Ben Allen has had an unusual path to his current role as chief information officer and chief innovation officer at Marsh & McLennan. He rose to the role of president and chief executive officer of Kroll, Inc., which was an operating company within Marsh & McLennan until it was sold by that company to Altegrity, Inc. in August 2010. Soon after the divestiture, Allen re-joined Marsh & McLennan with the first of his CIO titles, that of chief innovation officer. He was the first person to hold that title in the company. A large portion of his responsibilities were centered on facilitating greater collaboration and value creation from across the company. Interestingly enough, that is a role the best chief information officers play, as they have reason to collaborate with leaders of each business unit and division of a company often in ways that those leaders do not with each other. These similarities were not lost on Allen, who assumed his second CIO role, that of chief information officer, less than a year after his return to Marsh & McLennan.
(This is the seventh in the CIO-plus series. To read the prior six interviews with the CIO-pluses from Waste Management, McKesson, Merck, Red Robin Gourmet Burgers, Ameristar Casinos, and Owens Corning, please click this link. To receive notice about future interviews in the series with CIO-pluses of ADP, the San Francisco Giants, and P&G, please click the “Follow” link above. To listen to a podcast interview I recently conducted with Ben Allen, please visit this link.)
Peter High:
Ben, let’s begin with your path to the CIO-squared role that you have, as chief information officer and chief innovation officer. You used to be the CEO of one of Marsh & McLennan’s operating companies, Kroll. After that business was divested, you rejoined Marsh & McLennan as chief innovation officer first, and then as chief information officer second. Now that you provide services to your former peers, what advantages have you seen by having walked a mile in their shoes?
Ben Allen:
It’s always easier to be successful serving a customer/client when you’ve walked in their shoes. You more fully appreciate what they are trying to accomplish and the difficult trade-off decisions that need to be made. The Marsh & McLennan business leaders know that I’ve run a global P&L and carried the pressures associated with that responsibility. We speak the same language and want the same outcome, and there is no doubt that makes a big difference.
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Frankly, I also was a tough customer of the IT function when I was on the other side of the fence. I recall what I liked about it, and where I saw room for improvement. That has given me different perspective and rationale in approaching the second of my CIO roles, that of chief information officer.
Peter High:
As the role of CIO was your first formal role in IT in your career, how have you gone about becoming more tech savvy?
Ben Allen:
I have to admit that I am a technology enthusiast at heart, so I have always been interested in technology personally and professionally. Therefore, the topic is not brand new to me, and I am probably not as intimidated by it as others who make this leap might be.
Second, I am blessed with a solid chief technology officer, David Fike, and a great worldwide infrastructure team who have been very patient with me in bringing me up-to-speed on the most technical aspects of what we manage. As an outsider coming into IT, having someone who is a deep technologist as a complement to my traditional business roles is key to success in my mind.
Peter High:
You were the first ever chief innovation officer of Marsh & McLennan. What was the rationale in establishing this role?
Ben Allen:
Like all long-standing businesses, and Marsh & McLennan is over 140 years old, innovation has always been required to stay competitive and to grow. Marsh & McLennan has a history of responding successfully to industry, global, customer, regulatory and other environmental changes, but like so many organizations these innovations are serendipitous or in response to extreme situations. The goals were to innovate in a more systematic fashion and across business units.
Most of the focus of the small corporate innovation team has been to provide knowledge, best practice, collaboration platforms and maybe most importantly connectivity across the various operating units which is an unnatural act for most.
Peter High:
What was the rationale in having you undertake on the chief information officer role in addition to your responsibilities as chief innovation officer?
Ben Allen:
It was a combination of factors some unique to Marsh & McLennan and my history with the firm but also the fact that most innovation today is either linked or heavily dependent on technology.
As you look at different types of innovation, whether it is product innovation, business model innovation, or service delivery innovation, much of that requires technology enablement. In fact, I would go so far as to say that technology has had a disproportionate enabling influence on innovation in all areas. By making these two parts of our organization closer, it has yielded real benefits.
Peter High:
What factor best determines the structure that a company’s innovation should take?
Ben Allen:
The single largest determining factor is the velocity of change in the business and the source of competitive differentiation.
Take a company like Apple whose growth is heavily dependent on very short product release cycles (less than a year) and where follow-on revenue is dependent on winning the device war – that’s pressure to innovate. In organizations like Apple, innovation is and needs to be all consuming.
In many of Marsh & McLennan’s businesses the velocity of change is nowhere near the likes of Apple, but it doesn’t stand still either. This stability is both a blessing and a curse in that you won’t see your entire business become irrelevant in 3 years but it is also more difficult to create a sense of urgency around innovation.
In the end the innovation effort needs to be mindful or the velocity of change.