The Accidental Successful CIO

As the person with the CIO job, you have a lot on your plate. 

You are  the one who is responsible for securing the companies network, you have  to roll out new servers and storage, and you have to worry about getting  everyone to reset their passwords every 90 days. However, it turns out  that you are also responsible for something else that you may not be  aware of: the usability of your company’s web site. Sure we all take a look at the website to make sure that it’s running ok. 

However, it turns out that you need to take a look at it through the eyes of an older visitor.

The one thing that stock traders want to be able to do is to trade their  stocks. 

However, if the IT systems that they use to make this happen  have a fault or an outage, then all of a sudden something that is  normally always there can vanish instantly. When this happens, down lost time means money lost for stock traders.  The person that they are going to be holding responsible for their  losses will be the CIO who is in charge of the systems that they use.  This was recently a big problem. 

What are CIOs to do to prevent events  like this?

CIOs who are following what is going on in the world of security and encryption know that things are about to dramatically change. 

A new type of computing, quantum computing,  is being developed. This new type of computing is going to be perfectly  suited to breaking the types of encryption that we are using to secure  our networks and our corporate data today. 

Within 10 years these new  quantum computers are going to become available and CIOs need to be getting ready to deal with them now.

Just about everyone knows who Volkswagen is. 

They are the German company  who makes cars – remember the Beetle from the 1960’s? Well, they are  still around and they still make cars. The person with the CIO job has  been studying the car market and has seen the rise of Tesla in the  electric car space. VW would like to enter this market also. 

However,  despite their years of experience in making cars, it turns out that it’s been software that they have been struggling with as they try to enter this new market.

Ok, so let’s have a talk here for just a moment. 

The managers that CIOs  are putting into place these days seem to becoming younger and younger.  Maybe it’s because there are so many millennials now working in the IT  department, but it sure seems as though the pool of candidates that we  can promote to manager no longer have any gray hair. This is causing a  problem for the person with the CIO job. This new breed of manager lacks some basic training.  

In order to ensure that this new generation of IT managers is going to  be successful dealing with the importance of information technology, is  this the time for the person in the CIO position to turn to robots to  keep track of how their new managers are doing?

As CIO we are always trying to move our companies forward because we understand the importance of information technology. 

What this means  sometimes is that when our company has a piece of equipment that has  become outdated or perhaps no one knows how to use or maintain, we’ll  often try to apply a wrapper technique to it. We’ll try to marry modern technology to older equipment in order to extend its life and avoid replacement  costs. 

However, as some CIOs are starting to discover, this is not  always a good idea.

When a CIO starts to think about what they need to do to secure their  company, most often they tend to look around themselves. 

They look at  the company’s data centers, the desktop systems that people use, the  laptops that people take home, etc. All of the company’s IT assets that  relate to the importance of information technology can be seen and, with  a little luck, secured. However, it turns out that there is one area  that too many CIOs have been overlooking: their supply chain. What this means is that all of the computers and systems that a company’s suppliers use to connect to the company have to be as secure as the company’s systems are. 

However, can a CIO ever be sure that their supply chain is secure

In the post pandemic world CIOs are facing a major challenge: where should everyone work? 

There are those people who have been just waiting for permission to return to the office because they like the environment and the interaction with all of the different people. However, on the other hand there are the people who actually prefer to work from home and who might leave the company if they were forced to come back into the office. CIOs are going to end up with a hybrid work environment with some workers in the office and some remote. 

How is this going to work out for everyone?

You would think that being a CIO these days would be a pretty easy job. 

All you really have to do is to find ways to move more and more of your company’s IT assets into the cloud and everyone will think that you are doing a great job! However, it  turns out that a number of people with the CIO job who understand the  importance of information technology are starting to have second thoughts about doing exactly that.  It turns out that there are a number of issues such as cost and  security that make what seemed like a simple decision a lot harder. 

CIOs need to take a careful look at their current situation and make the  right decisions.

CIOs need to understand that in order to be successful in communicating the importance of information technology, they need to work with others.  

The people that they need to work with may not work for their company,  and in fact they may not be in the same country as the CIO. We need to  have the ability to reach out and connect with others who understand  what we are trying to do and can provide us with the contacts and  resources that we need. The big question for the person with the CIO job  is how to get in touch with these people? 

It turns out that the answer  might be right before us: social media.