June 1, 1998 Issue of CIO Magazine
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Debra M. Walker, vice president and CIO, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Akron, Ohio
Line of Business Manufacturing
Bio An 18-year employee of Goodyear, recently transferred from the
business side of the company to take over the IS organization
Day to Day Oversees company's IS organization and is key member of
senior management team
Challenges Leveraging her business experience as she leads IS through a
transformation to a shared-services organization
CIO: Why did Goodyear
decide to move you from the retail group to an IS position?
One of the reasons I was selected is because I'm kind of a hybrid person who has a natural affinity for IT in addition to business experience. I had a track record of using IT successfully to achieve business objectives. But even with that natural affinity, I had a lot to learn.
One of the reasons I was selected is because I'm kind of a hybrid person who has a natural affinity for IT in addition to business experience. I had a track record of using IT successfully to achieve business objectives. But even with that natural affinity, I had a lot to learn.
How did you go about making
the transition?
I've spent the last year taking advantage of a lot of opportunities for self-education. I've found that suppliers are more than willing to put together customized training sessions to help me learn more about things I'm interested in.
When you moved from the business side into the role of CIO what were your major goals?
My assignment from the CEO was to find a way to use IT to create competitive advantage for Goodyear. As a department, IS talks about the three levels that we need to work on all the time. The base level is providing a solid, dependable infrastructure for the organization. The second level, which builds on that, is providing excellent customer service. If we achieve those two things, then we get the credibility that allows us to play in the third level: partnering with the business to do the very high value-added activities and create competitive advantage.
What have you accomplished so far?
So far, much of our work has been assessing the situation and describing the IT service model that will help us best address the issues in the current organization and the opportunities available to us. Having gone through that process, we've decided that a shared-services model is the best approach. What we're working on right now is actually creating that organization.
How have you integrated the IS department with the business side?
We've gone through the pattern [with IS] that most companies have. We started out centralized back in the mainframe days. We were very efficient and very reliable, but not responsive enough to the business. Then we went to the opposite end of the continuum and became highly decentralized. We were more integrated with the business but developed a lot of inefficiencies because of duplication of effort. Now what we're doing is moving back toward the center, where we get the benefits of the prior models and minimize the negative aspects. A big part of the communications challenge is explaining [to people throughout the company] that shared services is not a centralized IT organization, because people tend to look at [shared services] and say, "We tried that years ago, and it didn't work."
What advice do you offer other executives moving from the business side to IS?
You have to have a personal tolerance for not knowing everything. You spend your first six months developing vocabulary because there are so many acronyms. Once you get the vocabulary down, you can move to the next level of understanding, which is really getting the concepts. There is a steep learning curve here. For people who have spent many years doing things they have a lot of experience in-things they are comfortable with and in which they see themselves as experts-moving into an area where they can't possibly be experts can be a tough transition.
-Tom Field
Return to Apprentice Systems site
I've spent the last year taking advantage of a lot of opportunities for self-education. I've found that suppliers are more than willing to put together customized training sessions to help me learn more about things I'm interested in.
When you moved from the business side into the role of CIO what were your major goals?
My assignment from the CEO was to find a way to use IT to create competitive advantage for Goodyear. As a department, IS talks about the three levels that we need to work on all the time. The base level is providing a solid, dependable infrastructure for the organization. The second level, which builds on that, is providing excellent customer service. If we achieve those two things, then we get the credibility that allows us to play in the third level: partnering with the business to do the very high value-added activities and create competitive advantage.
What have you accomplished so far?
So far, much of our work has been assessing the situation and describing the IT service model that will help us best address the issues in the current organization and the opportunities available to us. Having gone through that process, we've decided that a shared-services model is the best approach. What we're working on right now is actually creating that organization.
How have you integrated the IS department with the business side?
We've gone through the pattern [with IS] that most companies have. We started out centralized back in the mainframe days. We were very efficient and very reliable, but not responsive enough to the business. Then we went to the opposite end of the continuum and became highly decentralized. We were more integrated with the business but developed a lot of inefficiencies because of duplication of effort. Now what we're doing is moving back toward the center, where we get the benefits of the prior models and minimize the negative aspects. A big part of the communications challenge is explaining [to people throughout the company] that shared services is not a centralized IT organization, because people tend to look at [shared services] and say, "We tried that years ago, and it didn't work."
What advice do you offer other executives moving from the business side to IS?
You have to have a personal tolerance for not knowing everything. You spend your first six months developing vocabulary because there are so many acronyms. Once you get the vocabulary down, you can move to the next level of understanding, which is really getting the concepts. There is a steep learning curve here. For people who have spent many years doing things they have a lot of experience in-things they are comfortable with and in which they see themselves as experts-moving into an area where they can't possibly be experts can be a tough transition.
-Tom Field
Return to Apprentice Systems site
CIO Magazine - June 1, 1998
© 1998 CXO Media Inc.
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