Aspire

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In the “Aspire” curriculum, we will help you identify your “career sweet spot” within the context of the IT leadership challenge by clearly characterizing the role of the modern CIO, high leverage behaviors that lead to success, and how you can leverage your talents to realize your dreams.

We all aspire to leave behind something greater than ourselves. Everyone should understand and operate in their “career sweet spot”, where talents are applied in a manner that not only adds value to the surrounding organization, but also leads to the fulfillment of longer term goals and values.

Even very successful leaders, at one time or another, wonder, “Is this all there is?” They find, when challenged, that they have not allowed themselves to dream. They have not taken the time to understand their unique gifts and determine how to apply them in a way that makes the day-to-day more enjoyable and the outcomes more successful.

It is not enough to dream, we also must take action; there are a million things to do every day. The difference between good and great leaders is that the great focus on the activities that have the greatest leverage. To identify what matters most requires an understanding of the IT leadership challenge – specifically, that of the CIO and the business. Only by “getting on the balcony” can a leader gain the perspective to understand why success in the CIO role seems impossible to some, while others make it look easy.


Aspire Articles

Date Article Curriculum
6/29/10 The Four Types of IT Organizations that Leaders Cultivate
By default or by design, companies get the IT capability they've bought and paid for. The CIO, and the IT organization as a whole, reflects an organization's understanding and aspirations for IT. To understand what your organization wants IT to do, identify the role that best describes your IT capability: •The butler. •The grinder. •The team player. •The entrepreneur. Whichever of these four types of IT that your company has, understand that the current state of the organization reflects many years of conscious or unconscious decisions by senior leadership to cultivate that kind of group.
 Aspire
6/24/10 Why Can't My CIO Be More Like Me?
In the last 15 years, companies have wanted CIOs to act less like CIOs and more like general business leaders. Problem is, when you try to have it all, sometimes you don't get what you really need. As long as your CIO is technically savvy and able to deliver results in a high integrity manner, cut her some slack and lend her a hand. Help her define how technology can drive your business. Partner with her to sell in a strategic initiative. Coach her on how to present the IT spend in a way that woos the CFO. Take the lead on driving strategic business change. It's our differences that make us special and underlie our unique contribution. Since your CIO will never be like you, or you like him, it's much more productive to focus on perfecting the relationship and forgo trying to perfect the person.
Aspire
6/9/10 Is the Typical CIO a "Gear Guy"?
A CIO I spoke to thinks that most CIOs are "gear guys." They typically fix their own cars. Talk to them and you'll hear them bragging about their email Exchange migration, disparaging the future of the cloud, and incapable of providing a balanced opinion of off-shoring." She goes on to share that she thinks that 70-80% of CIOs are "gear guys" (versus business visionaries) and constitute the biggest threat facing the future of IT and the IT profession. Research seems to support these views. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, the authors conclude that, "...most CIOs don't have the broad business understanding, strategic vision and interpersonal skills that it takes to run a company or at least play a bigger role in running one." What do you think?
 Aspire
6/2/10 Seven Ways to Secure IT's Future
IT leaders understand that business leaders will take IT matters into their own hands if someone doesn't provide them a roadmap. Translation: Business leaders need your help. To prevent anarchy, you'll need to guide this democracy. Here are a few of the objectives you'll need to consider: •Uplift the IT-smarts of the corporate consumers of technology. •Manage and mine the data that is literally exploding within our companies. •Deploy "sense and respond" and innovation toolkits rather than applications with fixed functionality. •Architect technology platforms that reflect the target business operating model and support integration, change and growth. •Transition from governance breadlines to governance buffet lines. •Lighten the burden necessary to manage the extended IT organizational ecosystems. •Better manage the unanticipated consequences of our increasingly technology-dependent and networked world.
Aspire
5/14/10 How To Get Out Of The Doghouse
If you're wondering if you're in the doghouse, you probably are. Ask yourself these questions: •Are your ideas dismissed in meetings? •Are your requests deferred? •Do people seem a little less willing to take your side or ask you out to lunch? •Are people asking you, "How are you?" with a look of sympathy in their eyes? If you answer "yes" or "maybe" to these questions, you're in the doghouse and it's time to get out. Here's how: Act quickly. Be humble. Be patient. Go overboard. Ask for help. Solidify your base. Be confident. Everybody finds themselves in the doghouse at one time or another in their career. It doesn't really matter that you are in trouble. What matters is how you rebound from adversity and demonstrate resilience. An occasional visit to the doghouse won't derail your career unless you are defensive, can't play well with others, continue to fall short of expectations, or refuse to learn from your mistakes. For me it was miserable being in the doghouse. But with the right attitude and a lot of hard work, I learned a few new tricks and used the experience to my longer-term benefit.
Aspire
4/28/10 What Does the Future Hold For IT?
Nobody knows how technology will be managed or consumed in 5, 10, or 15 years, but we do know that change is coming. A recent report from the Corporate Executive Board provided a bold and provocative view of the future of IT based on the premise that "technology will be consumed as part of the business." These are some of the highlights.
Aspire
4/23/10 How to Encourage Smarter Use of IT
