Peter High
04-15-2014
Except from the article:
When Becky Blalock entered the U.S. workforce more than 30 years ago, there weren’t many female leaders for her to emulate. As a result, Blalock had to create her own career path, starting at Southern Company, the third-largest utility in the world, where she rose through the ranks to become a senior vice president and CIO. Blalock spent nearly a decade running IT operations at Southern Company where she was nationally recognized for her innovative practices before leaving the company in 2011. Now a managing partner at Advisory Capitol, a strategic consulting firm, Blalock recently published a book, DARE: Straight Talk on Confidence, Courage, and Career for Women in Charge, with the aim of providing career and leadership advice for women. Blalock spoke with CIO Insight contributor Peter High about DARE, mentoring, the difference between leading and managing, and what she learned from one of the biggest disasters in her tenure as a CIO.
What led you to write DARE?
Becky Blalock: The top jobs in corporate America were once reserved for men. I was fortunate to be among the first women to break this tradition when I became CIO of one of the largest utility companies in the world. Getting there was not easy, and during my career journey, I learned many important lessons. As a result, I’ve strived to mentor other women seeking the same career path and to help them find their own way to success.
I saw writing DARE as my chance to mentor women beyond my immediate circle. We still see a big gender gap in the IT field, and DARE gives me a platform to talk about what an exciting field this is and to encourage more females to pursue this career path. Some of the fastest growing and highest paid jobs are in IT, but this field does not have a positive image. I hope to change that with this book.
To read the remainder of the article, please visit CIO Insight.
Brian Bonner, Texas Instruments’ Board-Level CIO
by Peter High, published on Forbes.com
04-14-2014
Brian Bonner is the CIO of Texas Instruments, a $13 billion dollar semi-conductor company, and he manages a central IT organization that supports all aspects of IT including manufacturing, sales, and product development throughout the world. His organization is 1,100 people strong. Although Bonner has engineering degrees at the undergraduate and graduate levels, he spent time in a wide array of functions outside of IT, such as his role as vice president of Worldwide Mass Marketing and Acquisition Integration at Texas Instruments. He has also held general management, sales, and product development roles and was responsible for product strategy & development as well as revenue generation. His vast experience across nearly 20 years at Texas Instruments has made him a particularly business savvy IT executive, and it has meant that he has not been patient with any perception of IT as a support organization.
His business savviness has also made him an attractive candidate to sit on boards of different kinds. Currently, he is a board member of Copper Mobile and he is an advisory board member to for Gemini Israel Ventures. Bonner says that board membership has made him a much stronger executive at Texas Instruments, and recommends that others who might seek a board position first work on demonstrating business value in their current roles as CIO, demonstrating that they have the know-how necessary to become a board-level CIO.
(To listen to an unabridged podcast version of this conversation, please click this link. This is the fourth article in Board Level CIO series. To read the other articles in the series, including an interviews with the CIOs of FedEx and Lincoln Trust, please click this link. To read future articles in the series, including interviews with the CIOs of Intel and Cardinal Health, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Brian, you have a rather non-traditional path to the CIO role. Can you talk a bit about your own personal history and what led you to the current position several years ago?
Brian Bonner: That’s right, Peter. I think the key ingredient for anybody working in technology is to have a curious mind, and I have always been interested in learning new things. I started out with a masters in electrical engineering and actually worked as an automotive engineer before coming to TI. At TI, I went into technical sales where I sold technology to customers and then progressed to sales manager. From there I had an opportunity to become an engineering manager in one of our major sites. I then advanced to running a couple of profit and loss centers and for several years I became a global business manager responsible for a collection of businesses that were around a couple hundred million dollars in size.
Then I was asked to build our mass marketing capabilities. This was really an exciting opportunity to take of some of the things I had learned in sales and business and put together the infrastructure to take care of our customers worldwide. Just as I was really starting to enjoy that, I got the opportunity to do two acquisition integrations, one in New Hampshire, and one near Chicago. I was asked to be the interim leader of those companies as we folded them into Texas Instruments. As that was winding down, I was asked to take over the role as CIO for TI, which was something I didn’t feel I was at all prepared for and never had on my career path. But after talking with our CEO, I realized that all the things I had done prior to this role had prepared me very well for the role of CIO and run it like a business function. So I think the path that I took to get here came from some of my curiosity about technology and how business operates.
Additional topics covered in the article include:
To read the full article, please visit Forbes.com
To explore other Board Level CIO Series articles, please click here.
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To listen to a Forum on World Class IT podcast interview with Helen, click here.
