Bypassing the CIO is the norm

Few organisations see the merits of having a CIO within the organisation. In fact, some even put the CIO as a part time job.

If you look at the job scope of a CIO, how can a job that involves managing the information flowing into and out of the organisation be a part-time job? In fact, a lot of the productivity improvements can be made just by analysing the information flowing around the organisation. How often have you filled up forms that you think it's totally irrelevant to what you're applying for? How about a repeat customer, being asked to fill in information that you have provided before?

In fact, a lot of people in the organisation like to bypass the CIO in their decision making process because many are not able to see what they are doing affecting the organisation. For example, you may wish to implement a certain type of system but you know that the CIO will ask a lot of questions on it. So what do most people do? Do first, talk later. However, they may not understand that maybe a certain system is already available for the whole organisation that is similar to what is being requested, the direction for the department is changing and doing it will be a waste of resource, etc.

Sometimes when you try to justify why you need to do certain things, it brings clarity and in fact, you may start questioning yourself why you need to do it. However this will take time and knowing how "productive" our bosses want us to be, how often can we take time to justify certain improvements?

To be productive, sometimes you need to be not productive for a period of time. Complicated? You bet.