Leadership and Building a Leadership Team:
An Interview with Jeff Lucchesi

Jeff Lucchesi has a distinguished career in IT across multiple industries with several posts as the CIO of notable Silicon Valley companies including DHL Airways, Corio (now IBM Applications), and BMHC. He is respected by his peers, many of whom worked for Jeff as part of his leadership team and have since gone on to become successful CIOs themselves. Given his tenure, his success, and the following of support he has from those who have worked for and with him, we thought it fitting to interview Jeff on the topic of leadership and building a leadership team.

Taos: What would you say are the top leadership characteristics of a successful CIO?

Jeff: You have to relate to the business leadership and be able to put a plan together that is in line with what they are trying to achieve. Once that is established, you must be able to deliver the plan consistently and often, keeping in mind the fundamentals of support needed to run the business. In other words, you can’t wait a year to start seeing results from large investments.

Taos: And do believe these leadership characteristics can be developed?

Jeff: There are different types of CIOs. For example, some are more CTO based. They are more technology driven and have some areas of weakness on the business side. Conversely, there are CIOs who came out of the business and are more business driven, but may not have the breadth of understanding of technology they need. Shoring up one side or the other can be done, but you need to recognize where your deficiencies lie and be willing to step up to that challenge. Balancing strengths between technology focus and business focus isn’t the only area to look out for, but it is one of the big ones. Another example is being able to focus on the big picture. Some CIOs are very good strategists, they like the big picture, but hate the details; some have a hard time getting out of the details and really love getting their hands dirty. Again, there needs to be a balance and in this case I’d say much more heavily weighted toward big picture and strategy. I still see too many CIOs stuck in the trenches.

Taos: In terms of building a strong IT Leadership team what should be the focus of the CIO?

Jeff: The first thing is to recognize what your own weaknesses are and plug those gaps. You’ve got to be able to put your ego on hold and realize what you’re good at and where your weaknesses are, and surrounded yourself with strong players that fill those gaps. Really looking at yourself in the mirror and honestly reflecting on the things you do well and the areas where you could use some help is one of the hardest things to do, but if embraced it will help you create a powerful team.

Taos: How do you come to an understanding of what those areas are for yourself?

Jeff: If you don’t know them by the time you’re a CIO you’re going to have problems. It means your ego is too big for the job. For most CIOs it takes a long time to get to the role and you start seeing patterns in yourself as you grow through the ranks. By the time you are a CIO you’ve got a pretty good idea what your strengths and weaknesses are.

Taos: How do you empower your leadership team to take on your vision?

Jeff: You’ve got to build it together and you’ve got to get them to come on board without being heavy handed. Here’s where the art of negotiation and persuasion come to play. You’ve got to have those skills otherwise you’re not going to make it both inside your organization and dealing with the business leadership. In fact, I think these two skills are the primary skills required for the job. I can have a vision and a strategy, but other people have to execute it. When it really comes to shaping the detail underneath, you need your direct reports to build that with you. If they’re not part of the building blocks to get there, they’re not going to buy in, and neither will their direct reports.

Taos: What are some of the tools or resources that you’ve found to be most valuable in developing the strength of your senior leadership team?

Jeff: One tool is to do a discovery period during the first 90 days on the job; understanding the culture of the company you’re in, understanding what the issues are, how you work through the channels in that particular company, and how things get resolved. Every environment is different. The types of people you’re going to select are going to be different depending on the demands of the environment and the characteristics of the company. When I start a job and do my 90 day assessment, I look at where the disconnects are, and I look at what the business is trying to achieve. I look at what IT is doing: and what is going well and what is not. Then, I provide a report to the CEO and tell him what I plan on doing to get things aligned and get his buyoff before I really start bringing people in.

Taos: Ok, you’ve done your assessment, you’ve built your vision, now you’re starting to bring your team in and, as you said earlier, you make them part of the process to build an execution plan or they won’t buy in and align to it. So what is the process that you use to build alignment within your leadership team?

