CIO在人際溝通中最容易犯下的十宗罪(1)
導讀：再優秀的CIO也會偶爾出現交流失誤，這種交流失誤會阻礙CIO們有效地開展工作，不利於與下屬或其它管理人員建立良好的協作關係，North Star財務公司前SVP和CIO Craig Blad正在尋找CIO的接任者，他說如果一.....
多年來，CIO們一直處於除了業務和IT相關的語言外，就不知道說什麼話，給人印象刻板，但使用一些溝通技巧後，許多CIO證明他們自己無論是在會議上，還是在網絡上，都還是很有說服力，很有魅力的。
的確，再優秀的CIO也會偶爾出現交流失誤，這種交流失誤會阻礙CIO們有效地開展工作，不利於與下屬或其它管理人員建立良好的協作關係，North Star財務公司前SVP和CIO Craig Blad正在尋找CIO的接任者，他說如果一名CIO和其它管理人員之間除了行話外，就沒有共同語言了，或者他不能闡述一個項目的商業價值的話，這樣的人永遠不能成爲我的繼任者。
在某些情況下，溝通失誤可能會對CIO的聲譽和事業導致嚴重的打擊，因爲他們說的話如果是負面或錯誤的，其影響會被放大無數倍。
曾經幹過IT顧問，CIO和CTO的Peter Kretzman說：“當你把事情搞砸時，你的光輝形象會立即毀於一旦，當你習慣於行話或天馬行空的廢話後，不僅讓人懷疑你的能力，還會損害你的事業和你的部門利益，上級可能會想‘我們需要的是能與我們溝通，讓我們知道真正是怎麼回事的人’”。
下面是CIO們最容易犯的10個溝通錯誤，多瞭解一下，以便你可以在工作中儘量避免犯同樣的錯誤。
1、盡說行話
與非IT同仁交流時，使用過量的專業術語是所有IT人員，包括CIO在內最易犯的一個毛病，他們可能不知道對方已經聽得一頭霧水，自己卻還滔滔不絕，前CIO雜誌主編，現Lundberg媒體的溝通顧問總裁Abbie Lundberg說：“技術人員與人交流時，容易將對方也想象成與自己一樣的專業人士，CIO更應該意識到這一點”。
2、在不恰當的地方抱怨技術問題
哈佛商學院CIO Stephen Laster仍然記得他剛升爲CIO時，在一次公司會議上，當他用非常專業的IT術語介紹他的團隊正在深入到數據中心，解決幾個棘手的技術問題時，大家都傻眼了，本來Laster是想讓大家繃緊神經努力工作，結果反倒將自己的問題暴露出來了。
會後Laster的老闆找到他，向他解釋瞭如果將同事的思維帶入了IT，並且是些棘手的問題，只會讓他們感到不安，也會降低IT部門在他們心中的信任度，Laster還記得老闆當時曾說：“你不應該將屬於你的問題說給我們聽，如果你非要說給我們聽，也應該換一種說法，至少要讓我們能聽懂，也許我們才能幫上你的忙”。
3、說話象銷售主管
有業務背景的管理人員晉升成CIO後，他們往往會把新入IT人員當銷售人員使，因此會用訓練銷售人員的方法提振技術人員的精神，但很多IT人員卻不吃這一套。
“CTO/CIO視角”站長Kretzman說：“如果我也這樣訓練我的團隊成員，我一定會被嘲笑，我敢肯定當他們結束提振士氣的晨會後，一定會翻白眼。因此CIO應該尊重傾聽對象的職業，不宜用客套，古板，訓斥的方式交流”。
4、魯莽
F-U-C-K這四個字母組成的單詞可以在球場上說，可以在酒吧裏說，但絕不能在辦公室說，如果你真的有那麼愚蠢，只會遭受被解僱的命運，Kretzman說他就真正遇到過這樣的人。
那時他還是一家公司的CTO，當時那家公司的CIO是一個年青小夥，在一次會議上，Kretzman還有其它六名項目經理都在場，那名IT主管當着大家的面說：“你們現在需要做的是上樓去，告訴那些業務人員，去他媽的，讓他們去死吧！”。
Kretzman說：“9天后，那個傢伙就因爲他的魯莽言行被開除了”。
5、不善於問問題
Lundberg說：“聰明的CIO通常很會問問題，也善於傾聽別人的回答”。
問精明的問題對CIO開展工作有很多好處，既可以誘探出關鍵的信息，又可以增強與同仁之間的關係，Lundberg補充道：“IT業內的人員很少這麼做的一個原因是，他們覺得所問對象可能無法回答自己的問題”。
6、將自己的想法強加給別人
CIO往往都很自信，特別是自己擅長的技術領域，因此也很容易將自己的想法強加給他人，很多時候根本不徵求人家的意見就做了決定，他們認爲“我是CIO，我知道怎麼做是最好的”，他們不知道其他人的意見也很重要。
哈佛商學院的Laster說他就犯過這樣的錯誤，當時IT部門正在考慮一個大型平臺的架構，Laster知道他的方法是正確的，因此他沒有通知團隊成員就定了方案，但因漏掉一個重要的功能而耽誤了幾個月時間，最後不得不回到起點重新設計，通過這次教訓，Laster也學到了協同工作的重要性，也懂得了某些時候“爲什麼”比“怎麼”更重要。
7、借技術原因恐嚇對方
在解釋爲什麼一定要使用某種技術時，部分CIO常會誇大功效，並簡化理由，忽悠不懂技術的管理層，例如，爲了獲得採購新設備的款項，有些CIO可能會這樣說“我們很快就會崩潰了，除非我們明天就採購10臺新服務器！”
但這種方法不一定湊效，老闆可能會覺得把他當顧客在推銷商品，Kretzman建議最好不要說出帶有恐嚇性質的話，如果必需，最好是在會議上提出，並且提供至少3種可選方案，詳細描述每種方案的優缺點，重點在財務影響，業務影響和客戶影響三方面闡述。
8、過度依賴於事實
雖然事實對於IT投資簡報的確很重要，但CIO不應該過度依賴於事實，如果CIO在公司中的聲譽沒有其它領導層好，事實描述太多往往會適得其反。Lundberg說：“CIO應該象講故事一樣先吸引大家的注意力和興趣，從根本上說，CIO想要改變其他人的想法，也是一種推銷行爲，如果事實描述冗長，被反問的機率會很高，無疑會給自己帶來更多的麻煩”。
9、不能充分闡述IT的價值
每個CIO都清楚自己有義務用商業術語解釋IT的價值，但有時有些特殊的商業術語是難以表達的。
Lundberg說：“大多數時候，當CIO與其它管理層討論技術時，很難說清楚IT的最終價值”。
例如，他們可能會說：“我們可以獲得特殊的洞察力，因爲我們部署的商業智能工具能夠提供這些信息”。
Lundberg補充道：“CIO需要做進一步的解釋，解釋這個特殊的洞察力將會給業務帶來哪些不同，例如究竟是能給公司帶來更多的銷售機會，還是能提高客戶服務滿意度”。
10、用PPT給觀衆催眠
Lundberg悲哀地說：“人們使用PPT的水平很糟糕，每張PPT都充滿了大量的信息，怎能不讓人昏昏欲睡，好的PPT應該簡潔明瞭，要給聽衆思考的時間”。
Lundberg建議CIO考慮PPT是否是最有效的交流方法，應該尋找比PPT更有效的溝通方式，如一個實例演示就比好多PPT管用。
10 Communication Mistakes CIOs Still Make
