Digit Group’s Corporate Insights Series are short Q&A interviews with today’s leaders and influencers, who like all of us are adapting and evolving in this current market.
KEN COUSINS – CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER AND TRANSFORMATION LEADER
This week it was my pleasure to speak with IT Executive Ken Cousins, whose has been a driving force in technology transformation for leading global blue chip organisations from IBM, CUB, SABMiller and most recently as CIO and Solutions VP Shared Services for AB InBev South East Asia.
Damien: Ken what is your field, background, and area of expertise?
Ken: Transforming the way businesses operate. I’m passionate about driving effective and efficient delivery of outcomes through a combination of Technology, Process and People. The world has changed significantly in recent times, and not just because of our current challenges with COVID. People are increasingly tech savvy and want the @Home experience @Work, technology is easier to implement and the proliferation of tools delivered outside of IT organisations is rife. Within our departments we rely more and more on partnerships, hosting and third party solutions to create our architectures. Increasingly we need a structure and skill set within organisations that can deliver the right, sustainable governance and leadership.
Damien: Interesting to see the gradual change combined with accelerated changes required given COVID. What do you think is important in an effective modern organisation?
Ken: Three things spring to mind.
- Strong Governance – Establish strong governance to control what matters but release your company to use its complete capability to move forward. For example, allow marketing to deliver brand websites with agencies but ensure data ownership and Cyber Security are implanted under technical control.
- The Team – build a team that has a powerful commercial and partnership skillset to harness the power of the market opportunities – how many companies move applications to the cloud but never throttle capacity through a lack of operational firepower. This limits available benefits.
- In the details – IT is not a back-office function, build a team which deserves to be seen on an equal footing with your operational business, strong domain knowledge and commercial capability are paramount. Ask yourself, can I attract talent from other departments in my company and are other departments chasing my staff.
Damien: You haven’t focussed on technical skills here, why not?
Ken: Technical skills are critical however I think the team and structure either release or hinder technical capabilities to deliver true value. On technical skills – I think that architecture, data, security, integration and quality design capability are key to driving the right solutions. Invest in these capabilities. Detailed technical skills can be secured through partnerships with dedicated tech companies, particularly if you have a great team which can manage solution delivery rather than run the coding.
Damien: So what advice would you give to a new CIO looking to implement this type of organisation.
Ken:
- Sponsorship is vital – this starts at the top so invest time ensuring that you are truly a peer in the leadership team and that your CEO is a supporter
- Test the water on staff transfers early, export and import talent to create better networks and balance capability, this can be really hard in some companies
- The best solution is not necessarily the most technically elegant, make sure your technical team knows and believes this, time to market and cost are also important.
- Never cut corners on data and security
- Manage your commercial relationships tightly with focus on value and partnership
- Be decisive and lead, this is key to building momentum every day.
Damien: Thank you for your time and insights Ken.
For any further questions about this article you can contact Ken Cousins via Ken.cousins@outlook.com or 0434 564 328.
For any recruitment enquiries please contact Damien Moss – DIGIT Group: dmoss@digitgroup.com.au or 0408 690 787.
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