount if they can't produce the kind of results the company expects.

EL. Are you dealing with many new CIO positions?

SB. We have a number of them in the pipeline. We went through a period where we did many new assignments for brand-name companies.

EL. Some CIOs leave positions with Fortune 1,000 companies to start their own consulting firms or to go work for a startup. They don't seem to rebound to where they once where. Is it hard for some CIOs to get back on the Fortune 1000 saddle again?

Some of these executives are in transition. Perhaps, they left on their own or were asked to resign. Many of these CIOs will have a hard time regaining the stature they once had for several reasons. Many of them are viewed as the archetype of that legacy paradigm of the CIO. Like the great generals of yester year, they commanded troops across large and complex global businesses. Today's organizations don't perceive these executives as nimble, fast-moving CIOs who can drive change through influence rather than by direct edict or mandate. Legacy CIOs have been empowered to drive change or to tell people in the organization what to do. Today's paradigm stresses collaboration and collegiality. CIOs need to lead by the carrot, not the stick. They have to convince and persuade business line managers and divisional CIOs who now report directly to business units, instead of the corporate CIO.

Some CIOs in transition didn't fall into the company's succession planning continuum. If someone has 30 or 40 years of IT experience, perhaps he or she did not mesh well with people coming up the ranks. On the other hand, some companies might want a well seasoned or a retired CIO who doesn't mind staying for a few years, grooming a successor, and then leaving. This happened at Chubb Insurance. Last year, a bank asked us to find a retired or a semi-retired CIO to sort out the current technology situation and create a succession plan.

EL. Do you see any consistencies with the backgrounds your CIO candidates possess?

SB. In the past 10 years, we have seen more diversified backgrounds, with a greater emphasis on business. We don't necessarily look for people who have a computational, engineering, or mathematical background. Instead, we look for people who are superlative business and process executives. These individuals know how to look at a business and understand where the opportunities exist and where to apply technology to create business value. For example, if a company manages technology more for cost than innovation, it will hire a CIO who understands finance. The CTO has become the be-all and end-all global technical executive who understands things like service-oriented architecture.

EL. Can you be specific about the competencies that companies want in a CIO today?

SB. Companies want someone who can apply technology to create more broad-based business value, but who also has expertise in another area such as sales or marketing. This individual might have an MBA or be someone who has run an operational business unit.

The majority of candidates we see have spent some time in areas outside IT of during their career. At some point, they decided to return to IT, either to head up a project management office or to do strategic planning. These roles provide a segue to take on broader IT operational responsibilities.

Ten years ago, we got more requests for consultants from McKinsey or Accenture. That has changed. Organizations want people who have owned the business processes and have accepted accountability for the results. Consultants don't operate that way. On the other hand, candidates who have been in consulting during their career usually have strong strategic planning skills, good project management skills, and good client relationship skills. We would consider candidates who have married this experience with corporate IT experience.

EL. What is your firm's formal process for screening candidates and what similar process do client companies follow?

SB. We use a very specific methodology called competency-based interviewing. It causes people to relive their professional experiences. It's analogous to drilling a well. For example, we might ask a person this question: Tell me about the time that you had to drive change across an enterprise and you got pushback from key stakeholders? Someone can easily give a theoretical answer to that question. Based on the answer, we might then ask: Who gave you the most pushback and why? How did you bring order to the governance process to win over this stakeholder? What concessions did both parties make to bring about a compromise? How were you able to demonstrate the business value of IT?

The more we drill through the answer, the more we learn about how the person handled the situation. If someone hasn't done what we ask about, then he or she is usually lost for words. You can't make this stuff up.

Our cadre of industrial and organizational psychologists helps us to evaluate candidates. Working with each client, we create an index of specific competencies, which we force rank. We interview against those specific competencies to develop a candidate assessment. The client company also interviews against the same set of criteria.

EL. Do you screen for whether or not the candidate fits the client's corporate culture?

SB. Yes, cultural assessment is very important to us. In fact, we recently rolled out a new tool called a cultural analyst. There is a rigor and a discipline in the science of assessing the competency of people to do the job. We marry these things into a very scientific rigorous process that provides a holistic view of this person. Although a candidate might have great skills, he or she might be a disaster because of the cultural fit. Conversely, a candidate might have most of the skills and competencies, but be a better culture fit than candidates with better qualifications.

EL. Is there any reason why you won't work with a qualified candidate?

SB. We've seen a number of candidates who have lied on their resumes. For example, some candidates will turn a one-week executive leadership course into an MBA.

Elizabeth M. Ferrarini - She is a free-lance writer and IT consultant from Boston, Massachusetts. Reach her at elizabethferrarini@yahoo.com.

