IT chiefs should encourage companies to have high aspirations even thoughcolleagues might not see why they should, writes Fiona Harvey

Looking out of his window in BT's offices in the City of London, Sinclair Stockman points to St Paul's cathedral and tells a story.

When Sir Christopher Wren was engaged to rebuild the cathedral after the Great Fire of London, he presented his plans to Charles II, together with an estimate of costs. But the king thought the project too expensive and instructed Wren to lose the dome.

So the architect set up his offices in a hostelry nearby to oversee the building work, carried on with his original plans regardless and simply presented the authorities with a beautifully domed cathedral and a big bill.

For Mr Stockman, chief information officer at BT, there's a lesson in the story for information technology (IT) directors everywhere. "The chief information officer \ needs to have the courage of his conviction. You have to help create the aspirations within a company, to drive companies forward, to encourage them to aim high even though they might not necessarily see why they should," he explains, enthusiastically.

After decades of investment in and development of IT, "most big outfits are quite good at the basic stuff now", he notes, and standard technology systems have ceased to give companies as much competitive edge as in the past.

Thus, creating those high aspirations, as high as the dome of St Paul's, "becomes a key differentiator between one business and another, and enables a business to transform itself into something much better", he says.

Mr Stockman loves to tell stories. Another favourite is to compare the history of computer networking to two prominent saints of the early Christian church, St Patrick and St Augustine. The latter "hid himself in the desert and got a completely warped view of reality".

But St Patrick, notes Mr Stockman (himself a native of Northern Ireland), followed the Celtic tradition, which said that the greatest sacrifice one could make was to leave home and go wandering. His work in spreading the gospel led to the setting up of a sizeable network of monasteries around Europe.

The lesson, Mr Stockman concludes, is that just having the data is not enough - St Augustine and St Patrick had access to the same Christian teachings - and the true value comes from having a network to communicate that data.

For IT managers, that means following in the footsteps of St Patrick and evangelising within their companies, he adds.

"You have to explain IT to the business. You have to set expectations for what is possible, and what is not possible.

"And you have to create an impatience in the business, an impatience to get on and improve things, to realise the visions... Don't accept just being good," he says.

Talking about IT to people within the business who do not understand technology can be a problem. "IT is always to blame for something," he notes.

Mr Stockman prefers to talk in terms of "information" and "information systems" rather than to use the terms IT and technology, because he believes this better encapsulates the role of IT, and resonates more clearly with people in other parts of the business.

Anathema to him is the idea of IT as a mere support function. "That's not the way it should be thought of any more. Almost whatever your business these days, IT will be at the core of that business," he argues.

Take Ryanair. Its business model may rely on cutting the frills from flying and driving hard bargains with airports, but none of it would be possible without complex computer systems that can work out yield management and dynamically adjust pricing.

The challenge for the CIO today is to keep that focus on evangelism and aspiration despite the constant pressure to cut costs - and, sometimes, corners.

Mr Stockman shakes his head: "It's very difficult in this environment where lots of companies seem to see IT as a cost that they want to minimise. CIOs come under a lot of pressure, they are forced to cut staff, to cut projects."

Concentrating on the future can be very difficult to combine with the IT department's day-to-day role in ensuring "the bedrock stability of the systems, their security and integrity".

If the base IT systems fall down, no one will care about the grand visions the CIO has for the future. "And then if you do keep everything up and running all the time, if you're very efficient at that, then you get depressed because no one is thanking you."

To Mr Stockman, the rapidly changing nature of IT forces companies to aspire ever higher whether they feel comfortable with that or not. Technology goes out of date too quickly to let them stand still.

For instance, companies such as BT used to write complex billing systems for themselves. "Actually, we used to go mad writing them," he jokes.

There was a time, even, when it was fashionable to say that BT was its billing system. Yet those systems now have been reduced to a commodity that can be bought off the shelf. That tendency towards commoditisation means companies have to fight hard to stay ahead of the pack.

The possibility of failure haunts IT projects too and, within many companies, there is a suspicion of the IT function that leads managers in other departments to round on the IT department at the merest whiff of a break down.

Projects fail for a wide variety of reasons, many of them nothing to do with technology, and some nothing to do with the CIO. You have to accept a certain amount of risk, Mr Stockman concedes.

Wren had to shoulder the risk of the dome of St Paul's. But Mr Stockman believes that risk can be minimised if proper methodologies are adhered to, and companies should keep the risks of IT in perspective - plenty of projects in other parts of organisations fail too, from products that customers do not want to unsuccessful advertising campaigns.

One of the big challenges must be to ensure that, whatever new systems are developed, they are accessible to and accepted by the users.

"No one ever saved money by developing and deploying information systems. You only save money if you use them," Mr Stockman advises.

While the CIO must fully understand a company's IT architecture, and the engineering behind it, and must be able to design that architecture to greatest effect, the most important task is to align the information systems behind the organisation's business goals.

"That requires a deep understanding of those business goals. And then, on top of that, you have to have the vision to see where IT in the future could take you, how it could help the businesses fundamental goals, if you have the right ambitions, and to work out a way, step by step, of achieving those ambitions," he says.

Aside from these Herculean tasks, one remaining ticklish problem is to persuade the board of the value of those ambitions and get the go ahead. Mr Stockman's advice is straightforward: "You need to get them to think it's their idea. Then it's easy." - (Financial Times Service)