Senior managers overseeing major IT projects have, to use the words of Australian communications company Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo, three months to “catch the vision or catch the bus”, when it comes to understanding the significance of major IT projects, according to PwC national transformation leader Stephen Woolley.
“A visionary and charismatic CEO might think they would win the hearts and minds of their direct reports over a period of 12 months,” Woolley told an audience of information executives at a recent AIIA CxO Forum in Melbourne. “The lesson we learned was that you can’t wait 12 months, and you can’t wait six months. If they haven’t gotten on the bus in three months, move them on and get someone that you trust to run it.”
