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In order to be a successful CIO who has a long career dealing with the importance of information technology, you are going to have to take steps to make sure that you truly love what you are doing. What we have to realize is that we can’t rest on the things that we have already accomplished, instead we need to realize that new competition will be coming. They are going to catch up with how your company does business and this means that you are going to have to work with your IT department to make sure that they are ahead all of the time. If we want to have a successful career that we will find fulfilling, what do we need to be doing today?
Make Investments In Yourself
Most people with the CIO job have reached their position by being interested in what has already been done. We like to read about inventions and what people have done in the past. We reached the level that we are at by taking the time to study. That is something that we can never let go. The world of IT is always changing so fast that what we know today will not be how things work tomorrow. CIOs always have to be finding the time to invest in themselves and make sure that they can stay abreast of where technology is currently and where it is going.
Get An Early Start In Order To Be First
What the person in the CIO position need to understand is that the issues and the technologies that will become big deals tomorrow always seem to start out as a small thing today. CIOs may initially have a small team that is dedicated to a specific task. However, if you staff that team with skillful people than they can run with the new technology if it starts to take off. The key is for the team to find the opportunities that the company can take advantage of over time.
One of the things that CIOs have to be aware of is that in the IT field, speeds always seem to be increasing and sizes of things such as storage are also always growing. Although things may start small, you can almost always assume that over time they are going to speed up and take up more resources. As a CIO your goal should be to make sure that your company can be out in front of any new technology. In order to make this happen, you need to make sure that you are first. If you can do that, then you’ll have a better chance of winning the race to deploy new technologies in a way that can help the entire company.
If You Think Big, Your Team Will Follow You
CIOs need to understand that they should not strive to be judged by the size of their IT team. It can be too easy to try to build big teams in order to make IT look like an important part of the company. A much better approach is to make sure that you have very clever people on your IT team. If you can do this, then your CIO style can be to be innovative. This will allow you to drive new things and ensure that they will result in things happening.
CIOs also have to realize that this type of innovation is not something that they have to do by themselves. CIOs will take on leadership roles because digital revolutions demand it. However, ambitious, world-changing projects aren’t a solo pursuit. You need to be able to work with others in order to achieve your goals. If you can be a visionary leader, then people tend to come to you, and they like to work with you.
What All Of This Means For You
Just being the CIO is never enough. This is a tough job and as long as we are going to put the effort into it, we’d all like to feel fulfilled while we do it. IT technology is a fast moving field and if we are not careful, we can easily feel overwhelmed or even left behind. Every CIO needs to have a good understanding of what they need to be doing today in order to get the most out of the career that they have chosen.
Due to the fact that we have decided to work in a field that is constantly undergoing such radical changes, CIOs need to take the time to make investments in themselves. Learning new things is what allowed us to become CIOs in the first place. Now we have an obligation to make sure that we take the time to stay on top of all of the changes that are happening around us. Technology is always advancing. As CIOs we need to make sure that we have teams in place who are working with the latest new technologies. We can never tell which ones of these will eventually become a big deal. We need to make sure that we have a team exploring how each new technology can be used by our firm. Our goal has to be to start early in order for our firm to be first. CIOs can never think small. Instead, we need to always be looking for the next big thing and dreaming big dreams. It is only by doing this we’ll be able to convince our teams to follow us.
In the lives of CIOs, change is a constant. We need to understand that the way that the world is today is not how it will be tomorrow. We always have to be learning, growing, and changing ourselves in order to keep up with everything that is going on around us. Take the time to make the required investments in yourself and in your IT department and then settle in for the ride. We don’t know where we’ll end up, but we know that it’s going to be quite an adventure!
– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™
Question For You: What is the best way for a CIO to make investments in himself?
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time
The hiring process at any company is a complex undertaking. CIOs are often involved in the mechanics of how the process works. With the arrival of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, AI is now being incorporated into many of the tools that companies are using as a part of their hiring process. What this means is that from the outside, how the hiring process actually works has started to become somewhat of a mystery. It is now the CIOs job to make sure that we understand how the process works and to remove the mystery that is surrounding it.