The Grill: Tracey Rothenberger wears two hats at Ricoh Americas

Many IT leaders have moved between technology and operations, but Tracey Rothenberger's dual role at Ricoh Americas is still unique in the world of IT management. Rothenberger last year added chief process officer to his existing titles of senior vice president and CIO. "We were trying to merge two multibillion-dollar companies -- IKON Office Solutions and Ricoh. When you merge two large organizations, you have so much system and operations and process interaction, our chairman saw a distinct need to create a specific role to come up with our strategy so we'd have the best processes as we went through this transition and built the new company," Rothenberger explains. Here he reflects on the career that brought him to his current position.

Tracey Rothenberger

Family: Wife and two beagles.

Hobbies: Long-distance running and high-performance motorcycle racing.

Do you plan to run a full marathon? The training time is quite a commitment. I'm a Type A personality, so I don't want to do anything halfway.

What book are you currently reading? Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room, by David Weinberger.

What's your biggest career goal? Probably to figure out my next career phase. The role of CIO is changing, and the role I'll have 10 years from now is probably something I can't conceive of today.

How did you land the CPO position? I've led large business transformation initiatives in the past at IKON, and I've led large business stabilization efforts at both IKON and Ricoh. So I had a good reputation for being able to come in and collaborate and see where the organization may need help bringing to bear those resources in a way that was very dynamic and very cross-functional. Also, my ability to put together collaborative teams that don't report to me is one of the skills they valued.

How does the CPO role fit with your duties as CIO? Sometimes it doesn't, but oftentimes it does. When an organization is going through a business and process transformation, there's almost always a corresponding systems implication and those tend to be expensive. And if you're trying to create a new business solution or innovate in a specific area, you want to have that strategy pretty well thought-out before stepping into a new system investment. So I'd say 25% to 30% of my time is spent doing work that never touches IT, and that's in areas where I'm focused on process improvement. But when it does transition into needing a technology, then we have better clarity and alignment on what we need for IT. And that's where you get the real harmony, because you're able to provide much better clarity on what's needed, you're able to control the scope of projects and drive them more quickly, and ultimately they end up being less costly because you have such good, sharp focus.

How do you get all of your work done? I have a very strong leadership team, and my leaders have very good alignment with my expectations, the expectations of the corporation, and they have the ability to execute. They have a high degree of empowerment, and that allows me to play a real strategic role.

How do you build a good team? You need individuals who are decisive. I don't want leaders who are sitting around trying to analyze things to death. I'd rather have someone make a decision and change directions later if they get new information. I'm looking for people who have managerial courage, who can raise their hand and disagree. If we have a lively debate inside our teams in the right context, we ultimately get to the best decisions. And I look for people who are good coaches, because they have to take this message down to the next level so we can get alignment, because we're talking about fairly large teams.

I've heard you can talk about "the power of a multilevel approach to business transformation." What's that? There's a lot of talk about executive sponsorship, and that's one level of business transformation. But a deeper, more significant level is: Who are the subject-matter experts inside those leaders' teams who really need to come to the table to take a concept to a tactical level? That's where an organization might struggle, and you find the alignment or commitment isn't as strong as you think. If a top leader isn't willing to put the best and brightest on a transformation initiative, then that top leader doesn't see the value in the potential success of that initiative. So when I think of a multilevel approach, I'm thinking of not only the top-level buy-in, but [whether we] are also getting the best and brightest subject-matter experts engaged at the right level.

You wrote in one of your blogs that "IT people are notorious control freaks." As a leader, how do you manage that mentality? When you have leaders or employees stuck in the old way, you have to call them out on it, and twist it backward and ask what the customer ultimately is trying to get out of the experience. They're not trying to intentionally circumvent IT; they have something they're trying to accomplish. How do we help them?

Do you see any required leadership qualities that are unique to IT managers? No, not at the leadership level. IT leaders generally like to think of themselves as somehow different than other business leaders, but I don't see why. Everyone has domain expertise, but the leadership qualities are the same.

Do those qualities come naturally to you? I have to work on all of them all the time. For me, the easiest one is decisiveness. I tend to be a rapid-response person. I tend to leap first and be more agile in changing that approach if need be. The one that I always have to work on is the coaching one. I always have to remember to make sure that I'm helping people understand why I have a particular opinion or observation, because when they understand why I'm trying to do something, it helps to get them more brought-in.

-- Interview by Computerworld contributing writer Mary K. Pratt (marykpratt@verizon.net)