With a new boss, the smartest way to be smart is to be quiet

Training a new manager is tricky; the smart ones listen before they commit to anything, but giving them something to hear before you know how they think is dangerous

Dear Bob ...

I'm the CIO in a mid-size company (~750 employees left after layoffs; 50 in IT). I report to the CEO. As of this week, I report to a different CEO than I used to report to, because the Board of Directors fired the last one ("left to pursue other interests") and his replacement just came on board.

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My first formal meeting with him is scheduled for Thursday. I'm proud of the job we've done here in IT and want to tell him about it. But some friends have told me that would be a bad idea ... that I should be keeping my head down to see which way the wind is blowing before I say very much.

What do you think?

- Blown by the winds of change

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Dear Blown ...

Listen to your friends. They're giving you good advice.

With this caveat: If the CEO is smart, he'll spend his first month or so doing nothing but listening, to get a feel for things before committing to any new directions.

So if you work hard to listen instead of talking and the CEO's goal is to listen instead of talking, you're going to have a very quiet meeting.

The good news about this: If the CEO is listening first, there's a decent change he's going to be good at his work.

So here's what you do: First, see if you can get your new boss talking. If he isn't ready to talk about specifics, ask about his philosophy of leadership, how we wants to work with you, his general expectations of IT, and how it should fit into a business.

If he's in listening mode and is good at the game, he'll answer your questions with questions. At some point, you need to answer. As you do, intersperse phrases like, "This is how we've been handling this sort of thing, but I'm pretty flexible."

Or, "Left to my own devices, here's how I generally address situations like this. It seems to have worked pretty well, but I expect you'll be taking the company in some new directions and I'm pretty sure that will mean we'll need to do some things differently in IT so that we properly support them."

It will also be a good idea to ask how much he's going to want to know about the specifics of how things work -- in particular about key applications and their strengths and limitations. Assuming he wants some knowledge, offer to set up a few briefings with some of your key technical staff -- just let you know when he's ready.

This establishes you as a CIO, as an executive who has built an organization, and not a technician with hands that are too deep into the plugs and wires.

Whatever you do, don't say anything that connotes loyalty to the old CEO or to initiatives he might have sponsored that the new CEO might decide to jettison as bad ideas.

If you do that, you're asking to be jettisoned along with them.

- Bob