Empower your IT staff to make decisions

IT chiefs at financial services organisations should encourage staff to take greater control of business decisions, says JP Rangaswami, global CIO at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein.

Speaking at the Financial Services IT Summit in London today, Rangaswami said his management style has adapted to the changing business environment.

A lot of the institutions setting the agenda for the 21st century wouldn't know about the best use of control if it hit them in the face.

-- JP Rangaswami, global CIO, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein

"Over the last three years," he said, "there has been a change from control freak to benevolent despot, learning to let go and realise as you educate [someone], what that person wants. They want you to get out of their way."

He continued: "Really you have to have some sort of soft hands control. Empowering the individual to do the work is what will make a difference. But trying to do this in a live environment is what keeps me awake."

Rangaswami said he has noticed profound changes to his job, with relatively young companies such as eBay and Google influencing the investment bank's strategy.

"The Googles, the Amazons and the eBays are setting an agenda. The CIO is being asked different questions to the ones he is used to. [You need] to see what emerges as the result of a transaction like eBay and Skype and understand it. But a lot of the institutions setting the agenda for the 21st century wouldn't know about the best use of control if it hit them in the face."

Many of the challenges of compliance can be beaten by taking an all-encompassing approach to capturing corporate data, Rangaswami added.

"Storage is so cheap you can record everything," he said. "The architecture of the enterprise has become 10 times more important but the difficulties are on how you future-proof this."