If you think you are busy in your life as a CIO, consider this. Leonardo was a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer.
By Ross O. Storey
09 Sep 2008
Long before I saw the movie ‘The Da Vinci Code’, based on the hugely successful 2003 novel by US author Dan Brown, I have been fascinated with the life and works of Leonardo Da Vinci, the 16th century genius who, hundreds of years before they were actually developed, came up with machines such as the helicopter, the parachute, the submarine and the tank. I put Leonardo right up there with Albert Einstein, Mahatma Ghandi and Stephen Hawking as my personal life heroes.
If you think you are busy in your life as a CIO, consider this. Leonardo was a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer. Such was the diversity of his brilliance, the claims, by some, that he must have traveled back in time to have been able to conceive of such inventions, give me pause for second thoughts. Da Vinci is regarded as perhaps the most diversely talented human being ever to have lived.
The reason for my present musings on this great genius stems from a clever presentation to the MIS Asia IT Summit 2008, some weeks ago, by DHL Express Asia Pacific’s CIO Nariman Karimi. By the way, if you didn’t attend this event, you missed out on some fascinating and diverse presentations from prominent IT leaders, in one of our best events for years, even if I do say so myself. The theme of our 2008 Summit was ‘The Art of Business – IT Alignment’, a perennial subject that has occupied the minds of senior IT executives since Bill Gates wore shorts.
Nariman gave a thoroughly entertaining and informative presentation during which he argued that CIOs today have a lot in common with artists like Da Vinci in the way their approach their work. Yes, said Karimi, Business – IT Alignment can legitimately be called an ‘art’ because there are many creative ways to achieve it and no firm, fixed formula for how to do so. Like CIOs, artists build upon the volumes of previous knowledge and wisdom of their predecessors. Painters have their art and craft, IT executives have structure, governance and process. Both have their culture.
Nariman likened creating an IT project to painting a masterpiece like Da Vinci’s painting ‘The Mona Lisa’. Just like Leonardo was painting, on commission, to please his client, CIOs today, who seek the ‘holy grail’ of Business – IT alignment must align their projects to the needs of the customer. They must be focused on ‘customer-centric IT’. To be truly aligned with the business, a senior IT executive must be a stakeholder who makes the customer experience more important than managing employee productivity. Like Leonardo Da Vinci, CIOs today must work with their tools to ‘make the beauty last’, to develop projects which appeal because of their simplicity (complexity does not necessarily mean efficiency) and which are in harmony with their environment. Even today, six centuries beyond his lifetime, Leonardo continues to make a technological, and artistic, impact.
Ross O. Storey, currently the Managing Editor of Fairfax Business Media Asia, is responsible for the editorial content and production of MIS Asia, CIO Asia, Computerworld Singapore and Computerworld Malaysia magazines.
