Trying to connect with Irish CIOs

Margaret Smith runs a networking group for chief information officers, writes Karlin Lillington.

Margaret Smith, who has held some of the most senior information technology roles in British companies over the past 30 years, was crystal clear on one aspect when it came to making a career choice more than three decades ago. "I didn't know what I wanted to be, but I knew I definitely didn't want to do computers," she laughs.

However, computers have very much ended up being at the centre of her life as she has worked her way up several corporate ladders (British Gas, Woolwich and Legal & General) to the chief information officer (CIO) position - including two stints in that role for Legal & General.

Now she is managing director for CIO networking group CIO Connect, which brings together British CIOs - the people who oversee the entire information and communications technology infrastructure for their firms.

CIO Connect runs 150 events a year, from informal lunches to formal events, and has about 200 members, she says.

Running it is a new challenge which she relishes after 16 happy years with Legal & General.

"I really like challenging myself," she says, speaking after an Eircom-sponsored breakfast talk to financial industry executives in Dublin.

In her CIO Connect role, she maintains her position as one of the most prominent women in the IT industry in Britain.

She always loved maths and physics at school, and went to university to study aeronautical engineering at a time when very few girls enrolled in such courses. But she grew bored with the coursework and decided to try the real world, signing up with a temp agency. That landed her a secretarial job where she briefly passed her time filing and typing.

Amazingly, she was spotted by a manager who was intrigued with the young woman who stayed to chat with the programmers when she went to pick up their computer punch cards and knew what she was talking about.

The next thing she knew, she was supervisor of the input/output area and she found herself moving up through a sequence of companies in computer-related positions.

One sent her off to be a trainee programmer and she learned the computing languages Assembly and Cobol. But she never had much chance to use her programming skills as firm after firm placed her in top managerial roles.

Smith's early appointments came at a time when it was perfectly legal for firms to say during job interviews that they had their doubts about her staying power as certainly she would go off and have children.

"I was there in that particular job longer than all the men they hired at the same time," she says wryly - indeed, she became the team leader and ended up overseeing all the men that came in with her.

However, she says she wouldn't describe herself "as typically ambitious, but I am ambitious for a challenge."

A typical challenge for her seems to be to take on roles such as deputy head of programming at British Gas, a position she stepped into, aged just 25. At Woolwich, she was development director and then promoted to IT director.

At Legal & General, she was CIO twice and was on the corporate board for 14 years.

She wears that experience lightly, however. She is an engaging, funny and relaxed woman, happy to poke fun at herself and very no-nonsense about her role as a woman in what remains a man's industry.

The technology industry was always a comfortable fit for her as a woman, she says, and she rarely had issues with men uncomfortable with her role as their boss.

She likes having mixed teams of men and women "because they bring different things to the party. I think women juggle multiple tasks very well, while men are good at focusing."

Women can have difficulties when they are promoted into managerial roles, she thinks. Perhaps due to the lack of role models, she finds women often have a very tough time in their first six months to find a consistent and stable managerial style. If they survive that first six months, they usually end up being fine.

But women make excellent managers, she believes, not least because they can bring the experience of managing a family to the workplace. "I do think having a child makes you a better manager - whether you are male or female - because you learn give and take," she says.

Is it harder for women to make a career and have a family? "It is difficult to juggle, but is it more difficult for women? I don't know. I am very lucky to have a husband who supported me in my career. Also, I had my first child at 37, so I was already very established in my career.

"The week before I went back to work after the baby, they promoted me. It was about the worst thing they could do! It was really quite tough. Overall, though, I don't think having younger children alongside a career is that difficult. I think the big challenge is when they're in their teens."

Her work with CIO Connect seems to be equal parts managing and proselytising. She wants CIOs to understand that networking isn't just about a social life but is central to how CIOs work - sharing information, following industry trends, discussing industry challenges.

The role of CIO is different from other managerial roles, Smith believes, perhaps because of its technical nature.

"It's quite a lonely job because no one in your company understands what you do - or is remotely interested," she laughs.

She is hoping that Irish CIOs will be interested in opening a branch here and, to that end, has solicited responses on industry issues from 30 Irish CIOs and will hold a dinner in Dublin on April 7th to gauge reaction.

"We want to establish a larger CIO Connect community in Ireland," she says. "We have quite a few CIOs who will be coming to a dinner to discuss if and how we could take it forward."