Poor Robert: the story of a CIO who followed industry "best practices"

Speech Abstract

Sometimes "best practices" are nothing more than where the lemmings went yesterday. Robert is a fictional CIO (a compendium of real-life CIOs) who followed all the common practices in financial management and governance. And at every turn, his sincere efforts back-fired, creating more problems than solutions.

Clients complained about the cost IT, and didn't understand its value. They saw IT as a "black hole" for money, and irrelevant to their business strategies. IT was accused of unresponsiveness. Funding for infrastructure and innovation were lacking. And pressures for outsourcing mounted.

Laugh or cry, this story will hit home. It illustrates mistakes to be avoided, and suggests critical thinking about "best practices" and open-mindedness about new approaches. It lifts you out of the weeds, inducing a more strategic approach to financial-management systems and processes.

100-word version....

50-word version....

Outline

• Preparing the budget

• Allocations

• Priority setting

• Service delivery

• Alignment and governance

• Cost cutting

• Outsourcing

• Shared services consolidations

• Help! What can poor Robert do?

Internal Market Economics (book)....