The Accpac R&D management team was invited out to dinner with the new Chief Technology Officer of Sage North America, Motasim Najib earlier this week. It was a very interesting and enjoyable evening. We had no idea we were going to be invited to dinner which was good and bad. Good, because dinner was  informal, unfortunate because perhaps I could have prepared a little better had I known. Anyway on to the highlights and some observations from the evening.

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Be prepared

Have your elevator pitch ready and make it count. It was  a real eye opener to watch the difference between some senior staff with polished pitches compared to the rest of us. I am very comfortable with my communication style for peers and co-workers in R&D. I know many of their key concerns and have tailored my communication accordingly. I didn’t really know what Motasim’s expectations were. On a couple of occasions directors were adding in key pieces of information to my answers after I had finished. I was not alone in this regard. Not a  big  deal but an important opportunity to improve for future reference. Although the R&D management team did not have anything formally prepared it was obvious that we are genuinely committed to our proposed re-org. I believe Motasim was quite impressed by this.

Be open-minded

This was a rare opportunity to ask questions about our strategy to an executive at the very top of the company.  I was pleasantly surprised to see how open-minded Motasim was. I was even more amazed at how candid he was about our strengths and weaknesses as an organization. Senior leaders are often “wooden” in their public communications to employees and keep strictly to the company line. This is necessary but makes it harder for their message to really “resonate” with staff. In most meetings I attend around R&D standards (Motasim is not present) the message we have received is “the CTO wants x” . I and many others interpret this as a mandate. In conversation it was  a totally different experience. His passion around product quality was evident. As a QA manager I agree with him that software organizations in ERP are too focused on technology and new features. Minimizing disruption and delivering robust high quality releases are less sexy than new customer acquisition. They tend to receive lower priority as a result. His leadership approach seemed much more around “I’d like you to think of” rather than you MUST do x. Sage’s development strategy made a lot more sense after I was able to ask a few questions for clarification.

Time perspectives differ in strategy and operations

Motasim was very interested to hear our challenges and seemed generally supportive. It was entertaining and frustrating to hear him strongly agree various operational issues should be addressed. Leaders often lose credibility with employees when the time taken to implement decisions is excessive. The time horizons and therefore expectations of these employees and senior executives are very different. For example, an issue could be resolved or in progress from an executives progress but could still be  eighteen months or more away in terms of  implementation. This information is generally not available to employees who wonder what happened to the public commitment. With no insight into the progress and immaterial movement on previous projects employees often turn cynical. The other interesting challenge that I saw was that decisions that a senior executive like Motasim could make and implement within weeks could take a year or more for lesser mortals to implement. He seemed genuinely puzzled why we were unable to resolve various organizational issues more quickly.

Why metrics are necessary

The CIO role at Sage is very difficult. Sage has over forty products across numerous categories in North America. Everyone at dinner was very positive about the Accpac R&D organization. I left dinner that night wondering how Motasim gets to the next layer of information? This is why metrics are so critical. It allows leaders to ask intelligent questions and  probe for areas where the local management team may need guidance or help. This is the nature of corporate life. Everyone makes best efforts to impress leaders. It seemed like Motasim could add a lot of value to some tactical debates as we review our future plans. I might think otherwise if we had a very different perspectives! Perhaps this is not the most effective use of a CIO’s time though.

Final thoughts

In closing, our new CTO was not like I expected at all. Senior executives are people with their quirks and strengths like the rest of us. It was good to get to know him on a more personal level. He seemed more focused on the business side than I had expected. With a little more information I agreed with him on most points. I learned a huge amount about the business  in a few hours. Motasim seemed accessible and reasonable. It will be interesting to hear his perspective on Accpac R&D’s and Sage North America’s progress a year from now.