04-08-2014
About ten months ago, I met John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a Google (GOOG +1.65%) board member at a conference in St. Louis at which we were both speaking. Doerr spoke from the stage to roughly 800 technologists with Google Glass on his face. The series of commands and swipes that he undertook were fascinating and odd to many audience members, most of whom, like me, were witnessing the device in person for the first time. As Doerr brought the new device to life, and had it undertake a number of activities, he described the potential revolutionary commercial and consumer implications it had. He has spoken about its potential use by healthcare practitioners who need to use their hands during surgery, or students who could use it to bolster what they might learn in class. He also mentioned how the voice commands might be invaluable to a quadriplegic, opening up the world in new ways for him or her. After the conference, the conference organizers sent me a pair from Doerr, and I have been testing it since.
In typical Google fashion, it has released a product with much potential, but asked that the lucky few who would test it to help determine how it might be used. The company hoped to spur innovation by getting it out into the public and to have a much broader set of smart people devise uses for the product, and develop apps to make those ideas a reality.
04-07-2014
Chief information officers at technology companies can have it tough. For one, IT operates as a group of technologists in a sea of technologists. Often the engineers in the traditional “business” functions think of themselves as doing more important work than that of the IT department, which leads to the conclusion IT and the CIO are really focused on more commoditized work; work that could be outsourced and little difference would be felt by the enterprise. These same “business” engineers may simply think that they can do the CIOs job better than the CIO can.
I have had the privilege of interviewing a vast number of CIOs of tech-centric companies like Google, HP, Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, Netflix. I also recently spoke about this topic with Lee Congdon, CIO of Red Hat in 150th broadcast of the Forum on World Class IT. What these executives and others have mentioned as remedies to the traditional issues plaguing CIOs can be encapsulated in five lessons:
Amtrak’s CIO Changes The IT Culture In First 100 Days
03-31-2014
In 2012, Jason Molfetas joined the Amtrak family as the Chief Information Officer (CIO). Prior to joining Amtrak, Mr. Molfetas had no direct experience in this particular industry, but he was very much familiar with the complexities of running IT in a diverse business environment. Mr. Molfetas’ was able to quickly get up to speed by reviewing the company’s corporate strategy, studying the Amtrak organization charts, reviewing information about his staff and more importantly, meeting with key business leader to learn the Amtrak business practices. In his first 100 days, he did as much listening as he did talking; recognizing that the path to a new strategy would come through insights garnered from his colleagues both within and outside of IT as well as from vendor partners and Amtrak customers. He has made transparent communications the hallmark of his leadership, and has since changed the IT culture to one that is more empowered, accountable, and transparent, while also ensuring that it is closely aligned to the needs of Amtrak customers.
(This is the 12th article in the “CIO’s First 100 Days” series. To read the prior 11, including interviews with the CIOs of Intel, Caterpillar, Time Warner, Johnson & Johnson, and J. Crew, please click this link. To receive notifications regarding future articles in the series, including interviews with the CIOs of AmerisourceBergen and Viacom, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Jason, you joined Amtrak as its CIO in June of last year. You came to Amtrak with logistics experience but without transportation industry experience. How did you prepare for the job prior to joining?
Jason Molfetas: This is the ninth company that I have worked for, so I have had a number of new beginnings in new industries. As a result, I am pretty comfortable with change. The key to a successful transition is recognizing that you are only one part of the overall business and the culture of the company that you are joining. It is important to respect the organization you are joining, the individuals who are now your co-workers and to learn about them and determine how you will fit in with them. To be a successful CIO, you have to be a change agent. You can only attempt to drive change if you have a strong understanding of the company, the culture, the dynamics, and how and when to push for change.
My focus prior to joining was to learn as much as I could about all of the components of the business, its history, and what prior changes were successful or were not successful. It was also important to understand the external factors such as customer viewpoints, market conditions, competitors, the governing board, and other critical stakeholders that shape the company’s forward direction. A tremendous amount of this information is available either directly from the company or from external sources such as annual reports.
You are correct that I had not worked in the rail business before, but I had been a customer of Amtrak, and the interview process was a great opportunity to learn more about those plans, and to begin to understand the company and the culture from within. I very much admired what I found and accepted the position.
To explore the full collection of The CIO’s First 100 Days Series articles, please click here.
To explore the recent CIO’s First 100 Days Series articles, please click here.
How Helen Cousins Became CIO And Board Member Of Lincoln Trust
03-24-2014
Helen Cousins represents the quintessential curious networker that a chief information officer ought to be. Until recently, she was the Executive Vice President and CIO of Lincoln Trust Company. She was also a board member of the company. Prior to that, she was CIO both of Dex Media and of Cendant Corporation. She was also in the 2012 class of CIO magazine’s prestigious CIO Hall of Fame. You would think then that she was destined to be a CIO from the outset of her career. Far from it.
