Staying the Course as a CIO. How to Overcome the Trials and Challenges of IT Leadership

Be the most effective CIO you can be—by learning from the best in the business Today's Chief Information Officers must be an entirely new breed of technology leader. With ever-changing demands from the business, and in an increasingly technology-centric business environment, CIOs must find game-changing innovations and process improvements that make a real impact on the bottom line. Business executives need their CIOs to be real partners—speaking the language of the business and donning their strategist caps—not just commodity managers. Those IT leaders who fail to break out of the order-taker, utility manager mold will, simply put, be looking for a new job. In Confessions of a Successful CIO: How the Best CIOs Tackle Their Toughest Business Challenges, current and future CIOs will gain invaluable perspectives from the stories of today's best IT leaders. These acclaimed leaders—each profiled in their own chapter—explain the toughest business decision they had to make, and how the outcome influenced and impacted their leadership style. These in-depth anecdotes take the reader inside some of the most challenging business climates imaginable and chronicle how these elite CIOs made the decisions that mattered. Read detailed case studies of how some of the best CIOs have handled their most challenging business problems Learn how the best CIOs anticipate changes to their business and respond—before the business comes knocking Explore how these top-flight CIOs make critical decisions around strategy and IT to not only benefit their companies, but in some cases, to save them from becoming obsolete. Analyze their perspectives on managing people, crises and balancing the risks and rewards of their «bet the farm» strategies Confessions of a Successful CIO is the new playbook for learning how to take risks, respond to crises, and create more value from IT. Each chapter presents a different challenge, giving present-day and future IT leaders the chance to examine, analyze and learn so that they can be just as successful as the CIOs they're reading about.

Essential reading for IT professionals with aspirations toward the top IT spot, and for sitting CIOs looking to refine their mobile, social and cloud strategies and knowledge The definitive work on how to achieve leadership success in IT, Straight to the Top, Second Edition reveals how the role of the CIO is changing due to major trends associated with consumer and enterprise products and technologies driving new mobile solutions in today's organizations; cloud computing and the move away from controlled / internally managed data centers to pay as you use and elastic cloud infrastructure and application services; and the impact social media is having on today's complex organizations. Author Gregory S. Smith expertly coaches existing and aspiring CIOs on building the requisite skills through his observations and experience as a veteran CIO with more than twenty-five years of experience leading IT teams and delivering complex technical solutions in the information technology field. An invaluable guide to help information technology and business professionals recognize the qualities, skills, and expertise necessary to attain the role of a CIO or enhance the skills for sitting CIOs Equips IT managers, CIOs, and CTOs to strategically plan their career moves Packed with encouragement, advice, and essential skills for aspiring and sitting CIOs Features interviews with leading IT professionals, CIOs, and executive recruiting professionals Providing an organized and comprehensive view of the CIO job and its important role in modern organizations, Straight to the Top, Second Edition equips sitting CIOs and CIO candidates with the strategies and knowledge necessary to be successful in the new business normal – a mobile, social and cloud-based world, and how to provide technology leadership as a world-class CIO.

Britain does not have a written constitution. It has rather, over centuries, developed a set of miscellaneous conventions, rules, and norms that govern political behavior. By contrast, Bosnia’s constitution was written, quite literally, overnight in a military hanger in Dayton, USA, to conclude a devastating war. By most standards it does not work and is seen to have merely frozen a conflict and all development with it. What might these seemingly unrelated countries be able to teach each other? Britain, racked by recent crises from Brexit to national separatism, may be able to avert long-term political conflict by understanding the pitfalls of writing rigid constitutional rules without popular participation or the cultivation of good political culture. Bosnia, in turn, may be able to thaw its frozen conflict by subjecting parts of its written constitution to amendment, with civic involvement, on a fixed and regular basis; a ’revolving constitution’ to replicate some of that flexibility inherent in the British system. A book not just about Bosnia and Britain; a standard may be set for other plural, multi-ethnic polities to follow.

Revised for 2009 and beyond, The Black Book of Outsourcing is a comprehensive guide and directory for the evolving field of outsourcing, including expert advice on how to operate an outsourcing program. Valuable governance checklists, offshoring insights, best practices and one-of-kind resources are featured in this bible of the outsourcing industry. First published in 2005, this topical, bestselling manual explores the evolution of both outsourcing buyers and suppliers. Outsourcing and research gurus Douglas Brown and Scott Wilson chart a course of advice for business leaders charged with managing sourcing initiatives, present a wealth of opportunities for job seekers, and offer insights for entrepreneurial thinkers and investors worldwide

The Transformational CIO is chock full of stimulating thought leadership and useful knowledge that will help you leverage new and existing technologies to create business value, generate more revenue, increase profits and improve customer relationships in rapidly changing global markets. This book is a practical guide for senior executives seeking optimal returns on technology investments, now and in the future. Hot-button issues and essential topics covered in the book include: Vision and Organization Culture and Change Partnering with the Business The Art and Science of IT Leadership Team Building Cloud Computing Enterprise Collaboration Strategic Sourcing Executive Career Development The Transformational CIO features real-world stories and revealing anecdotes from CIOs and IT thought leaders at leading organizations as Disney, Kimberly-Clark, Kaiser Permanente, Dell, Flextronics, Wipro, Boston Scientific, Salesforce.com, General Motors, Shell Oil, Pitney Bowes, IBM, Cisco, Siemens, Citigroup, Microsoft, CVS Caremark, Frontier Communications and the U.S. Tennis Association. Written in straightforward business language, The Transformational CIO is a concise guide for staying ahead of the competition and seizing opportunities for success in a turbulent global economy.

