Preface: How to Handle Herculean Tasks

EVER SINCE THE ROLE of CIO (chief information officer) began to become commonplace in the IT industry as well as in IT user organisations, it was subject to snide remarks, the key one being "Career Is Over." That's because the typical CIO needs to be multihatted: technocrat, businessperson, cheerleader, and as the custodian of the ITD (IT Department) finances. Some have even likened the duties and tasks of a CIO to the Twelve Labours of Hercules.

Who was Hercules? Most people would have some idea of Hercules from the many Hollywood films since 1957 that dramatized the heroic exploits of Hercules. The movies portray Hercules as a Roman hero. However, not many would know that the Roman hero's real name was Heracles and that his country of birth was Ancient Greece, not Ancient Rome.

According to Greek mythology, Heracles was the son of Zeus (King of the Gods) and Alcmene (granddaughter of Perseus). King Zeus had sworn that the next son born in the Perseid House should become Ruler of Greece. However, due to a trick played by Zeus' jealous wife, Hera, it was not Heracles but another child, the sickly Eurystheus, who was born first and became heir. When Heracles turned 18, he had to serve King Eurystheus and also suffer the vengeful persecution of Hera.

How did the Twelve Labours of Hercules come about? According to an epic Greek poem written in 600 BC by Peisander, in a fit of rage and madness induced by Hera, Heracles killed his wife and children. He then prayed to the God Apollo for guidance and went to the Oracle at Delphi. The Oracle told Heracles to serve his half-brother (and the King of Mycenae), Eurystheus, for 10 years. During that time, he had to perform 12 difficult feats, called "Labours". After completing his tasks, Heracles became a hero in the Greco-Roman world for his combination of physical strength, ingenuity, and bravery.

What's the connection with ICT? After joining the IT profession, I was often warned by friends and colleagues that developing large and complex ICT systems was a Herculean task. Considering what Hercules had gone through, I thought that they might have been exaggerating. But when I started to gain more experience and knowledge, I realised that there were indeed reasons to compare the rigours of systems development with the Labours of Hercules, albeit on a different scale.

To solve every problem, Heracles had to rely on hard skills, such as physical strength and stamina - and soft skills, such as bravery, ingenuity, and teamwork. Similarly, in the large, complex, and rapidly changing world of ICT systems, CIOs have to turn into Heracles almost daily and employ technical knowledge (hard skills) as well as problem-solving and teamwork (soft skills) to be successful.

Let us take a look at the analogy between the Twelve Labours of Heracles and the 12 skillsets of a CIO.

NEMEAN LION

• Heracles' Labour: Get the skin of the feared Nemean Lion. When Heracles found the Nemean Lion and shot arrows at it, they bounced harmlessly off the creature's impenetrable golden fur. When the lion returned to its cave, Heracles blocked one of its two entrances and entered through the other. He stunned the beast with his club. Using his immense strength, Heracles then strangled it to death. He attempted to skin the lion with a knife from his belt, but the blade was not sharp enough. He sharpened it on a stone and even tried to skin the lion with the rock, in vain. Athena, noticing his plight, told him to use one of Lion's claws to skin the pelt; that worked.
• ICT Analogy: Keep the lights on. The ICT environment is as complex as the Nemean Lion. The ITD supports many mission-critical apps that help run the business. The CIO needs to "keep the lights on" first, which is to ensure that all routine functions are working well, and then resolve complex issues such as carrying out a major systems upgrade or shut down critical systems for a major software patch. Like the Nemean Lion's ferociousness, IT has to be ferociously alert.

The Nemean Lion's skin is akin to the high availability and quality cloak of the IT environment. The sharp claws of the lion are equal to the defences that the ITD has to maintain to protect the company from attacks, including malware, DDOS (distributed denial of service), or ransomware. Even when such complex tasks are in process, the CIO's first key performance indicator (KPI) is to "keep the lights on" so that the company can continue to function.