After Cousins graduated from high school, she became the receptionist for a bank. Realizing she could do those duties pretty easily, her curiosity led her to other departments of the company, slowly learning how each department fit with others. She began filling in for people if they were away on a temporary basis. She eventually received a bachelor’s degree and then an MBA, but it was this curiosity to understand businesses that began when she was the most junior person at a bank that has served her well as she has risen. Upon becoming CIO, she realized that an ability to network through the organization, and to find common needs or opportunities articulated in multiple parts of the organization, tying them together before the leaders who articulated them realized they could be that set her apart as an extraordinary leader. She is a rare CIO to become a board member of her own company, but that was the role she played at Lincoln Trust. Although Cousins has many skills that are innate, and therefore tough to teach, she nevertheless imparts a great many insights in my interview with her for IT executives who wish to follow in her footsteps.
(To listen to my unabridged interview with Helen Cousins in podcast form, please visit this link. This is the third in the Board-Level CIO’s series. To read the first two, please follow this link. To read future interviews in this series with the CIOs of companies like Cardinal Health, Texas Instruments, and Capital One, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Helen, you have a non-traditional path: You don’t have an engineering degree, you didn’t grow up in the IT department and you didn’t have a lot of female IT leaders to look up to. Can you tell us a bit about your path to the CIO role?
Helen Cousins: I do have a pretty non-traditional path. My first job was right out of high school as a receptionist for a small international branch of a domestic bank. I always volunteered to learn what other departments were doing. We were very small – only about 30 people – so there was always somebody I could fill in for. I really learned how all of the departments interact together, how important it is as a task flows from one department to another department and to look at the end-to-end process.
As I started moving up, I decided to get my BS in Accounting & Economics and an MBA in computer science. I got involved in IT as a Project Manager for a System Implementation in one of the largest global banks because of my knowledge of the different areas in banking. Once that was successfully implemented, I found myself getting more responsibility until eventually I was running all the development for the bank within the US as the only female VP before leaving. My career in IT was really cast from there and I have since held three CIO positions: Corporate CIO of a large New York holding company, then a large yellow page company in Denver and lastly, Lincoln Trust.
Ambitious IT pros seek COO role
To effect truly strategic and visionary change, motivated tech leaders are looking at operations rather than IT.
Beth Stackpole
03-18-2014
Trending: “CIO-plus” roles
In many cases, when IT and operations do converge, it’s not a case of a traditional COO taking the reins of IT, but rather of an elite CIO stepping up. That’s part of a broader trend to award the senior IT role more responsibility — what some management consultants are calling “CIO-plus.”
“The great CIOs are becoming more of an operator and view their role like a COO, thinking more broadly and recognizing their strategic perch in the corporate structure,” says Peter High, president of Metis Strategy LLC, a boutique strategy and management consulting firm. “They are more likely to have an intimate understanding of other areas like human resources and the supply chain that arguably no other leader has, so it’s logical for them to take that next step to COO.”
For Duane Anderson, a CIO-plus role has always been a goal. Anderson, now CIO/COO at marketing agency Marquette Group, has had several key mentors, including Tekexec’s Stanley, who blazed the trail for a broader CIO role when the pair were at Harrah’s Entertainment, now Caesars. “It was part of the proving ground when I came up,” Anderson says. “I didn’t know that it wasn’t normal.”
To read the remainder of the article, please visit Computerworld
If interested, please read a related article on how CIOs Are Finally Getting Some Respect, written by Esther Shein and published in The Enterprising CIO.
03-17-2014
Martha Heller is the President of Heller Search Associates, and the author of The CIO Paradox: Battling the Contradictions of IT Leadership. In addition to placing a number of high profile IT executives, she also writes about hers and many other placements for CIO magazine together with advice for chief information officers everywhere. She has developed a strong personal brand, and has helped improve the personal brands of IT executives who have adopted some of her methods.
In light of this experience, I recently caught up with Martha to engage her on the topic of the CIO’s First 100 Days. Since she is often in touch with CIOs before they get their jobs, and then stays in touch as their tenures progress, she offers some interesting insights into how CIOs should prioritize their activities early in their tenures to ensure that executive recruiters are not called back in for a replacement soon thereafter.