In 2004, Andrew McAfee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, wrote a case study about a Japanese taxi company that used Japan's i-mode technology to bypass the dispatch center and immediately put customers in touch with the closest cab. That case study led McAfee to search for other tools that allowed for similar interaction. Meanwhile, a student introduced McAfee to Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs and wikis, which had just started to become popular. Further research led McAfee to become a proponent of Web 2.0 tools, which he calls Enterprise 2.0. As a result, he developed a technology paradigm that companies can use to buy or build digital platforms for enabling their employees and other constituents to collaborate more freely. Each letter in his SLATES paradigm stands for the first letter in one of the six components -- search, links, authoring, tags, extension, and signals. In fact, McAfee, who is also a visiting professor at MIT's Center for Digital Business, has chronicled his findings in his forthcoming book, Enterprise 2.0 - New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization's Toughest Challenge (Harvard Business School Press).

At the MIT Sloan 2009 CIO Symposium, Enterpriseleadership.org sat down with McAfee to discuss the challenges CIOs face in making technology investments, especially in Enterprise 2.0. Here is what he had to say:

EL. Is there a correlation between a company's profitability and the amount of money it allocates annually for IT and the maturity of its IT investment process?

AMA. Those correlations tend to be very weak. Much of the research shows that the amount of money a company spends on technology is a bad indicator of how much benefit it gets out of technology and what its profitability is like. As far as we can determine, that raw investment number is not a good predictor of things we care about.

EL. Is the maturity of a company's investment process an indicator of anything significant?

AMA. Most executive teams look at capital IT investments the same way as any other capital investment. The amount of attention everyone in the company -- ranging from the executive team to business unit managers -- pays to technology issues determines the success of these investments.

EL. If technology decisions are driven from the top, is there a better chance these investments will have a high success rate?

AMA. Yes, especially if the technology investments are intended to change the business. The business side of the company doesn't get involved in things such as upgrading routers or swapping out databases. If the purpose of the technology project is to bring about change to the business, then you need to involve business people.

EL. What industry sectors have increased their technology investments and what payoffs do they expect from them?

AMA. My research shows that companies in IT-intensive industries, such as finance, have experienced turbulence and higher rates of growth concentration than non IT-intensive counterparts. You, however, have to put things into perspective. These days finance is such a strange place to do business. It is very hard to predict what is going to happen going forward. On the other hand, companies in IT-intensive industries can't switch horses in midstream and slow down their rate of investments. It might take longer, but they will realize a payoff.

EL. Are there any other companies that stand out in your mind that really exploit technology?

AMA. I did a case study about the Spanish clothing company Inditex, Europe's largest clothing retailer. Zara is this retailer's most popular brand. It is an inexpensive but fashion-forward retail chain. This company is a brilliant user of technology because it does not throw too much technology at the business. It has developed great insight into the kind of customers it wants to go after -- 20-something forward people. Trends for this market segment are hard to predict, As a result, Inditex does not do much forecasting or looking into the future with technology. Its technology enables store managers all around the world to articulate what products will sell in the next couple of weeks. The company can then design the clothes, make them, and get them to the stores quickly, thanks to a fast replenishment cycle. Inditex can take advantage of trends while they are still hot, instead of trying to predict what 20-year-olds are going to wear 18 months from now. That is impossible to do.

EL. If a company has immature technology processes, what steps can it take to catch up and move forward?

AMA. You don't begin by throwing buckets of money at the problem. The company has to make the commitment that it can catch up, especially if the company has not historically had technology as a strength. The company has to understand the needs of the business, and then look at the technology landscape to see what it needs to adopt.

EL. How does your approach to technology differ from some other approaches?

AMA. Many of the approaches have a great deal in common. We all focus on people, process and technology. Keep in mind that enterprise deployments can vary widely. You can run into different kinds of problems or pitfalls, depending on what kind of implementation you are doing. If you just do finance and human resources, you won't run into many problems. On the other hand, because technology deployments for distribution, sales, logistics and manufacturing are more complex, you will incur more risk. As a result, you need to plan these deployments carefully.

EL. What guidelines would you give CIOs about measuring the success of technology investments?

AMA.  I try to help companies understand that cost and time are not the most important criteria for measuring progress and success with technology initiatives. You need to keep your eyes on those things, but more importantly, you need to look at the business impact of IT. That is hard to measure. You need to keep your eye on achieving the objectives of the project. Is the project doing what we need it to do? If not, how can we turn it around? Is it giving us the capabilities we are after?

EL. What are some of the shortcomings of the tools and techniques large companies use to guide the capital IT investment process?

AMA. When I look around, especially at larger organizations, I see too much decentralization of decisions about technology. The governance process revolves around letting each division or business unit make a set of technology decisions. The corporate level winds up stitching all of these technology decisions together. That's hard to do. You wind up with a fragmented technology environment riddled with inconsistent business processes and inconsistent data. You can't drive the enterprise, never mind see what is going on. I tend to advocate more centralized governance around the enterprise decision-making approach. It doesn't mean that headquarters makes all of the business decisions. You just try to layer and place some consistent technology across the company.

EL. Many companies use an ROI approach for measuring technology investments. Is that a good metric for technology projects?

