CIO Talk Network

Guest 1: Brenda Decker

Title: Chief Information Officer, State of Nebraska

Guest 2: Richard Fichera

Title: Vice President, Principal Analyst serving Infrastructure & Operations PROFESSIONALS, Forrester

Data centers are quickly becoming the new nerve centers of organizations. As dependency on them increases, so does the need to reduce costs and increase performance and productivity. Automation promises all these benefits. if automating the data center is beneficial, how close can we get to complete automation? Is complete automation even desirable? What are the challenges?

Guest 1: Michele J. Gelfand, PhD

Title: Professor of Psychology, Distinguished University Scholar Teacher, University of Maryland, College Park

Guest 2: Bryson Koehler

Title: EVP & Chief Information Officer for The Weather Channel

Guest 3: Pat Shier

Title: Director of Enterprise Technology for the State of Alaska

Traditional wisdom counsels the avoidance of conflict, but organizations don't grow by being passive or complacent. To meet their full potential, business and its IT must be able to channel conflict, both internal and external, into beneficial progress. But how does a leader help his/her team distinguish between the destructive and beneficial uses of conflict? How can leaders foster individual thinking (which can cause conflict) and use collective consensus and team unity to harness it for the common good?

Guest 1: John Baldoni

Title: Executive Coach, Leadership Educator/Author

Guest 2: Bobby Cameron

Title: Vice President and Principal Analyst with Forrester CIO Practice

Recent technology innovations have introduced the potential for IT to be nimble and efficient, but have these innovations alone achieved these goals? Which traditional practices should be abandoned? Also, what should be done about the siloed monolithic mental structures that exist in the minds of business leaders, IT managers, and IT workers? Why should so many IT leaders earn kudos for IT transformations that ultimately fail to make IT a simpler, more leverageable resource for business? Could it be that some of us are unintentionally running a rigid IT?

Guest 1: Jerry Johnson

Title: Chief Information Officer and Director of Information Technology Services at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Guest 2: Dr. Vince Kellen

Title: CIO for the University of Kentucky

Some organizations are adopting a “fail small” and/or “fail quick” approach to technology that pushes internal IT and leverages shadow IT to see what works. If everyone were to approach business this way, then what happens to the strategic innovation that a CIO is expected to enable/lead/drive? Instead of evolving into the Chief "Innovation" Officer," won't this force CIO's to regress back to their roots where they were just responsible for data, security, and integration issues?

Guest 1: Bryan Ball

Title: Vice President and Principal Analyst, Supply Chain Management, Aberdeen Group

Guest 2: Rick D. Blasgen

Title: President and CEO of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP)

In the new global economy, how can manufacturers create value, cut costs, and reduce their exposure to volatile commodity price swings that squeeze profits? Perhaps by collaborating with suppliers and customers to extend the lifecycle of products, components, and materials while rethinking their business model to retain ownership of recoverable materials and then recycling them back into use. This suggests a supply circle rather than a supply chain. While it looks great as a hypothesis, is this concept practical? Just how do you pull such strategies off? And just where, around this supply circle, can IT intervene or be leveraged to make it happen?

Guest 1: Susan Cramm

Title: President Valuedance and Former CIO, Taco Bell Corporation

Guest 2: William R. Patterson

Title: Business Motivational Speaker

Leaders all talk about the importance of motivating those around them, and of keeping others as pumped and committed about what they do, as is he  or she. Yet, one obvious question is rarely addressed... who motivates the motivator? How does a leader motivate him/herself? How can a leader stay  motivated, day after day?

Guest 1: Dr. Michael Bakerman

Title: Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) for the UMass Memorial Healthcare System

Guest 2: C. Scott Blanchette

Title: SVP & Chief Information Officer at Vanguard Health Systems

Guest 3: John Mattison, MD

Title: Assistant Medical Director, Chief Medical Informatics Officer, Kaiser Permanente, Southern California

Ideally, healthcare providers should avoid unnecessary admissions and readmissions and work instead to improve their patient population’s health and hospital experience. This may require getting timely, high quality metrics on factors such as emergency room efficiency, cost management, patient flow, staff productivity, clinical outcomes, efficacy of treatment, and “Meaningful Use”. This, in turn, would require high quality, near real time, highly actionable analytics which will be delivered leveraging state of the art operational, clinical, and financial analytics platforms. Are we just getting started with these platforms or riding the maturity curve? What related people, process, and technology challenges will have to be overcome before accountable care can be delivered consistently and reliably?

Guest 1: Edward Adams

Title: CTO and Director of Computing Services, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

Guest 2: Dr. Michael Zastrocky

Title: Executive Director of the Leadership Board for CIO’s in Higher Education and Senior Advisor to The Chronicle of Higher Education

Guest 3: Kelli Trosvig

Title: Vice President and Chief Information Officer UW Information Technology University of Washington

Better higher Ed should produce better workers, business leaders,entrepreneurs, and innovators for the future. So why do so many feel higher education is failing to meet this expectation? Where are higher educational institutions dropping the ball? What new or different innovations are being used in the hope of transforming Higher Ed? What is working or not working? What chronic issues still need to be addressed, and what new issues have emerged? Is IT in a position to enable or even drive such a transformation?

Guest 1: John Teeter

Title: Deputy Chief Information Officer for the Department of Health and Human Services

Guest 2: Tommy Amaker

Title: Head Coach, Harvard Crimson Basketball

Isn’t running an IT department just like coaching a ball team? You have your team run every day to build their endurance and to keep them in peak condition. Each player player must be a top performer, regardless of his/her position, and be ready to fill-in other positions if needed. Every team member must love the sport and be committed to keeping the ball in play, doing whatever is necessary to win. How well are today’s IT leaders playing coach? What additional gamesmanship can an IT leader pick up, to better play the increasingly complex business/IT ball game?

Guest 1: Tim Peterson

Title: EVP, Chief Information Officer - Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield (Des Moines, IA)

Guest 2: Nicholas R. Colisto

Title: Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Hovnanian Enterprises

You were already a CIO when the new Normal arrived. Now what? What got you here may not get you there, so what capabilities do you have or lack? Of the capabilities you have, what should you preserve, what should you change, and what should you lose, in order to be ready to trod your new uncharted path into the unknown future?