Wolf in Cio's Clothing

dealing with a false alarm. CIOs also consider themselves very logical, and some believe they are more logical than their colleagues in other departments. While this may or may not be true, confidence in one’s logic and objectivity can put us into denial about the power our emotions have over us. Urgent requests are often conveyed with powerful emo

While gaining support is generally a prudent approach in a light-side culture, Charles should have asked himself why he wanted the support. There are only two reasons for a CIO or anyone else to solicit the input of stakeholders — either the stakeholder has information that will improve the quality of the IT decision or the CIO requires permission

Sometimes your goal is to successfully choose between bad and worse

Areas such as innovation, business process improvement and information management often fit into the grey spaces. When I asked one group of CIOs what they do when they encounter a grey space, one entertaining CIO emphatically responded: “We put a server in it!”

Sharks must avoid accidentally scaling up fear and paralyzing followers Simon is a Shark CIO in the shipping industry who is having difficulty understanding why he cannot accelerate the pace of IT change in his organization. He created a digital strategy working with the other C-level executives, gained budget resources, developed personal credibil

If a CIO shares a great deal of information and her peers share little, this sends a signal that they are not peers. One is a service provider who has no choice but to reveal all, and the other is not. Peers and partners share approximately the same amount of information with each other, and CIOs must strive for this ratio as part of the relationsh

“I identified someone on the project team who was an ok performer and who the team really liked. Then I waited. When he said something in a project team meeting that sounded a little bit like he was objecting, I yelled, screamed, and threw him out of the room and off the project team in front of everyone.” William went on to explain “The team was c

Whenever Raja, a business-unit CIO for a large telecommunications company, launches a project, he estimates the time and materials required from the sponsor and key stakeholders in the same way he would for an external consultant. Then, he sets up milestones for both the time and the materials, including key information deliverables, and holds the

As she explained, “Getting people to agree to give up control is like math; order matters. I create an initial talk track or business case and then I select a colleague to practice it on. Usually, it is someone who has a small ERP project that would be subsumed in the consolidation and I try to get their support for the change. If I succeed in conv