LERNAEAN HYDRA

• Heracles' Labour: Slay the Lernaean Hydra. The Lernaean Hydra was raised by Hera just to kill Heracles. When Heracles cut off one of the hydra's heads, two others grew back in its place. To add to this complication, one of the hydra's heads - the middle one - was immortal. Heracles turned to his nephew Iolaus for help. Iolaus came up with the idea (possibly inspired by Athena) of using a firebrand to scorch the hydra's neck stumps after each decapitation. Heracles cut off each head; Iolaus cauterised the open stumps, thereby killing the Lernaean Hydra.
• ICT Analogy: Find the root cause of problems. The ICT environment is composed of many technologies, often from different vendors. The ITD's technical resources similarly come from multiple sources. When these diverse systems and technologies are not synchronised, it can result in a hydra-headed monster of solutions trying to work together, and sometimes crashing. The CIO and the ITD team may try to fix one problem (cut off one head), and two issues may crop up, much like the Lernaean Hydra.

To address these myriad heads of the hydra, the CIO cannot just slice off one head; that would be like fixing a temporary patch or asking IT vendors to solve a specific problem without realising how it may impact other systems. As CIO, you need to identify the root causes, the base issues, and maybe even engage independent external expertise to troubleshoot and resolve tough technical problems. If you don't find the root cause of the problems and get them fixed, the heads of the hydra will reappear.

CERYNEIAN HIND

• Heracles' Labour: Capture the Ceryneian Hind. The Ceryneian Hind was a giant female deer, which lived in the region of Keryneia. It was sacred to the Hunting Goddess, Artemis. Although female, it had male-like antlers, which were made of gold, while its hooves were bronze. It could outrun a flying arrow. Heracles awoke from sleep and saw the hind by the glint of sunlight on its antlers. Heracles chased the hind on foot for a full year through Greece, Thrace, Istria, and the Hyperboreans. In some versions, he captured the hind while it slept, rendering it lame with a trap net.
• ICT Analogy. Persistence pays. It took Heracles a year to capture the Ceryneian Hind. Heracles had to chase the creature across multiple geographies; he had to persist in getting to this goal. Likewise, in the ICT space, some projects will take longer to mature, will require teams to jump through technical hoops, often coming close to "throwing in the towel" and going back to status quo ante. For example, many projects involving big data analytics, AI and DX (digital transformation) are tough to do, require long periods of testing and fine-tuning, and need the persistence of the entire ITD as well as the organisation.

As CIO, you have to be the cheerleader of your team. You have to get them to carry on the tasks, no matter how challenging, until you reach the goal. You can, of course, take help from external parties, vendors, consultants, SMEs (subject matter experts). Your team will otherwise give up. You as CIO have to persist with the plan, and get your team not to lose hope.

ERYMANTHIAN BOAR

• Heracles' Labour: Bring the Erymanthian Boar. This task was to bring the Erymanthian Boar back alive to King Eurystheus. A boar is a huge, wild, fierce pig with tusks growing out of its mouth. The Erymanthian Boar lived on the Erymanthus mountain. Every day it would come crashing down from its lair, attacking people and animals all over the land, gouging them with its tusks, and destroying everything in its path. Heracles had visited Chiron for advice on how to catch the creature. Chiron told him to drive it into thick snow during winter. Heracles caught the boar, bound it, and carried it to King Eurystheus, who was scared of the beast and fled into his half-buried storage, called Pithos, and begged Heracles to get rid of the creature.
• ICT Analogy. Negotiate and seek expert advice. Heracles was not shy to seek advice or external expertise. The CIO would likewise be required to introduce new technology or solutions and might have no knowledge or talent in-house to get it done. Don't be shy to ask for advice, either from your vendors, industry bodies, or consulting companies.

Capturing the wild Erymanthian Boar is akin to introducing major IT solutions. IT projects come in waves: mainframes to client/server systems to Y2K migration, to e-commerce and mobile computing. Adopting and implementing these widely differing technologies requires different types of resources and IT talent. The only way to obtain both of these is to negotiate and seek expert advice.

AUGEAN STABLES

• Heracles' Labour. Clean the Stables of King Augeas. Getting Heracles to clean the stables of King Augeas was designed to be very humiliating (rather than impressive, as the previous tasks had been) and impossible,...