CIO — For years, CIOs have been fighting the stereotype that they're weak communicators, unable to speak the language of business or relate to anyone outside of IT. But by using practiced communication skills, many CIOs are proving how convincing, credible and captivating they can be—in the boardroom and on the Web. (For evidence, check out blogs by British Telecom's (BT) JP Rangaswami, Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center CIO John Halamka and Mike Schaffner, the director of IT for Cameron International's valves and measurement group.)
Indeed, CIOs' communication skills—their ability to negotiate, build consensus, engage stakeholders and make business cases—have improved dramatically since the days they were in charge of data processing. Yet they still slip up occasionally, lapsing into acronym soup or erring on the side of hyperbole to sell an IT investment.
Such communication mistakes can impede CIOs' effectiveness on the job or hinder their relationships with staff and other functional executives. Craig Blad, a former SVP and CIO of North Star Financial who's currently seeking a new CIO role, says poor or jargon-filled communication creates misunderstandings between CIOs and fellow executives. If a CIO can't speak to the business value of a project, he says, it will never get approval.
In some cases, communication blunders can do serious damage to a CIO's reputation and career, since they reinforce those negative, geeky stereotypes about CIOs.
"Every time you screw up, you come off as less polished and less prepared," says Peter Kretzman, an IT consultant and former CIO and CTO. "When you descend into jargon or 'the-sky-is-falling,' you come across as not as capable, and that does damage to your career and to your department. It makes management think, 'We need to get someone in here who can talk to us and let us know what's really going on.'"
Here are 10 communication mistakes common among CIOs. Be aware of them so that you can avoid making them.
1. They speak in jargon.
Using technical jargon when speaking to coworkers outside of IT is the most obvious and most common mistake IT professionals at all levels make. The use of jargon is an example of a broader communication mistake IT leaders make: not being aware of where their knowledge ends and where the knowledge of the person they're trying to communicate with begins, says Abbie Lundberg, president of communications consultancy Lundberg Media and former editor-in-chief of CIO magazine.
"It's easy for people with specialized knowledge, like technologists, to communicate in a way that assumes an insider's understanding," she says. "Technologists in particular need to be very, very conscious of this."
2. They complain about technical problems.
Stephen Laster, CIO of Harvard Business School, remembers a talking-to he got from one of his bosses early on in his leadership career. He had just come from a meeting where he carried on before his peers about the technical problems his team was having inside a data center and how they were working so diligently to resolve them.
"All my peers were hearing was some foreign language," says Laster. "I was bringing them too deeply inside my organization. What they gleaned [from the meeting] was 'Stephen's really got a lot of problems.' The best I could do in that conversation was make them nervous."
