Oct 30 2007
CIO|08 Conference - Monte Ford from American Airlines Views IT Organization as Innovation Center
Mike Friedenberg the President and CEO of CIO magazine kicked off day two of the CIO|08 conference by introducing Monte Ford, Senior Vice President & CIO of American Airlines (AMR).
Monte has had a long and illustrious career, resulting in his induction into the CIO Hall of Fame last night. Prior to his time at American, Ford held positions at The Associates First Capital Corporation (which was acquired by Citigroup), and the Bank of Boston, which became Fleet Bank, and has now been acquired by the Bank of America.
Ford said the airline industry has several challenges impacting their business currently including: (1) high fuel prices (2) load factors (3) governmental constraints; and (4) service issues. With these in mind, it is a challenge to keep people informed about their journey and at the same time keep the internal systems up with all the external factors that are at times uncontrollable.
When asked about innovation, Monte spoke with reverence about Max Hoffman, the speaker and former Chairman of the Sabre Group at last night’s Hall of Fame ceremony. Monte feels it was Max who is known as the “Father of Automation” in the travel industry who not only pushed his own organization to innovate, but also his vendors. Innovation, Monte says, was top down at the time due to the hierarchal nature of organizations. Today however, organizations are becoming more flat. Innovation will be a derivative of this flat structure, and it must be embraced in these changing times as it from “The Wisdom of Crowds.” Unfortunately, he warned the audience to be aware that innovation is where the risks will permeate from too.
The pace of innovation needs to be self-managed as it is never occurring fast enough. The more you do, the more they’re going to want you to do, and the faster they want you to do it. As such, you need to create your own metrics to determine what is the right level for innovation within your organization. While the CIO’s budget can often be viewed as a cost center, it can also be viewed as an innovation center. As a result of this perspective, one way to look at the IT organization is as a portfolio. IT spends are strategic discussions which are not insular and need to include other top C-level executives. However, none of this can be done without people, so it is critical to hold these discussion first as a part of any budgetary discussion.