Jeff: At the 90 day point I’ve got a pretty good idea of what needs to happen at the eighty thousand foot view. Then I bring people in who have either worked in the type of environment I’m trying to drive to, or understand what the issues are and have a fairly good idea of how to solve them. I make sure that their philosophy and my philosophy are aligned. We haven’t put a strategy together yet. It’s more about asking them, “here’s what the issues are within this organization, how would you go about making this work better?” and seeing how their thought process works and whether it aligns to mine. Once you get them on board, then you do the detail work. It’s the equivalent of building a house. The idea stage of a house is a block diagram. I can layout where the living room would be and where the dining room would be, but I haven’t detailed it. I haven’t blueprinted it yet. So the actual blueprint of your strategic plan starts after you’ve gotten them onboard and you’re laying out the detail on how you’re going to get there.

Taos: This is assuming hiring new leadership, what about the team you inherited?

Jeff: That’s part of the assessment process, looking at the management team that’s already in place. I have never removed a whole management team from an existing organization. I have removed zero. I have removed part of it, but I have never removed a whole management team before. My assessment of the team has a lot to do with alignment. Are our philosophies the same? Do we have the same ideas on how we want to get there? Are we on the same page, or close to being on the same page on what are some of the things that might have to happen over the next year to be successful? Do they have the skills to accomplish that? Do they have the management skills? Do they know how to be leaders in their own areas? There’s a whole series of things that I look at when I perform my initial assessments of individuals on my team.

Taos: What is your view on when to promote from within versus hire someone from the outside?

Jeff: That depends on what the company needs. At my current company, the business was way ahead of IT and it wasn’t so much IT’s fault, there just wasn’t any investments in IT. I needed to bring people in who had worked at large companies, who knew how to grow organizations. Many of my staff had been at the company for a long time and weren’t familiar with ways to grow an organization. Once I did the assessment, I realized that it would take a while for them to get there and we didn’t have the time to develop some of the folks that were in management jobs. So I had to bring management in from the outside. The alternative would have taken too long and the individuals I had were more technical than management. They’re still in my organization today. I didn’t lose any of them. I put them in jobs that aligned more towards their skills and discovered that many of them didn’t want the managerial jobs anyway.

Taos: How do you develop and grow your leadership team over time?

Jeff: At my age, mentoring is what I like to do most. I’ve got a succession plan at my company. I’ve got the right people in place. And I spend more of my time mentoring now than I did probably five years ago.

Taos: How open are you about what your succession plan is with your team?

Jeff: I always try to make sure that if something happens to me the company’s not left without some leadership that can keep the engine going. This is not something I’m totally open about with everyone, but it is something I try to keep covered in my own planning. I look at where the company is going to be four or five years from now. At least, what the company’s approach is and where they believe they’re going to be and what type of challenges the company’s going to face. Then I try to make sure I have someone on my team who is a year away from being a CIO and I spend more time trying to nurture them.

Taos: In closing, as you reflect on your recent roles and what you have learned from watching and listening to your peers, what do you see as key to the effectiveness of the CIO today?

Jeff: It hasn’t changed that much. I read the magazines and I hear what CIOs are saying, and talking about regarding what things are changing, but there are common threads that haven’t changed at all. I think the creditability factor is always going to be there; if you’re good at what you do and you deliver what you say you’re going to deliver and you don’t spend money on technologies that never bring business benefit, you’re going to have creditability. Another key point is how you engage with the business. In every company where I’ve been a CIO, there has been an executive level steering committee for IT projects. It’s when you do not engage, when you’re not connected to the business, when you don’t fully understand what the business is going through and trying to achieve, when you fall in love with the technology over the process or the business goal, that’s when you’ll fall on your face.

Taos: Thanks Jeff, it was a pleasure speaking with you.

Jeffrey F. Lucchesi
Senior Vice President, Chief Information Officer

Mr. Lucchesi joined BMHC in August 2004 as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer. From 2000 to 2004, he was Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations for Corio, Inc., an enterprise application service provider. Mr. Lucchesi also served from 1994 to 2000 as Vice President and Chief Information Officer for DHL Express, a leader in international air express services.