8 Secret Habits Of Successful CIOs
CIOs today must keep the lights on, but also transform the business to meet the demands of real-time customer requirements. How do they stay productive? How do they find the right people to hire? What traits do they nurture? What secrets keep them ahead of the game? We've collected the top secret habits of successful CIOs here.
![](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt69509c9116440be8/blt96639a3c9a9ce2ea/64cb43b44134b084d68a5b3f/road-to-success-iStock_000044633990_Medium.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Do you consider yourself successful in the role of CIO? The definition of success for CIOs has probably changed as much as the job description has changed over the last few years. Yet some CIOs seem to be navigating the changes and even thriving in a new environment.
Today's most successful CIOs must lead two distinct efforts. They must "keep the lights on" with their existing infrastructure and serve their user bases with ever-tightening IT budgets. At the same time they must pivot to serve a new fundamental need as technology becomes an underpinning to all the services their organizations provide to customers.
Leon Kappelman, professor of Information Systems at the University of North Texas's College of Business and the lead for an annual CIO trends study for the Society for Information Management, believes that this new environment will bring new faces to the role of CIO.
"I think we may be at a watershed moment, and five years from now perhaps half of the current batch of CIOs will be CIOs," Kappelman told InformationWeek. That's a gigantic change at the top for IT organizations.
Create a culture where technology advances truly empower your business. Attend the Leadership Track at Interop Las Vegas, May 2-6. Register now!
This changing of the guard at the top will be driven by the transformation in the industry, generational factors, and a requirement for new skill sets. Today's CIOs and aspiring CIOs must take a hard look at their own competencies and habits as they gear up to lead tomorrow's organizations.
These topics and more will be discussed during the IT Leadership Track at Interop 2016, May 2-6, at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. (Full disclosure: Interop is produced by UBM Americas, InformationWeek's parent company.)
InformationWeek regularly speaks with successful CIOs and IT executives about projects, strategy, and vision. We're always looking out for the secrets that others can use to help drive results within their own organizations. Which habits help CIOs achieve success?
Once you've reviewed our list, tell us how many of these habits you've incorporated into your work. If you have a habit that has helped you achieve success in your own IT leadership role, please share it with us all in the comments section below.
Many successful people wake up early in the morning to get a head start on the day before the emails, phone calls, and other interruptions begin. Successful CIOs have adopted this habit, too.
"I get up by 4 am so I can get work done before meetings start," Thomas Pacek, VP and CIO of Inspira Health Network, told InformationWeek. The approach offers benefits beyond work, too. "When I go home at night, I turn off the work as much as possible." (Pacek is presenting Practical M&A: One CIO's Experience during the IT Leadership Track at Interop 2016.)
According to Leon Kappelman, of North Texas' College of Business, "CIO success is all about relationships. The job is too complicated to do without a strong IT team, and impossible to do without strong partnerships with the suppliers and customers of IT."
Thomas Pacek, of Inspira Health Network, also emphasized the importance of relationships within the internal IT team. When he visits locations, he said, "I spend most of my interactions with my staff discussing how they are doing personally, how the family is. I can get the work details in my management meetings. I feel it is important to have a sincere personal connection with each employee. Care for the whole person, not just their work."
Enterprises are transforming to focus on delivering real-time customer service and customer experience. In order to be a part of that change, CIOs must forge alliances with other members of the C-suite, including the chief marketing officer, who is likely at the forefront of customer-focused enterprises, and the chief digital officer. In traditional organizations, these roles may seem to have very different missions. In digital organizations, these executives all need to be rowing in the same direction.
"It sounds so simple," Forrester Research VP and Group Director for CIOs Sharyn Leaver told InformationWeek in an interview late last year. "But at the end of the day it doesn't always exist."
Creating such relationships can cement a CIO's role in the digital mode of IT, something that is essential for IT leaders of the future.
