How to survive and thrive as an IT executive

Dear Bob …

I’m CIO in a company with 2,000 or so employees. We’re publicly held, reasonably profitable, and growing (not exponentially, but steadily), and I don’t know how it’s possible.

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Our CEO is a chameleon, constantly changing his colors to suit his audience. Our COO is known for preferring people good at kissing up than doing their jobs well. Our CFO says no twice to anything, and everyone knows it by now, so all his turn-downs do is to delay spending for a bit — they don’t make our spending decisions better, just slower.

Half the executive team seems to have their personal self-interest much more in mind than what’s best for the company. I spend most of my time massaging egos, identifying and pushing hot buttons, and gaming out the possible responses to someone’s big-distribution-list nastigram.

Here’s my question: Since I first got promoted past being a front-line supervisor, every position I’ve had seems to include some variation of these same, stupid political games. How do I avoid landing in the same situation the next time I decide I can’t stand it anymore?

– Reticent Player

Dear Reticent …

That’s simple: Polish your technical skills, find a job as a help desk analyst, and decide you aren’t interested in a management position anymore.

Oh, I get it — you want to continue to be an executive. You just don’t want to have to do what just about every executive in the United States (and I’m guessing everywhere else) has to do because every other executive is a human being and not Watson, the “Jeopardy” champion.

Every time I make this stump speech, I feel like Rodney Dangerfield taking Business 101 in “Back to School.” This isn’t what most business professors talk about, but the truth is executives are paid to move the organization. That means learning how each individual with political clout responds, so you can play the members of the executive suite like keys on a piano.

How do you do this? You get to know them as individuals, and earn their respect and trust. How do you do that? Listen, understand, empathize, do small favors, and ask for them. Also, you need to pay attention, observe who trusts whom and where the alliances are, and above all else, think and be conscious of it all.

This is what it means to be an executive. No matter what you’ve learned about what organizations are supposed to be, what they really are, first and foremost, are networks of relationships among actual people, each of whom is a unique person. The best executives not only understand this, they consider it to be a defining skill they take pride in and polish, much as programmers take pride in their ability to figure out how to get a computer to do what they want it to do.

This isn’t for everyone. If it isn’t for you, you have plenty of alternatives available. You can start your own small business (and keep it small). You can work for a very small company instead of one with thousands of employees. You can go back to being a staffer — or you can consider this aspect of your job to be a necessary evil you have to be good enough at to be able to do the other parts of your job that you enjoy more.

– Bob

This story, “How to survive and thrive as an IT executive,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Bob Lewis’s Advice Line blog on InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.