The New Cio Leader

As information technology becomes increasingly essential within organizations, the reputation and role of the CIO has been diminishing To regain credibility and avoid obscurity, CIOs must take on a larger, more strategic role. Here is a blueprint for doing exactly that. This book shows how CIOs can bridge the gap between IT and the rest of the organization and finally make IT a strategic advantage rather than a cost sink.

Great CIOs consistently exceed key stakeholders' expectations and maximize the business value delivered through their company's technology. What's their secret? Sure, IT professionals need technological smarts, plus an understanding of their company's goals and the competitive landscape. But the best of them possess a far more potent ability: they forge good working relationships with everyone involved in an IT-enabled project, whether it's introducing new hardware or implementing a major business transformation. In The CIO Edge, the authors draw on Korn/Ferry International's extensive empirical data on leadership competencies as well as Gartner's research on IT trends and the CIO role. They prove that, for IT leaders, mastering seven essential skills yields big results. This new book lays out the people-to-people leadership competencies that the highest-performing CIOs have in common—including the ability to inspire others, connect with a diverse array of stakeholders, value others' ideas, and manifest caring in their relationships. The authors then explain how to cultivate each defining competency. Learn these skills, and you'll get more work done through others' enabling you to successfully execute more IT projects, generate better results for your company, and concentrate your efforts where they'll exert the most impact. The payoff? As the authors show, you'll work smarter, not harder—and get promoted far faster than your peers.

You have what it takes to be a CIO. Do you have a strategy for getting there? Now you do. "Gregory Smith has written the definitive work on how to achieve leadership success in IT. This well-written and carefully researched book is a must-read for any IT professional with aspirations toward the top IT spot. Years from now, seasoned IT leaders will be crediting Smith's book with playing a role in their success." —Martha Heller, Managing Director, IT Leadership Practice, Z Resource Group, and cofounder, CIO Executive Council "Wow! Put all the tips, advice, and strategies in this book to use now. The road to the top is rarely straight—follow Gregory's advice and the path will reveal itself to you!" —John R. Sullivan, CIO, AARP "While most professions have a distinct road map to the top, there is no standard career path to becoming a CIO. Smith addresses this unique challenge and provides aspiring CIOs with encouragement, advice, and essential skills based on years of his own and other CIOs' cumulative experience -- an important effort for the profession that Smith's fellow members in the CIO Executive Council embrace and applaud." —Mark Hall, General Manager of the CIO Executive Council "Teaching students what a CIO really does has been tough. We've had to choose between anecdotal treatments based on trade press articles and integrated academic frameworks that offer little in the way of lived experiences. Greg's book fixes that. By organizing interviews with leading technology executives, trade press reports, and his own experiences as a CIO, he provides an organized and comprehensive view of the job and its important role in modern organizations." —Fred Collopy, PHD, Professor and Chair of Information Systems and Professor of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University

Becoming an effective IT manager presents a host of challenges--from anticipating emerging technology to managing relationships with vendors, employees, and other managers. A good IT manager must also be a strong business leader. This book invites you to accompany new CIO Jim Barton to better understand the role of IT in your organization. You'll see Jim struggle through a challenging first year, handling (and fumbling) situations that, although fictional, are based on true events. You can read this book from beginning to end, or treat is as a series of cases. You can also skip around to address your most pressing needs. For example, need to learn about crisis management and security? Read chapters 10-12. You can formulate your own responses to a CIO's obstacles by reading the authors' regular "Reflection" questions. You'll turn to this book many times as you face IT-related issues in your own career.

Regardless of industry, most major companies are becoming technology companies. The successful management of information has become so critical to a company's goals, that in many ways, now is the age of the CIO. Yet IT executives are besieged by a host of contradictions: bad technology can bring a company to its knees, but corporate boards rarely employ CIOs; CIOs must keep costs down at the very same time that they drive innovation. CIOs are focused on the future, while they are tethered by technology decisions made in the past. These contradictions form what Martha Heller calls The CIO Paradox, a set of conflicting forces that are deeply embedded in governance, staffing, executive expectations, and even corporate culture. Heller, who has spent more than 12 years working with the CIO community, offers guidance to CIOs on how to attack, reverse, or neutralize the paradoxical elements of the CIO role. Through interviews with a wide array of successful CIOs, The CIO Paradox helps readers level the playing field for IT success and get one step closer to bringing maximum value to their companies.

An executive’s transition into any leadership role can be a challenge. Such transitions do not always go smoothly, and the negative consequences can be significant. This is particularly so for Chief Information Officers (CIOs), as the role has evolved significantly over the years yet remains deeply ambiguous. This is despite information and technology moving from the periphery of an organization to a fundamental driver of innovation and competitive advantage. This book is to help the newly appointed CIO “take charge”: the process of learning and taking action that the newly appointed CIO goes through until s/he has mastered the new assignment in sufficient depth to be effective in the role. This book provides keen insights into the challenges faced by today's CIOs while transitioning into a new role and enlightens readers on how to navigate the organizational environment in order to implement necessary changes. With plenty of practical tools and insights it will help you to: • Decide how best to approach the job • Prioritize the first areas of the business you should attend to • Draw up your goals for the first few weeks and months into the role • Find out if there are there any decisions that you can postpone making Based on over 200 interviews with CIOs, CxOs, and recruiters, this book offers readers guidance on how to take on the role of a business executive with special responsibility for information and technology, with ten key prescriptions to maximize success.

Essential reading for IT professionals with aspirations toward the top IT spot, and forsitting CIOs looking to refine their mobile, social and cloud strategies and knowledge The definitive work on how to achieve leadership success in IT, Straight to the Top,SecondEdition reveals how the role of the CIO is changing due to major trends associated withconsumer and enterprise products and technologies driving new mobile solutions in today'sorganizations; cloud computing and the move away from controlled / internally managed datacenters to pay as you use and elastic cloud infrastructure and application services; and theimpact social media is having on today's complex organizations. Author Gregory S. Smith expertly coaches existing and aspiring CIOs on building therequisite skills through his observations and experience as a veteran CIO with more thantwenty-five years of experience leading IT teams and delivering complex technical solutions inthe information technology field. An invaluable guide to help information technology and business professionals recognize thequalities, skills, and expertise necessary to attain the role of a CIO or enhance the skillsforsitting CIOs Equips IT managers, CIOs, and CTOs to strategically plan their career moves Packed with encouragement, advice, and essential skills for aspiring and sitting CIOs Features interviews with leading IT professionals, CIOs, and executive recruitingprofessionals Providing an organized and comprehensive view of the CIO job and its important role inmodern organizations, Straight to the Top, Second Edition equips sitting CIOs and CIOcandidates with the strategies and knowledge necessary to be successful in the new businessnormal - a mobile, social and cloud-based world, and how to provide technology leadership as aworld-class CIO.

This book describes how chief information officers (CIOs) can embrace and drive the digital transformation by providing innovative leadership that uses old skills in a novel way. The book explores ways in which new actors and factors will play a key role in this process and how new relations can be created among things, data, and people. In addition, the design of digital organizations and the implementation of digital technologies are carefully examined and it is explained how digital workspaces can be designed, organized, and used. A set of methods is provided for linking new digital tools in order to meet the goals and challenges of building a digital enterprise. The digital economy is disrupting the way of interaction within value chains, creating fresh spaces for competition and novel ecosystems. With the advent of social media networking, mobility, big data and cloud computing, 4.0 manufacturing, etc., we are witnessing the birth of new digital organizations. However, sharing of leadership of this change among different actors can create disorder and inefficiency. Against this background, the future role of the CIO will be crucial.