What I Learned After Day One As CIO

In my previous blog post, I told the rather bizarre story of my first day on the job as a CIO. It was a strange first day to say the least. Eventually, however, I did begin to settle into my new job. I learned a lot about being a CIO and about coping with adversity.

Early in my IT career, I worked for my uncle for a period of time. He was a CIO for a large insurance company. I knew that there was a good chance that I would be in his shoes one day, so I tried to learn as much as I could about his responsibilities. Between all of the conversations that I had with my uncle and my own management experience, I thought that I knew exactly what to do as a CIO. I was so wrong.

From what my uncle told me and what I observed on my own, I assumed that as a CIO I would probably be spending the bulk of my time in meetings. I assumed that it would be my job to come up with IT solutions that would help the organization meet its business goals. Certainly there was some of that, but it was a rarity. As I explained in my first blog post, the executive team really didn't want to have to deal with IT at all. They wanted me to handle things so that they didn't have to.

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