After 20 years as an IT executive, including CIO, at Capital One's Financial Services division, Doug Moran decided it was time to do what he really loved - coaching and  leadership development. Moran's tenure at Capital One focused on getting his team to work with business partners to achieve business impact of IT. They carried out technology solutions and the integration of disparate technologies from numerous  acquisitions. Some of the projects had budgets up to $100 million. He admits that on occasion his goal of achieving business impact of IT took a backseat to the politics of being a CIO. Along the way, he spent much time mentoring his direct reports and other leaders. Before joining Capital One, he served as the Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Resources, Deputy Commissioner of Social Services, and Telecommunications Director for the  Commonwealth of Virginia. He began his career at Verizon.

Moran's new company, If You Will Lead, LLC, is a leadership consultancy focusing on executive coaching, executive development, and  infrastructure strategy. His forthcoming book is called, If You Will Lead: Enduring Wisdom for 21st-Century Leaders. He serves on the boards of the Virginia Children's Health Insurance Program Advisory Commission and the Better Housing Coalition.

Enterpriseleadership.org recently sat down with him to discuss the challenges of carrying out the business impact of IT and the need to mentor subordinates. Here is what he had to say:

EL. What does business impact of IT mean to you?

DM. The president of the  division that I was CIO for put everything in perspective for me when he said, 'IT isn't an overhead function. It's  essential to our operations. It's core to who we are.' His words were a sign that I made a difference in how our business leaders thought about IT.

It seems self-evident that if you cannot justify the business value or the business impact of IT, you shouldn't be doing it. Before I became a divisional CIO at Capital One, I was a business information officer. During my first leadership meeting as BIO, my new boss said that he expected me to think and act as a business leader. He went on to say that if I was just going to be an IT professional, he didn't want me to stay. He expected me to be able to describe the problems in business terms, not technical terms. He still expected me to be competent in technology.

When I acted as a member of his leadership team, I had to act as a business leader with a technology bent not the other way around. That view stuck with me for my entire time at Captial One. At the end of the day, you need to be able to quantify IT. Too many technology leaders focus on the attractiveness and the excitement of the latest toy, as opposed to the business value we must deliver.

EL. Can you give a couple of examples of how you created and quantified business value of IT?

DM. A good example is in that business group I mentioned. When I got there, I looked at the list of projects for the IT organization. I immediately cut the number of projects down to a manageable size. At the top of the list, we had a large project to deliver a new capability that would require  outsourcing  to a new vendor. We spent a lot  of time talking about this effort to the business. We started looking at the business case. The project was an idea that many people wanted to do, but we could not quantify the value.   We decided to shut it down rather than take the risk and waste significant time and money. The value we brought was avoiding a huge investment that offered questionable value for the organization. This enabled us to focus on higher value projects.  This reinforced that my role was not just about delivery new capabilities.  IT was also about managing risk.

Before I left Capital One, I worked on replacing our lending platform. The acquisition of a couple of different banks gave us the challenge of how to deal with different platforms all doing the same thing. We said, 'Here is what it costs today. Here it what it is going to cost if we continue to operate with these disparate systems. It’s not just  the hard cost of running them, but the missed opportunity of an  integrated  customer experience.' We put together a compelling case and wound up replacing the system  three years before we had intended. We showed that this effort made  sense. It was controversial. It required the business to go through  change that itt did not want to embrace.

EL How did you communicate business impact of IT to your constituents?

DM. We used their language or terms to build a business case that was grounded in the business metrics that the business unit valued. We had regular meetings. Each of the CIOs who reported to me had to become an integral part of the business they served. They were at the table, attending all of the meetings. They had to work closely with our business partners to help them understand all of the issues. When it came right down to it, my team's job was to learn the problems the business was experiencing and be part of solving them. There were the natural business things that occurred. When we got together to figure out what we wanted to do, we would have meetings to prioritize and make sure we got access to the technology professionals we needed to solve the problems.

EL. Did you handle the politics of being a CIO?

