Fred Mapp, former AMD CIO
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Recruit, develop, and retain “world-class people”
You can’t create your team until you know the objective.
I’ve been asked why I wait until Initiative 4 to start talking about
people. I answer that you won’t know what kind of people you will
need or how many of them you will need until you’ve worked your way
through the first three initiatives. You first gather the business requirements
and next validate the business process. In Initiative 3, for example, we
talked about knowing your points of arrival, your specific IT destinations.
You have to know these kinds of specifics before you’ll know what
kind of people and skills you’ll need to achieve the objectives. If
you decide to build in steel, you won’t need very many carpenters.
If you’re buying and installing your software out of the box, you
won’t need many developers. In the real world this is tough to achieve
because the people you need are often already onboard.
Start with the big picture. How is your organization structured?
Who has responsibility for the strategic direction of IT? Who is responsible
for best practices and review of the costs of IT? Some IT organizations
separate support functions from technology development and other IT functions.
Some are combined. Don’t put too much stock in the structure your
IT has traditionally relied on. Instead, plan for what you want your organization
to become. Look at the previous three initiatives, your vision, and your
points of arrival. Then determine the most logical organizational structure
and division of labor to achieve those objectives.
AMD: A technology development emphasis. At AMD, we implemented
a role-based model with an emphasis on new technology development and relationship
management. (I will discuss more on relationship management in the next
initiative.) Our technology development organization is designed to respond
to business requirements and to understand business processes and the applications
necessary to optimize them. Then, once the technology is up and running,
it’s turned over to applications support.
"I can honestly say that I wouldn’t
be where I am today without mentoring."
- Fred Mapp, former AMD CIO
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Business acumen among the technocrats. You may have
noticed that business acumen is one of my recurring themes. This is a
great time to revisit that theme. Look through your organization. Do you
find people with knowledge of the business, or is everyone a technocrat?
To map IT to your business processes, to follow a business vision, and
for many other reasons, you’re going to need people who understand
business processes. End users usually balk at accepting technology they
don’t perceive as value. The importance of business knowledge is
essential to mapping technology to business processes. Of course there
is always a need for development and technical support people.
How’s your bench? What do you do if key personnel
leave? Is there a succession plan? Is there a backup? Without a succession
plan, complete with recruitment, a talent review process, mentoring, and
training plans, the loss of key personnel could turn into a fire drill.
And that kind of chaos can delay or even derail the best of plans. Before
that happens, create talent review and performance planning processes.
The talent review process includes identification of key skills, areas
for improvement, training required and ranking. This process will identify
your key people and your actual bench strength. In the performance review,
you need to literally sit down with every employee and tell him or her
“here’s what I expect you to do in each quarter.” It
is important that they have input and agree with the expectations. This
process should include metrics that are reviewed quarterly to allow you
to measure their effectiveness and make changes.
Mentoring: A fundamental building block
I can honestly say that I wouldn’t be where I am today without mentoring.
For that reason, and for the life lessons, connections, and memories I
gleaned from my mentor, I’ve always considered mentoring a top priority.
There’s no better way to develop and refine your talent pool, create
new leaders, and strengthen the bonds among management and executives.
I strongly recommend that as part of this process you find a junior member
of your team to mentor and encourage the rest of your executive staff
to do the same.
Another big step
I’ve emphasized taking these seven initiatives one at a time. Never
has the importance of this been more obvious. Not until you have the processes
and procedures in place to develop and retain “world class”
people will you be ready to move on to Initiative 5.
Download
Initiative #4 pdf
Initiative 5
Provide business solutions through leadership and consulting services.
This requires skilled, motivated people with plenty of business sense.
Without them you can go no further.
Fred brings over 30 years of experience in the area of information technology having held key executive IT positions at AMD, IBM, InfoSpan Corporation, American Express, Honeywell and his own company, Quality Service Solutions.
Immediately prior to joining AMD, Fred served as Vice President and CIO
of Information Technology at Honeywell Corporation for its Industrial Automation
Controls Division. Before Honeywell, Fred's IT leadership at American Express
was instrumental in the development and implementation of new applications
and services and in the re-engineering of the information technology organization.
FredIt's perspectives have been published in Optimize, Fortune, InformationWeek,
and CIO Magazine. |
创新的微处理器、闪存和低功耗处理器解决方案