Master the essential skill set of the truly effective leader The Leadership Journey charts a course through four critical areas of being a great leader. Written by Korn Ferry CEO Gary Burnison, this book brings world-renown people and talent development expertise to bear in a discussion about 'good' versus 'great' leadership. Successful leadership at any level is about getting results, but how do the best of the best manage to consistently deliver bigger and better things? This book shares the 'secret sauce' of successful leadership, and provides an actionable framework for discovering—and developing—your own leadership skills and potential. Anyone can have the right hands-on skills, but true leadership finesse lies in the much tougher realm of developing self-awareness to lead yourself first ('Look in the Mirror'); navigating by a fixed point of personal and organizational purpose ('Embody Purpose'); journeying with others who want to follow you ('Don't Walk Alone'); and plotting a course that's beyond the line of sight of what everyone sees ('Navigate Beyond the Horizon'). By distilling the broad and complex topic of leadership into highly accessible points and discussions, The Leadership Journey is perfect traveling companion for everyone along the leadership path. Effective leaders help people do more—and become more—than even they ever thought possible. This book gives you a practical framework for becoming the kind leader your team needs to succeed. Master the key elements of great leadership Understand why hard skills aren't enough Learn how to motivate and lead others Achieve more by helping others inspire and empower themselves Grounded in practical and proven real-world experience, this invaluable guide packs a powerful punch. When it comes to great leadership, reaching your destination requires a precise, well-planned journey that covers all critical ground. The Leadership Journey gives you a clear roadmap with expert direction and world-class advice.

We have long been taught that emotions should be felt and expressed in carefully controlled ways, and then only in certain environments and at certain times. This is especially true when at work, particularly when managing others. It is considered terribly unprofessional to express emotion while on the job, and many of us believe that our biggest mistakes and regrets are due to our reactions at those times when our emotions get the better of us. David R. Caruso and Peter Salovey believe that this view of emotion is not correct. The emotion centers of the brain, they argue, are not relegated to a secondary place in our thinking and reasoning, but instead are an integral part of what it means to think, reason, and to be intelligent. In The Emotionally Intelligent Manager, they show that emotion is not just important, but absolutely necessary for us to make good decisions, take action to solve problems, cope with change, and succeed. The authors detail a practical four-part hierarchy of emotional skills: identifying emotions, using emotions to facilitate thinking, understanding emotions, and managing emotions—and show how we can measure, learn, and develop each skill and employ them in an integrated way to solve our most difficult work-related problems.

Gold Medal Winner, Human Resources and Employee Training, 2012 Axiom Business Book Awards Trust, Pride and Camaraderie—transform your company into a «Great Place to Work» The Great Place to Work Institute develops the annual ranking of the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For. In this book, the authors explore the model of a Great Place to Work For-one which fosters employee trust, pride in what they do, and enjoyment in the people they work with. They answer the fundamental question, «What is the business value of creating a great workplace?» and brings the definition of a Great Place to work alive with anecdotes, best practices, and quotes from employees working at the best workplaces in the U.S. Reveals the essential ingredients in and the trends of the best places to work Explores Great Place to Work model developed in 1984 and validated through its enduring resonance in both the United States and in over 40 countries around the world Written by Michael Burchell and Jennifer Robin two Great Place to Work Institute Insiders If you organization is struggling with the challenges of leveraging human capital, discover why some companies have what it takes to be great.

Leadership the Hard Way presents a method of living and working that can truly facilitate the learning of leadership. Their method shows how to go against the current, fight conventional wisdom, and embrace the unexpected. It is about trusting oneself and valuing intuition, principles, and imagination as much as hard skills and analysis. Frohman combines his counterintuitive ideas with experiences from his own background?from escaping the Nazis as a child to becoming a leading innovator in the semiconductor industry?to show how readers can build their own leadership abilities. A leader?s values and personality, he ultimately reveals, are the only sure source of stability in a world of continuous change.

As our economy shifts from recession to recovery, our current economic climate is ripe for transformation. CIOs are in a unique position to leverage technology in order to drive innovation and boost business growth. The CIO Playbook is the handy desk reference for CIOs, CEOs, CFOs, and up and coming leaders, revealing a dynamic seven-step framework (Partner – Organize – Innovate – Deliver – Support – Protect – Grow) that will guide you in making essential changes to your organization. The proven strategies, tools, and techniques in The CIO Playbook make it the ultimate «how-to» resource for creating a high-performance IT organization that delivers value-added products and services to employees, customers, and shareholders. Author Nicholas Colisto provides solutions to the issues that concern business leaders and IT practitioners, including: How to truly partner with business peers Delivering high-quality products and services that are embraced by your user community How to ensure your team is focused on the right innovations Measuring performance and running your department like a business Ways to attract, motivate, and retain a talented team working toward a common vision Managing risks to operate effectively and protect corporate reputation Featuring online templates for each of the seven steps described in the book, The CIO Playbook can help you transform your IT department from a mere order taker to a high-performance organization that delivers extraordinary business outcomes, despite this era of turbulent economic challenges.