DM. I tried to minimized the politics by keeping the end game in mind. If you deliver business value, then the politics can work themselves out. Often politics become an excuse to   rationalizef why certain projects cannot get done. On occasion, I would run into that problem, and I would fall back into that excuse saying,, 'It's the politics of the systems that keeping mefrom getting the resources I need.’ The fact was, I could not make the case for showing what I needed to get done was more important than other people's projects.' I have spent much time looking back at what went well and what did not go so well. I often blamed others for not getting everything done. In a most cases, I had not done the best job of figuring out how to put the most compelling case before the appropriate stakeholders.

EL. As a CIO, what did you look for in staff?

DM. I looked for people with a good work ethic, and strong technical skills. Capital One has a culture of rigorous testing and assessment. We did much screening before we hired anyone. As a result, I knew that the people I interviewed had made it through a tough  process. I also looked at peoples' creative abilities and willingness to think about problems in business terms, not as a technologist. I wanted my direct reports to be very business savvy.

EL. Did you do any type of mentoring to help your staff improve the raw skills you were looking for?

DM. I am a great believer in mentoring. Capital One invested much money in enterprise training. I invested much of my time in mentoring and developing leaders on my team. The love of mentoring inspired me to set up my company. Of all the things I have done, mentoring and coaching made me the happiest.

EL. Are you glad you are longer a CIO in an organization?

DM. I am glad to be doing what I am doing. I loved being a CIO. At times, it frustrated me. At the same time, I found it to be very rewarding. Unfortunately, my role became too administrative, where I focused more on making sure that the businesses underneath me did things correctly, as opposed to being a thought leader and driving business.

EL. Can you describe your forthcoming book, especially why you decided to write it?

DM. I have based my leadership book on Rudyard Kipling's poem, IF. Kipling’s poem described 16 attributes required to be a man. When I rediscovered this poem in my late 20s, I realized that it was a simple set of rules for being a better leader and a better person. I have used it in my personal development since then. About six years ago, I started introducing it to people I worked with, especially people I was mentoring.

The book takes the same 16 attributes in the poem and looks at leaders from history who have used at least one of them. I have written a chapter about each of those leaders and the lessons we can learn from them. The first line of the poem says, 'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.' As a leader, you need to have composure and to be able to maintain it in tough times. I wrote about George Washington during the early days of the American Revolution. Each chapter has a different leader associated with it. I encourage people to ask, 'How can you learn from this person? What can you do differently to maintain composure or to demonstrate the characteristic that makes a strong leader?' That's the essence of the book.

People who want to be leaders must decide to make that investment themselves. The book's introduction says that the content is not for people looking for a quick fix. Instead, the book is for people who want to invest the time and energy to do it right, recognizing that being a leader is just as important as investing in any technical skills.

EL. Are you currently mentoring any IT colleagues from Capital One?

DM. I still mentor people at Capital One or people who have left and gone on to other jobs.

To be a CIO, you have to be credible in the IT community. You also have to be credible to the business. A former colleague and I often debate which comes first -- the business side or the technical side. At the end of the day, the IT folks need to know that you are one of them and the business folks need to know that you are one of them as well.  I help people shift gears to remain authentic with whoever their audience is.

EL. What are you perceptions of young people coming into IT today?

DM. They are so anxious to get ahead  now. They are always looking for the next promotion or the next opportunity. They are the hungriest and most aggressive group I have ever seen. I always encourage them to take their time, learn their skills, and grow them in a reasonable way. The ones who are not doing this are burning out.They often not have the foundation beneath them to support themselves. We are seeing a mixed bag of young people. The most successful ones I have seen are those that really love the relationship between technology and its ability to enable business growth. If you want to work in financial services, or any other industry, you need good technical skills, but it is more important that you understand how technology will enable the business to deliver results and create value. Sometime people who I mentored wanted to be pure technologist.  They really loved the technology. I would often encourage them to follow that path by going to pure technology firm where their skills and passion would be most appreciated.

I am a big fan of off-shoring. It has enabled significant changes in the IT field. It is also presenting challenges for young IT professionals. Today’s young people are competing with some of the best talent from across the globe. The talent coming from offshore firms, especially India, is exceptionally strong. As an IT leader, my challenge was finding ways to attract and grow both in-house IT talent and off-shore talent. That really requires balance.

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