The Transformational CIO: Leadership and Innovation Strategies for IT Executives in a Rapidly Changing World

Going Global

Ramón Baez is the vice president of Information Technology Services and chief information officer at Kimberly-Clark Corporation, the home to some of the world's most trusted and recognized brands including Kleenex®, Scott®, HUGGIES®, Pull-Ups®, Depend®, and Kotex®. Headquartered in Dallas, with nearly 56,000 employees worldwide and operations in 35 countries, Kimberly-Clark posts sales of nearly $20 billion annually. The company's brands are sold in more than 150 countries, making it a truly global enterprise.

When Ramón joined the company in 2007, he knew that one of his first tasks would be preparing the IT organization for the excruciating demands and evolving complexities of the global economy.

As it turned out, preparing the organization for its global responsibilities took on the dimensions of a transformational project. Ramón quickly realized that he had two immediate challenges to confront.

The first challenge was putting an effective IT leadership team in place. Here's the way Ramón saw things:

We needed to do things that we had never done before in areas such as business analytics, cloud computing, outsourcing, collaboration, you name it. So we needed a real leadership team that could motivate the rest of the IT organization. It couldn't just be me—there was far too much that we needed to get done in a brief period of time.

The second challenge was convincing the business units that the IT organization would function as a trusted and indispensable strategic ...