My last post profiled a CIO who is interested in increasing the IT-smarts of his organization. To help ensure success, we encouraged the CIO to approach the effort in a way that respects that change is driven from psychological, not just logical, forces. With this in mind, we identified eight steps to smarter IT.
Aspire
4/19/10 The Change-Management Challenge of Increasing IT Smarts
Boosting IT-smarts is a change-management challenge. But classic change-management approaches often fall short because they focus on the logical, rather than psychological, aspects of change. Behavior and decisions are driven not only by rational but also irrational factors, including behavioral norms, old patterns and short-term gratification. There are eight steps that I believe are critical to creating an IT-smart enterprise. We will cover the first 4 in this blog.
 Aspire
3/12/10 Smarten Up, and Feel the IT Love
To exploit technology, companies need a combination of IT-smart business leaders and business-smart IT leaders. If you want to make this a goal for your organization, start by baselining and benchmarking current performance. To do so, survey your business and IT leaders to assess them in 3 ways. Find out the results of my survey.
 Aspire
1/11/10 Five Ways to Lead with More Compassion
Question: When working with IT, how can you tell the difference between an introvert and an extrovert? Answer: The extrovert looks at your shoes. We label people. Everyone does it. Labels are convenient. And they are dangerous. Labeling people puts them into little boxes and constrains the possibilities that might arise from the relationship. As a case in point, consider our smallest boxes — those each of us squeeze into when we are with our...
 Aspire
1/7/10 Maybe You're the Reason Your Job is Boring
If you are finding your job a little boring, you aren't alone. There are many who feel trapped in their current jobs since the economy has removed a few of the seats in the corporate game of musical chairs. But I challenge you to see that it's actually you, not the job, that's boring. First, see if you recognize any of these hard truths: You're on autopilot. When bored, our brains shift into autopilot. When bored, our brains shift into autopilot. This...
Aspire
12/21/09 A Year-End Commitment: Engage Yourself
We are selfish creatures. At our best, we reach out to others in their time of need, sometimes at great personal cost to ourselves. At our worst, we spend our time and money on wants, not needs, oblivious to our good fortune relative to others. Last year at this time, I wrote a "Christmas wish" blog post, imploring employers to wrap their arms around their employees rather than shove them out the door. Millions of...
Aspire
4/17/09 Forging Better Ties With IT
Are you a customer or partner of IT? If you answered "customer," guess again. IT only has one customer — and that is the customer who buys the company's products and services. Serving this customer requires an effective IT-business partnership. As a wise old client of mine articulately states, "IT should be of service, but not subservient."
Aspire
2/3/09 Don't Use Smart Technologies to Do Dumb Things
Technology can help us do almost anything - for better and worse. In considering the options, leaders need to ask the question: "I know we can do it, but should we?" We all use, or rather misuse, smart technology to do dumb things.
 Aspire
8/8/08 Worksheet: Assessing Your IT Capability
At one time or another, all leadership roles involve some type of IT responsibility, such as serving as an IT liaison, subject matter expert, project or program manager, system or process owner, project sponsor, or participant in IT governance. The key to success is to understand the lay of the land in order to make smart decisions about how to get the right people working collaboratively on meaningful objectives in a way that delivers against short and long term needs.
Aspire
6/16/08 As Good as IT Gets
The end goal is to manage IT as an organizational asset, not an organizational structure. Achieving this goal requires tools that allow everybody in the business - across, up and down the organization – to modify their “applications” and underlying infrastructure.
Aspire
2/1/07 Five Steps for Successfully Transitioning to a New Job
Mapping out priorities when starting a new job can ease stress and help you hit the ground running.
 Aspire
1/1/07 Leadership Under the Influence
"Inexperience, old habits and fear can lead to unnecessary risk taking by the CIO. Avoid this trap by following these simple rules for safe and effective IT leadership."
 Aspire
12/1/06 Tips on Better Decision Making for the CIO
"Smart IT leaders know the key to better decision making is to take a hard look in the mirror and identify what they need to work on to build credibility with the business."
 Aspire
11/1/06 Better Leadership Through Peer Reviews
"CIOs can push their leadership skills to the next level by using a 360 review to understand what they do well—and to start doing it better."
 Aspire
10/1/06 Have Plans In Place Before You're Ordered to Outsource
"Why it pays CIOs to map their plays before a dictate to outsource comes down from on high."
 Aspire
8/1/05 How to Work with an Executive Coach
"Six ground rules for successful coaching engagements."
 Aspire
6/1/05 Your Work or Your Life
"How to overcome the corporate conspiracy that keeps you chained to your job."
 Aspire
4/1/05 All Talk, No Action - Part 2
"Since answers are not going to come from above, it’s up to those in the unbalanced majority to help resolve work-life balance issues – for themselves and with those whom they lead."
 Aspire
4/1/05 All Talk, No Action - Part 1
"...work-life balance isn’t about having more free time; it’s about devoting your life, and the hours within it, consistent with your values and passions."
 Aspire
12/1/04 Be Better Than You Really Are
"How to understand your personality type for leadership success."
 Aspire
9/1/04 Fear of Transparency
"Five excuses CIOs make to avoid practicing what they preach."
 Aspire
12/1/03 New Year's Resolutions for CIOs
"Ten must-dos for 2004."
 Aspire
10/1/03 Five Ways to Regain Your Leadership Focus at Work
"Five ways to regain your focus—and retain your job."
 Aspire
6/1/03 10 Worst Mistakes CIOs Can Make
"How to get yourself thrown out of the game."
 Aspire
3/1/03 How to Uncover Your Career Destination
"Is this job all there is?"
 Aspire
10/1/02 A Letter to CXOs
"You have the IT capability you deserve."
 Aspire
3/15/01 The CIO as Valet
"Why you should follow the fiduciary model of IT management."
 Aspire