Laster says his boss approached him after the meeting and explained to him that bringing his peers outside of IT into the nuts and bolts of IT's challenges only worried them and made them question their confidence in him. "It's not that you shouldn't bring your problems to us," Laster recalls his boss telling him, "but you should do it in a language we understand with a set of questions and alternatives we can help collaborate on."
3. They speak like sales people.
Kretzman, who also authors the blog, CIO/CTO Perspectives, has seen executives with business backgrounds who move into IT leadership positions and address their new IT staffs as if they were sales people. They take a boosterish, let's go get 'em approach to rallying their new staffs, which falls flat, he says, because technical people aren't motivated that way.
"If I talked like that to my team, I would be met with derision, people leaving [the meeting], rolling their eyes, tuning out, or opening their laptops and BlackBerrys," says Kretzman. "You have to speak to people in their own way."
4. They drop the F-bomb.
Four-letter words may make you sound tough on the field, in a bar or in the 'hood, but in the office, using them makes you look like, well, an ass. It can also get you fired. Kretzman has seen it happen.
He recalls one of his first meetings as CTO of a company that had never previously had a CTO. The individual then running IT for the organization was a "young kid" who Kretzman says had risen up the technical ranks. In a meeting with Kretzman and about six other project managers, the young IT director told Kretzman and the project managers, "What you need to do is go upstairs to the business and tell them to go f*&$ themselves," remembers Kretzman, who says this kind of talk was typical of the young Turk.
Adds Kretzman: "That person left nine days later as a result of [people's] reactions to his behavior."
5. They fail to ask questions.
"Great CIOs ask meaningful questions and really listen to the answers," says Lundberg.
Asking astute questions is critical to the CIO's job for three reasons. It elicits critical information and insights, engages the CIO's audience and helps them build relationships with their peers, she says.
"The reason a lot of people in IT don't do this," adds Lundberg, "is because they're afraid to look like they don't already have the answers."
6. They impose their brilliant ideas on everyone without building buy-in.
CIOs are confident in their ideas on the best technologies to implement and the best ways to implement them—and for good reason: Most have the domain expertise and battle scars to back them up.
But sometimes they're so confident in their ideas that they ram them down everyone's throats, from their staff to their executive-level peers, without building consensus. They think, 'I'm the CIO; I know best,' without realizing how important it is for people to feel they're part of the solution.
Harvard Business School CIO Laster says he made this mistake when his IT department was considering a large platform implementation and the architectural strategy to support it. Laster knew his approach was the right approach so he forged ahead with it without giving his team the time to get on board with his approach.
The result: "We lost a couple of months in the process because I didn't create the buy-in I should have early on," he says. "We backtracked and revisited why we were doing the work, and the project ended up well. The lesson learned is that collaboratively getting to the 'why' is in many cases more important than the 'what.'"
7. They use scare tactics to sell ideas.
When trying to explain why certain technology investments need to be made, some CIOs err on the side of hyperbole and oversimplification to make their points clear to business executives who don't understand IT, says Kretzman. For example, to get funding for new hardware, some IT executives might say something like, "We're going to get killed unless we buy 10 new servers tomorrow!"
The problem with this exaggerated approach, Kretzman says, is that it raises businesspeople's hackles and makes them feel like IT is selling them a bill of goods. Instead of going to a business meeting with one technical solution in mind, Kretzman advises IT professionals to present a few potential solutions, with their pros and cons, to the business. He also recommends focusing on the facts that matter most to the business: the financial impact, business impact and customer impact.
"Bring businesspeople into the decision so they can evaluate the trade-offs," he says.
8. They over-rely on facts.
While facts are critical to any IT investment presentation, CIOs shouldn't over-rely on them, says Lundberg. CIOs who don't have as much credibility as other executives inside their companies will often fall back on fact-based, analytical presentations when they're making a business case for an IT investment, she says. That's a mistake, she adds, because moving people to action requires an emotional connection.
"What they really need to do," advises Lundberg, "is tell a story and capture the imagination of the people they're trying to convince. Fundamentally, any time we're trying to move someone's opinion, it's a kind of selling. That's something that CIOs who have come up through technology might have more trouble with."
9. They don't adequately explain IT value.
Every CIO knows that her duty is to explain the value of IT in business terms, but sometimes those specific business terms are hard to articulate.
"A lot of times when CIOs and some of their peers at the executive level talk about their technology, they're just a step removed from what the ultimate value is," says Lundberg.
For example, they may say, "We're able to gain this particular insight because we have these business intelligence tools that let us get at this information," Lundberg says. But, she adds, they need to take that explanation one step further and explain how that insight will make a difference to the business: This is how it will help the company sell more products or serve its customers better.
10. They put audiences to sleep with PowerPoint.
"People use PowerPoint so badly," laments Lundberg. Too many slide decks are filled with bullet point after bullet point and present too much information, she says. Effective PowerPoint presentations focus an audience around what the presenter wants them to consider or learn.
Lundberg advises CIOs to consider whether PowerPoint is the most effective way to communicate their message, or if they should find another way to deliver it. For example, she says, "A dramatic demonstration of something (e.g., how a new customer service system works) is way more powerful than a deck full of bullet points."