(This is the eleventh article in the CIO’s First 100 Days series. To read prior interviews in the series with the CIOs of Intel, Caterpillar, J. Crew, and Johnson & Johnson to name a few, please visit this link. To listen to a podcast interview I conducted with Martha Heller, please visit this link. To read future interviews in the series with the CIOs of AmerisourceBergen, Viacom, and Amtrak, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Martha, as an executive recruiter, your client is the hiring manager to the CIO. You learn about what the prior CIO did well, and, more often than not, what he or she did not do well. Of course, all of that is taken into consideration in finding the right candidate for the position. Let me begin by asking what thoughts you have about the reasons why CIOs typically fail, and have the factors evolved over the course of your career as a recruiter?
Martha Heller: CIOs fail because they have not managed to build credibility with their business peers. Technology is expensive; technology is complicated, and technology does not always work the way we want it to. When the inevitable happens, and people are not happy with their technology, it is the CIO who bears the brunt of all of that frustration.
Over the years, the situation has evolved, but not necessarily for the better. Years ago, the CIOs role was to make IT work operationally, and when it didn’t, they were held account able by their CEOs. Today, IT still needs to work operationally, but it also needs to innovate. CIOs need to keep IT efficient and secure, but they also need to deliver new technologies to drive new revenue and take the company into new markets.
While the demands on the CIO have evolved, the tools CIOs need to meet those demands have not changed. The CIOs who are successful, despite these competing demands, do one thing very well: They build solid relationships, developed through years of successful IT delivery, so that when technology sputters (as technology will do) they have the credibility to weather the storm.
FedEx’s Rob Carter On What It Takes To Be A Board-Level CIO
03-10-2014
There are few chief information officers with as stellar a reputation as Rob Carter’s. He has played an integral role in FedEx’s sophisticated logistics and analytics systems, which have been sources of efficiency for the company and its customers, and have fueled tremendous revenue growth at the same time. It is not surprising that Carter has been asked to sit on the boards of multiple companies including Saks Incorporated and First Horizon National Corporation. He has added tremendous value to each board, but as he notes herein, he has also gained a lot for himself and for his company in the process. It has afforded him tremendous insights into two industries of critical importance to FedEx (retail and financial services), and it has continued to hone his business skills.
It is that last point that he reiterated multiple times in my conversation with him: IT leaders need to think in terms of business value, and need to communicate in a similar fashion to other executives across the company. These are pre-requisites to be asked to lead other functions, as Rob has done, but they are also pre-requisites for CIOs with the ambition to join the boards of other companies as well.
(To listen to an unabridged audio version of my interview with Rob, please visit this link. This is the second article in the Board-Level CIO series. To see a summary of the series, please click this link. To read future articles in the series, including interviews with Board-Level CIOs from Intel, Texas Instruments, Cardinal Health, Lincoln Trust, and BDP International, please click the “Follow” link above.)
Peter High: Rob, you were instrumental in transitioning FedEx from a package delivery company to an incredibly sophisticated logistics company. Can you provide an overview of that transition to being a company for which technology is so strategic?
Rob Carter: FedEx is a special place when it comes to applied technology. Our chairman and founder, Fred Smith, said all the way back in 1978 that the information about the package was as important as the package itself. This established a culture that made information central to our mission in order to strategically scale a business.
Now it is the backbone of how we operate the company, from delivering ten million plus packages each day, to how we interface with our customers; it is all technology based. We have one group of people who do an incredible job for our customers, but the tools that they use to make sure things are running smoothly and that nothing is overlooked are technologies aligned with the pulse of the business.
To listen to a Forum on World Class IT podcast interview with Rob, click here.
CIOs Are Finally Getting Some Respect
Esther Shein
09-03-2014
Amid all of the pressure on CIOs to innovate while keeping the lights on and fostering better communications and aligning with the business – topics that have been addressed here regularly – comes some good news: CIO tenure is on the rise.
That’s an observation from Peter High, president of Metis Strategy, a Washington, D.C.-based boutique strategy and management consulting firm, who I spoke with last week. Anecdotal information High has gotten from friends at major executive recruiting firms suggests tenure for CIOs is climbing above four years.
High attributes this to the fact that the CIO role is as complex as any role in the corporate hierarchy, and recognition that a longer-term perspective is needed. Finally! Switching out players used to be easy to do, he maintains, because the rest of the organization didn’t understand what the CIO did. “That’s partially the CIO’s fault, because they used different language and different metrics to measure the performance of IT, creating a virtual black box around the department from the perspective of the rest of the organization.”
To read the remainder of the article, please visit The Enterprising CIO
If interested, please read a related article on how CIOs can position themselves for business success, written by Peter High and published in ON Magazine.
