CIOIN

Back In 1985, the Harvard Business Review published an article by human resources Prof. John J. Gabarro called When a New Manager Takes Charge, which highlighted how industry insiders-people who have prior experience with an industry-take charge at a new job much faster than outsiders. The HBR piece only strengthened a suspicion many leaders had: Taking up a new job that cuts across industry verticals is a whole lot tougher than getting something in your vertical.
That's a rule Sanjeev Kumar, Group CIO at the Adhunik Group of Industries, scoffs at. Kumar who moved to the steel manufacturer in May 2010 from Polygenta Technologies-a specialty yarn producer-has always made a conscious decision to change verticals when switching jobs.
"It's a wonderful opportunity to prove your ability to understand, adapt and adopt," he says, referring to a list of the initial hiccups senior leaders face in their first 100 days at a new job from figuring out the territory and familiarizing oneself with the organization's culture and work processes, to shaping key relationships, and imparting the confidence and credibility to lead.
It isn't unusual for CIOs to spend a considerable portion of their initial days taking in new business modules and processes-leaving little time for action. That's why, in their book The New Leader's 100-day Action Plan, authors George B. Bradt, Jayme A. Check, and Jorge E. Pedraza recommend getting a head start. In Kumar's case, he began his discovery process on the day of his interview.

"Asking a lot of questions about the work, the people, and the organization gave me a fair idea about the expectations management had of me and where they expected me to improvise," says Kumar, who adds, "It's important to get information from the horse's mouth."
His early start gave him a heads up on a thorny problem the Adhunik Group faced: some of its processes were not integrated into the company's ERP, creating holes in information flow. For example, at the group's Rourkela steel plant, a staff of 30 checked the gross and net weight of incoming and outgoing trucks and manually entered these into Excel sheets. It was a process that could take up to five hours and opened up the process to mistakes that could potentially mean a loss in the millions.He quickly tapped into his network of peers in similar industries and service providers to find out ways to eliminate the manual process. His strategy is right out of the The New Leader's 100-day Action Plan, which urges leaders to invest in a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Bound) win early in the first 100 days.

Two weeks from the day he first clocked in, Kumar walked out of his plush office in Kolkata and traveled the 500-odd kilometers to the Rourkela plant. He says the trip, which took several hours because there was no direct transport available, was worth it because his firsthand look at the logistics side of the business allowed him to quickly implement and integrate a weigh bridge application with SAP. Today, it enables staff to enter data directly into the company's ERP, cutting down a process that took five hours to a few minutes-and saving the company a lot of money.
"The weigh bridge integration project was a smart win," says Kumar. "Within sixty days of joining Adhunik, I had brought in significant changes and cost savings with very little investment. Since the issue it addressed was specific to the manufacturing plants and new business processes, it also helped me establish more credibility."
For other CIOs attempting a similar quick win, Kumar has some advice: Be cautious. You don't want to rock the boat too much, too early, he says. "Making structural changes too early may lead to dissent among colleagues, he says referring to significant number of people whose jobs the weighbridge project made redundant. Kumar, says he had to ensure that two-thirds of them were absorbed in other processes within the plant.
Now who said outsider?