How to Sell New Technology:

Play to Your Audience

When Partners HealthCare System CIO John Glaser met with his boss, CEO James Mongan, to pitch an investment in service-oriented architecture (SOA), he knew the meeting had the potential to be difficult. He wanted to introduce Mongan to a complex theory about IT and explain how it could be a strategic asset, but he knew Mongan had little patience for theory, and less for technical detail.

But today, Glaser is near to signing a contract to develop an SOA. He attributes his success to the simple fact that he took the time to understand how Mongan likes to receive new information. That's something most CIOs fail to do, Glaser says. "If you don't understand how they learn, it will be like talking to your teenage daughter," says Glaser (who has one). "The root language you share may be the same, but you just have a very difficult time understanding one another."

Glaser says discovering Mongan's learning process was unscientific and took months. Glaser gathered intelligence by talking to colleagues who had met with Mongan, asking what worked and what didn't and what his reaction was to certain approaches. He observed Mongan both in one-on-one meetings and in executive meetings, noting how he responded to presentations and different communication styles. He also asked Mongan directly about how he liked to have information presented. In essence, Glaser developed an intimate relationship with Mongan to know not only what made him tick, but how he ticked.

Attention to the details of how best to communicate with Mongan paid off for Glaser when he made his SOA pitch. When he first met with Mongan about the idea last year, he started with a presentation that illustrated how Partners hospitals and medical centres couldn't share patient data. Glaser knew Mongan cared a lot about patient safety, so he described an example of how data about patient allergies and the incidence of diabetes weren't accessible to all the medical professionals who needed to know. "That's trouble," Glaser remembers telling Mongan. "This is set up in a way that somebody could get hurt."

Glaser then showed a slide that illustrated how a properly designed network could enable health-care providers to share all patient data easily and more efficiently. Not until the end of the presentation did Glaser mention SOA. But when he did, he "equated the theory with how it works in real life and the business value with the term", Glaser remembers. "That's how he likes to learn."

Glaser waited for Mongan's reaction. He hoped the presentation, designed as it was to Mongan's preferences, would elicit a dialogue. Soon Mongan stood up from his seat and walked to a large whiteboard. He drew a box on the left-hand side, representing patient data that was stored in database silos. He then drew a box on the right and, pointing to it, said: "If we had a common application here, wouldn't that solve the problem?"

"Right Jim," Glaser told Mongan, "but the challenge with that is it's expensive and will drain our resources." Mongan then drew a box in the middle, representing the SOA, tying together the application box and the databases box. "Right then I knew he had internalized it, made it his own," Glaser says. "He understood it and was ready to take the next step."

The lesson, Glaser says, is that everyone learns differently, and that successful communication requires more than not speaking IT jargon. It requires knowing your audience and tailoring your message accordingly.