The days of strong support for centralized IT may very well be over. Line-of-business managers are bringing in their own systems. Organizations are looking to cloud-based applications in the form of software-as-a-service and other tools. Do you fight it? If not, what approach do you take?
Successful CIOs who are managing bimodal IT environments must learn to collaborate, delegate, and sometimes let go. In the new environment, the CIO may end up interacting with a range of stakeholders inside and outside of the organization.
"There are so many reasons why CIOs should be collaborative," Forrester's Leaver said. "It has to do with speed, they need to get things done faster. It's about understanding what the business desire [is] and the customer desire is. There must be a lot of collaboration and co-creation with peers."
So, develop a comfort level with collaboration and learn to facilitate a collaborative environment.
Inspira Health Network's Pacek drives an hour each way to work, and rather than squander that commute time he uses it wisely.
He spends part of his drive time in the very early morning in prayer. And his afternoon commute back home is reserved for conducting conference calls. This habit enables him to stay productive while driving and make the most of his time.
Pacek told InformationWeek that these are among the habits that "help me to be productive and effective."
Kappelman, of North Texas's College of Business, defines credibility and courage as capabilities or skills rather than habits. He says that successful CIOs need both of these. "Credibility, because if you can't be trusted to deliver [then] nothing else matters. This one must be earned," he said.
"Courage is my personal favorite," Kappelman told InformationWeek. "Because cowardice lets problems become catastrophes. Courage and credibility are close companions."
Atticus Tysen, senior vice president and CIO at Intuit, dissected his partner-selection process and provided InformationWeek with his best practices.
"My search for the right vendor relationship doesn't start with the product, and even our business needs come secondary," he said. "First, I look for partners that will push my thinking and challenge my assumptions -- not ones that are learning from me or relying on me to lead. I focus initial conversations with vendors around what they can teach me and ask them what they are seeing broadly in the industry -- their product should only be a small part of that. By asking a lot of questions, and covering a lot of ground, I have better knowledge, insights, and foresight to make smarter decisions for Intuit."
(Tysen will provide more detail on these and other insights in his presentation, Transforming The IT Mindset: From Technology-Driven To Customer-Focused, during the IT Leadership Track at Interop 2016.)
Intuit's Atticus Tysen also provided an inside look at how he creates a great team.
"I look for people to join my team who are eager to try new technologies and new ways of working. Their traditional skill sets come second," he said.
"From there, I give them lots of air cover to experiment and learn. Too often, teams get bogged down in day-to-day work, and leaders do not provide the runway -- and opportunities -- to be examples of the behaviors they are asking for."
David Caldwell, senior solutions consultant/architect at Kaiser Permanente, has spent years going in and fixing IT organizations with chaotic structural challenges. A key tool and habit that has paved the way to his success? Creating technology and/or business process maps after every meeting with business and other IT stakeholders, and then circulating those maps and updating them as the conversation progresses.
"Over time, many months, I begin to not only gain a clear picture about how the organization works at a process and architecture level, but, in most cases, begin to comprehend it better than the business and even some longtime IT leaders," Caldwell told InformationWeek. "It's a habit that has helped me learn and engage the business at an expert level fairly quickly."
(Caldwell will present Top 7 Strategies To Win The IT Talent War during the Leadership Track at Interop 2016.)
David Caldwell, senior solutions consultant/architect at Kaiser Permanente, has spent years going in and fixing IT organizations with chaotic structural challenges. A key tool and habit that has paved the way to his success? Creating technology and/or business process maps after every meeting with business and other IT stakeholders, and then circulating those maps and updating them as the conversation progresses.
"Over time, many months, I begin to not only gain a clear picture about how the organization works at a process and architecture level, but, in most cases, begin to comprehend it better than the business and even some longtime IT leaders," Caldwell told InformationWeek. "It's a habit that has helped me learn and engage the business at an expert level fairly quickly."
(Caldwell will present Top 7 Strategies To Win The IT Talent War during the Leadership Track at Interop 2016.)
-
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like