As a person who has worked as a CIO for a large international organisation, I will use the CIO’s role as an example and take a few issues that I have faced, some mistakes that I have committed and some successes that I have had and talk about what I have learned from these experiences.
I hope that this can serve as a starting point of a discussion on the general issues of learning from mistakes and successes.
The following are the list of items that I propose to take up for discussion over the next few posts.
1. Friendship and work relationship should be kept separate – you may need to make uncomfortable staffing calls
2. Do not lose sight of the ball
3. Listen to your users – if they voice any concern the problem is bigger than you think
4. Small deliverables matter – sometimes even more than one large deliverable
5. Always have user visible deliverables
6. Make sure that you have the money and time to back up your boast – be realistic
7. Be technologically competent and aware – make sure you can discuss with users and present alternatives to them – a dumb CIO is a dead CIO
8. Stakeholder, stakeholder, stakeholder – always keep them in the loop
9. Handle issues directly and immediately
10. Use your own judgement – but seek inputs from all
11. Technologies change – you can’t always have the latest
12. Always put the business first – users first – no IT arrogance. Implement features that the users want, not what you fancy
13. Communicate your success stories, communicate enthusiastically
14. Accountability (and governance) – keep this in mind
In the next post we look at one very important lesson that I have learned as a manager: Friendship and work relationship should be kept separate; you may need to make uncomfortable staffing calls.
