Humour

Michelangelo of IT

T A Balasubramanian on why the CIO’s post has little scope for the creatively-inclined.

Bobo Jitter, stressed-out CIO at Bazooka Company, is back in conversation with Dr Don Jong, expert in the treatment of technology-induced psychotic conditions. Known fondly as The Oddfather, Dr Jong has a propensity to come up with soothingly different fixes for virtually any bizarre condition.

“I just got a long letter from my predecessor, Dodo Antigen, Doc. After apologising for the long silence and wishing me well in my current position, he came up with some thoughts that are … well, giving me sleepless nights.”

“A mere letter keeps you awake, my boy? But why?”

“Well, Doc, let me read out Dodo’s missive so you can see what I mean. Here it goes … Dear Bobo: I took on my first CIO job suffering a grand delusion of importance. Some of us grow into the job, the way a cat becomes part of a house and decides never to go away. But there are others—possibly non-feline in nature, like me—who do not get to like being a CIO, ever. As I think about it, after I was CIO for a while, I began to see the world through a much narrower tunnel than I used to, one that has no opening for the small but very real flourishes of creativity that all of us experience every now and then. Those, indeed may not fit into the master business plan at Bazooka where output and performance means everything …”

“Hmm. It certainly seems that Mr Antigen is looking back with some feeling.”

“Well, then, Dodo goes on to say ... ‘for the senior executives I used to work with, it was all about identity, rather than accomplishment. Although they would never admit it, they considered what I and my department did as utterly meaningless stuff. Perhaps it is, but it has been a long time since any work has given me this kind of peace and satisfaction. Now, I grow roses in my garden, and tend to them with the same care that I tended to my programming in my early days at Bazooka. Every hour is devoted to the project at hand; every day yields progress in the form of flowers I can see and touch, and even smell. That is maybe why the CIO post is not a job for an artist—the Michelangelo of IT—one who adores and understands the art, the science and the romance of silicon and digital life. You may ask me, are those essential qualifications for the job? But ponder on it. Anyone else—other than a Michelangelo—who would assume the mantle of CIO would be a pretender to the studio ...’ on and on he goes for many paragraphs in this manner.”

“Ah, so, we have a classic face-off between the urges of the creative side of Dodo and the brutal demands of the business world. But why does it trouble you so?”

“Wait, listen to this … ‘pretty soon, the perks and attractions of influence, the uneasy interface between personal loyalties and career took their toll, and I began to cut corners without even realising it. Packaged software seemed less risky, hence more attractive, than creating uniquely fashioned programming solutions, and no one remembers why or how I and my team got those results.  My Michelangelo had been quietly buried, and I had become that boring dreadful creature called a ‘corporate performer.’ An old boss of mine once told me that avoiding corporate boredom is one of the most daunting challenges of a successful career. The CIO job had become a bore. I resigned …’ and that is where I felt a great sense of empathy with Dodo.”

“Ah, so you are bored with your present job?”

“Well, no, Doc. At least, not yet. But Dodo’s letter points out to the inevitable route that my career will take.”

“Of course it will, Bobo. But only if you respond to your career chase in the same way that Dodo does. In fact, if you had not received these fanciful recollections from Dodo, you might not even be thinking about where your career path is likely to be going—why, you might have continued enjoying your blissful state indefinitely.”

“Exactly. I have already been feeling quite placid and insanely comfortable. This is like the calm before the storm.”

“It is interesting that you should even consider Dodo’s letter as a serious weather forecast. Do you know that the job of the CIO today, thankless though you imagine it can become, is possibly as important as the job of a magician in ancient times when the king needed to be amused?”

“How is that, Doc?”

“Well, I for one consider that someone who can design software, create and tune networks, and make computers do tricks is an exceptionally talented magician. And I would double my awe for the ones who can understand it all well enough to put them together into useful systems bang in the middle of a company like Bazooka, where every department would probably fall apart without a network in the backbone.  More exceptionally magical are the few with the vision to see the big IT picture and arrange it in unusual combinations for new and profitable uses.”

“I never thought of it that way, Doc. You’re sure about this magician thing?”

“Look at it this way. Dodo, your predecessor CIO friend, imagined that he was not having the freedom to express his creativity inside the system—that the Michelangelo in him was getting stuffed. So he gave up and turned into this ‘terrible’ corporate performer. Well, companies like Bazooka are famously picky in who they choose to promote—the ones who make the bottom line fatter. So when they go about the process of measuring the effectiveness or critiquing the personalities who, like Dodo, are actually artists in sheep’s clothing, they use the same sloppy yardstick as they might for executives in less exceptional areas of the company—such as finance or sales. But then, that is simply the law of the corporate jungle—every animal drinks from the same pool.”

“Come on, Doc, how can Dodo pack off the artist inside him and be happy?”

“The delicate culture of creating an environment where both creativity and business can flourish has always been at risk, Bobo. What with the corporate approach to the CIO as another profit center, there is a growing problem—how to get senior managers in the same boat  with creative CIOs whom they meet for the first time in the boardroom. But then, again, if Dodo had actually listened to Michelangelo closely, he would have found a different path.”

“And what exactly did Michelangelo have to say?”

“He said, and I quote, ‘The artist ought never to allow anything to overcome his sense of the main end of art—perfection.’ Now, if you know that you are a magician in a king’s court, then you should also know that nobody—not even the king—can actually measure the effectiveness of a great trick. Real magicians do not care about such things, even if it is something imposed on them—what they care about is in making the illusion perfect, because it is never good enough in their own estimate.”

“Ah, Doc, that is a great relief. As a magician, I can now keep my head up at Bazooka.”

“Voila! You can thank Dodo for that.”