AMA. It is tempting to try to turn a predicted ROI number into a business case in advance for a technology project. These numbers are extraordinarily speculative. At the start, people come up with whatever number they want. I don't advocate that companies spend much time on that. Whenever I have a chance to talk to companies which do technology well, I ask them about creating a business case and coming up with an ROI. Many of these companies say they don't focus their energy on these things. Instead, they focus their energy on making sure they select the right technologies. They watch their budgets carefully so they don't spend more than they anticipated.

EL. Your forthcoming book, Enterprise 2.0, outlines your concept, called SLATES. Can you give examples of organizations that are moving in that direction?

AMA. The 16 agencies of the U.S. intelligence community, including the FBI and the CIA, really surprised me. They have deployed a consistence suite of 2.0 tools that have all of the SLATES elements. This toolset has started to change how some of the analysts go about their work. This is good news. Perhaps the federal intelligence agencies could have prevented the September 11 disaster if they would have been able to connect the dots among all of the people and all of the pieces of information throughout the community. The intelligence community's Enterprise 2.0 platform, called Intellipedia, provides a consistent internal blogging environment. It has something for tagging, such as an internal del.icio.us. It comes pretty close to comprising the entire SLATES complement.

EL. What companies are embracing Enterprise 2.0?

AMA. Many of the high-tech companies are doing many aspects of Enterprise 2.0.Sony is a big user of these tools. You also see unusual industry sectors, such as insurance, embracing Enterprise 2.0. In fact, Northwestern Mutual Life is a big Enterprise 2.0 user. Other heavy uses of Enterprise 2.0 include Procter & Gamble and Pfizer.

EL. What must proactive CIOs need to be thinking about in order to move in the direction of Enterprise 2.0? What challenges do they face in that area?

AMA. The main challenge is for CIOs to get out of the way. If you want to control events and control outcomes, you have to give up control of people and trust them. Enterprise 2.0 technologies put that philosophy to the test. If CIOs want to be successful with Enterprise 2.0, they need to trust that people will use the tools appropriately and encourage them to lead by example. CIOs need to stop trying to be interventionist managers. CIOs should deploy the tools, model the correct behaviors, and have some faith that good things will happen as a result.

EL. Can you summarize what C-level executives will learn from your book?

AMA. They will learn what is new under the sun. The 2.0 suffix is not hype. There really is a new set of tools out there. They will learn what those tools are, what characteristics they have in common, and how organizations are deploying them and distilling lessons about how to profit from this new opportunity going forward.

EL. Can you describe some of these tools?

AMA. All of these tools have SLATES elements, such as blogs and virtualization. They tend to social- or community-based. Overall, they tend not to tell your role in the workflow. They do not impose a business process. For example, wikis and Wikipedia are good examples here. We used to think that if you wanted a high-quality encyclopedia article, you needed to assign people into roles and walk them through a very specific workflow for generating a good article. Wikipedia comes along and shows you don't need to do any of that. Instead, you can tap into a huge amount of energy out there to write articles, share knowledge and just be helpful. You can generate the world's largest encyclopedia. By some measures, Wikipedia is a good encyclopedia developed by not dictating terms to people.

Whenever I do seminars on Enterprise 2.0, I ask audience members how many regularly use used Wikipedia. Almost every hand in the room goes up. I then ask if it is the first place they click on to start learning about new topics. Again, almost every hand in the room goes up. I ask people to think about how remarkable that is because it has no formal editors' staff. Any one of us can make changes to almost any article. The lack of formal ground lines is bizarre. My point stresses that this experience is not an accident -- it is what is key to what is going on right now. The new technology toolkit is a great assistant and a great help for open innovation.

EL. What are some of the benefits organizations will get from SLATES?

AMA.  They can come away with a better product than they would have otherwise had. For example, they can take advantage of new ideas that they did not expect, such as a customer who offers an idea for how to improve the product. This process gets built into the way the company does business. It can help to generate revenues.

EL. Does SLATES change the organizational culture?

AMA. It does not have to change the formal organizational structure. I keep stressing that the results of Enterprise 2.0 capabilities are an alternative to the formal organization; i.e., having a formal organization chart, a boss and a hierarchy. Call it a complement, if you will, because it is in addition to all the formal business processes and the hierarchy of the organization. As you deploy these tools over time, they will start to change the culture a little bit, and people will start to think in a more democratic way about many issues. It is not this deep threat to the existing organization and the existing hierarchy.

EL. Some companies have devised their own internal version of LinkedIn or Facebook. Don't those social media projects cut across organizational boundaries?

AMA. Absolutely! These technologies inherently do not respect organizational boundaries. They do not care what business unit, division, or geography you are part of. As a result, these technologies enable you to bring together a globally disbursed workforce to look at problems and to contribute knowledge to share what they know. It cuts across organization boundaries, but let us be clear: We already have technologies, like telephone and email, which are equally indifferent to those kinds of things.

Elizabeth M. Ferrarini - She is a free-lance writer and IT consultant from Boston, Massachusetts. Reach her at elizabethferrarini@yahoo.com.