The Accidental Successful CIO

 Let’s face it, as CIOs we’d all like to be liked. We enjoy the parts of  our job that are fun and which have to do with the importance of  information technology. 

It makes us happy when another large IT project  is successfully rolled out. However, life is life and part of our job is that when there is bad news to be delivered,  we’re the ones who have the job to share the news with the people who  work for us. Nothing that I can tell you will ever make this an easy  thing to do. 

However, it turns out that there are ways that you can  deliver information like this in ways that turn out to be less stressful  for you and, perhaps, just a little bit more comforting for the people  that you have to deliver it to. 

The world in which we live is currently changing. 

Over the past few  years, as the importance of information technology has grown, the  internet has become a bigger and more important part of both our  personal and professional lives. Every IT department makes extensive use  of the internet these days to run apps, handle storage, and  communicate. The revolution that is currently going on is occurring  because more and more devices are being connected to the internet for the first time. 

What will the impact of this be for CIOs? 

If a the person with the CIO job could have a super power, what would be  the best one to have? The ability to fly and avoid all of those lines  at the airport? The ability to see through walls and find the people  that you are looking to talk with? These would all be great to have, but  perhaps there is another super power that would top them all. How about  the ability to see into the future. 

The ability to see what is coming  next in the crazy mixed up world of technology?  This truly would be a great power to have. 

None of us have this power,  but if we take the time to talk to really smart people then sometimes we might just a peek at what is coming our way. 

As CIOs we are faced with a complete set of problems that we need to  solve. 

These can be small, simple problems that we can solve just by  thinking about them for a moment and then telling someone what to do in  order to solve them or they can be the really big problems that we have  no clue how to go about solving. It’s these big problems that can cause a  CIO real headaches. 

It turns out that that in order to solve the really  big problems, CIOs need to use a different way of thinking about  problem solving in order to come up with solutions that will really work  for them. 

All CIOs have heard about big data by now: the Tsunami of data that is  washing over every company and the struggle that they have to collect  it, store it, and then process it in order to create actionable  information. 

As a CIO, when we think about big data  we are faced with a number of questions having to do with the  importance of information technology that we have not had to deal with  in the past. Is this going to require a new architecture? Will new  platforms be required? 

These are all questions that we are  going to  have to be able to answer, but first we need to make sure that we understand the questions. 

As CIOs, every day is busy. We’ve got a lot of different things going on  that have to do with the importance of information technology and it  can be very challenging to try to get everything done. 

That’s why when  it comes to hackers, we are aware of the problem but we may not be  currently doing anything about it. The thinking goes that if we run into  a problem with hackers, we’ll then free up some time and take care of  things then. Perhaps this is not the best overall plan. For you see, the  hackers are out there and they may have already found a way into your firm. The time to deal with them is now. 

Are you ready? 

As the person with the CIO job, it’s your responsibility to make sure  that the company’s IT department understand the importance of  information technology and is able to meet the needs of the rest of the  company. 

There are actually several different ways to go about doing  this. You can be the “slow and steady” IT department that rolls out new  products and services after everyone else in your market has already  deployed them or you can be the “first in” who rolls out new services  before anyone has ever heard of them. 

Wouldn’t it be better if your IT  department was more like Apple and just got it right each and every time?  

Can you remember the day when if you wanted to talk with your boss you  would go walking down the hall to his or her office? You’d knock on the  door, get called in, enter and perhaps shut the door behind you. Well  guess what – those days are just about over. 

Welcome to the new workplace reality: the open office. CIOs are being asked to make decisions about what office layout is going to be the best for their IT department and right now the open office is one of the leading candidates. 

Being the person with the CIO job is hard work. You try and you try and  you try to do a good job but it always seems like you are somehow  falling further and further behind. There is so much work to do in  regards to the importance of information technology that you only dream  of being able to do all of the things that you should be doing in order  to make your IT department as good as it could be. 

In cases like this,  it might be helpful to take a look around in the world of high-tech and see if there is anyone who is getting all of this stuff correct. Does anyone know how to run things correctly? 

It turns out that the answer is yes – Adobe. 

As the person with the CIO job, one of your main tasks is to assign work to the various people who work for you.  As the number of people grows and the amount of work that has to be  done seems to get even larger, this task that once upon a time appeared  to be simple, can quickly get out of hand. 

Over at those fancy new  startup companies that like to refer to themselves as being part of the  “gig economy”, they believe in the importance of information technology  and have started to use both apps and algorithms to assign tasks to the  self employed workers that they use. 

Is this something that you should  be doing?