I have just come from a talk by Gerry Pennell, CIO of LOCOG, organisers of the 2012 Olympics, at an event organised by La Fosse Associates. There is always a limit to what one can say at events like this and Gerry focused on the delivery of the results data, he acknowledged the significance of the infrastructure, enterprise systems (it was a business after all) and communications, but reckoned that what was different about London over Beijing four years earlier was the volume of mobile device access. Some of the numbers were truly staggering and the success of his team is unquestioned.
Gerry fielded a good number and it was at this point I found myself more interested. In part it was his acknowledgement that his team were incredibly focused and motivated accepting the fixed deadline and that their roles old end. He reported that he had little need to motivate them, but instead could focus on managing stakeholders. This rather confirms experience elsewhere but is still a useful example.
He also reported that there is little recycling of IT staff from London to Rio and cited the language difference as a major factor that would limit contribution. Again a truism from running global, internationally diversified teams.
It was also interesting to see a master at work. He fielded some expected and loaded questions. As an observer, he answered many with a safe or anodyne single sentence response which left you feeling there was much more left unsaid. In other instances he embarked on a longer, but rather deflecting answer. An honest analysis would probably conclude that he really said very little and certainly nothing at all controversial.
I don't mean that he was dishonest, but just very clever; as I said a "pro" at work.
He did say that he did not know his next role, but "politician" came to mind, but he might be too good to make it in the current UK set up :) .
As he said the biggest legacy he and his team left behind is the demonstration that the British IT industry works!
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