The Accidental Successful CIO » career

Do You Have Enough Personal Energy To Be CIO?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:00:11 +0000

Do You Know How To Manage Your CIO Energy?

So what’s it going to take to make you a successful CIO? Is it going to be your understanding of a wide variety of the IT sector’s emerging technologies? Is it your ability to understand where the company stands in the marketplace and where it wants to go? Or is it your business skills that allow you to seamlessly network with the rest of the company in order to lead the IT department?

Turns out that these are all good to have; however, what it’s going to take to get you to the finish line is something much more valuable: personal energy.

Why You Are Doing A Poor Job Of Being CIO

How would you be able to tell if you were doing a poor job of being CIO? I guess one way would be to determine that you were not getting things done – more and more tasks were just sitting around waiting for you to get to them. Is this happening? Maybe we should take a look at your email inbox – is it getting rather full?

So what’s going on here? You’ve probably read that “Getting Things Done” book, you’ve studied the 7 habits of effective people, how much more time can you spend managing your time? Tony Schwartz has looked into what is going on here and he believes that we are all experiencing what he calls a “personal energy crisis”.

Look, for years and years we have all been finding ways to do more in a fixed amount of time – thank you smart phones and laptops. However, we’ve just about used up all of our available time no matter how hard we try to free up more time to do stuff. We are out of time. Going forward it’s not going to be so much about finding more time to get things done, rather it’s all going to be about finding the personal energy to get things done.

How To Find Your Personal Power

The concept of having enough personal power to get the important work done seems straightforward enough. But how does one actually go about doing this? Here’s what we are all missing: we are human beings and that means that at a biological level we are programmed to work for a while and then to take a rest. The definition of information technology focuses on the software and systems that we use to accomplish tasks – we are not those machines. We are not computers sitting in some data center somewhere that can be plugged in and run for months or years without stopping.

Ooops, did I say rest? Doesn’t that go against just about everything that you are currently doing? Didn’t you get to the position of CIO by working harder than everyone else? Getting in early, staying late, working weekends is what it takes to succeed, right?

Bad / Good news – turns out that we’ve got it all wrong. Because we are human beings, we do need rest. But the good thing about rest is that after we get some, we have the ability to do more work than before. Studies of pilots have shown this to be true: a short half-hour nap boosted their reaction times by 16% while pilots who didn’t nap had their reaction times drop by 34%. I suspect that most of us are in the 34% crowd.

A sleep researcher names Nathaniel Kleitman came up with the concept of the “basic rest activity cycle”. What this means is that during the day we all cycle through a 90-minute cycle where we go from high alertness to low alertness. Clearly your body wants you to stop and take a break every 90 minutes or so.

To become a more effective CIO you need to make some changes in how you run your day. You need to schedule your work so that you are running at a higher focus for a shorter period of time. After this period is over, you need to take the time to rest and allow your body to renew itself. By doing this you will find that you really can get more work done in less time!

What All Of This Means For You

In order to be an effective CIO you are going to have to be able to get an awful lot of work done. The question that should be smacking you in the face right about now is just exactly how are you going to get all of that work done? It turns out that time management is only going to get you so far. You are eventually going to run out of time.

The importance of information technology means that you need to become a strong leader, not one that runs out of steam. You are going to have to switch from managing your time to managing your personal energy. We humans are designed to work in 90 minute cycles. What this means that is that we’ll go from being very alert to being not so alert every hour and a half. Understanding that you have this cycle and designing your work schedule around it will be the key to becoming and remaining effective.

You can become the CIO that everyone turns to because they know that you can get it done. However, the only way that you’re going to be able to do this is to make sure that your personal energy is up to powering you through day after day of charting your company’s technological future. Start living your work days 90 minutes at a time and you’ll be the CIO that everyone looks up to.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: What’s the best way to make sure that you can divide your day up into 90 minute blocks?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

I’m green, you’re green, all of IT is going green. Ok, so this sure sounds like a good thing to do and I’m all for saving the planet and such, but is it really worth it? I mean we’re still dealing with the aftereffects of that global recession thing and should those of us in the IT sector insist that green IT projects pay for themselves? If the answer is yes, then how the heck can we determine if a green IT project is a good idea or not?

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Post tags: alertness, basic rest activity cycle, energy crisis, energy management, focus, personal energy, pilots, rest and renewal, time, time management, unsustainable

One Industry Finally Understands The Importance Of A CIO

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:00:02 +0000

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You Can't Read An Electrical Meter Without Help From The CIO

‘Tis the time of year that my CIO customers are starting to get itchy to try new things. The kids are out of school and greener pastures beckon. They keep asking me where they should be looking for their next CIO job. Is there any industry that will truly appreciate the value that a skilled CIO can bring to the job? It turns out that the answer is yes and right now I’m recommending one industry in particular: energy companies.

Why Energy Companies Love Their CIOs

In order for a CIO to be fully appreciated by their company, the company has to have a real need for their services. At this point in time, energy companies fit that bill – they are facing significant IT challenges.

The first thing that CIOs need to realize when they start to consider working for an energy company is just exactly what an energy company does. Yes, generating electricity is a big part of the company’s job. However, there is a lot more going on.

Energy companies buy and sell energy and energy futures. They spend a great deal of time and effort planning how they will generate energy in the future. All of these tasks require a lot of data. Only now are energy companies starting to deal with just exactly how they are going to both store and access the large amounts of digital data that they need to more accurately perform their jobs.

Since energy companies are performing tasks that other firms are also doing, benchmarking is a very valuable activity. The CIO is needed in order to implement ways of performing ongoing benchmarking analysis with multiple other firms.

Finally, we are entering a new era of the smart energy gird. This means that sophisticated two-way meters are being installed in homes and businesses. The amount of real-time data that energy companies are going to have to process is getting ready to skyrocket. The CIO is going to be needed in order to create solutions for dealing with these new challenges.

Why Working For An Energy Company Is A Good Choice For CIOs

So now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty: why am I telling my CIO clients to look into CIO jobs in the energy industry? The reasons are actually pretty simple. It all starts with the fact that the energy companies get it – information has become the ultimate competitive advantage and the CIO holds the key to providing the company with the information that they need.

In the world of energy companies IT really matters. Instead of being told what has been decided and asked to implement it, the IT department is being invited to the strategy table and their inputs are shaping what the company decides to do.

A recent study of energy company organizations revealed that 20% of CIOs in this industry report directly to the CEO. Additionally, 5% – 10% of the other firms are moving their CIOs up the organizational chart each year. Although the numbers aren’t wonderful, they are a lot better than in other industries.

Finally, the Stuxnet virus that attacked the Iranian nuclear industry was a wake-up call for energy companies everywhere: it could happen to them. They are now all turning to their CIOs in order to be told what they need to do in order to keep their IT systems safe and their ability generate energy on-line.

What All Of This Means For You

The CIOs that I spend my time helping all too often feel overlooked and underappreciated. When they finally get fed up with the CIO job that they have, they ask me where they should go to look for their next CIO job. I tell them that the energy companies are the ones who currently appreciate what a good CIO can do.

The reason that energy companies love their CIOs is because they have specific needs that only the CIO can help them with. These needs include securely storing and efficiently processing the mountains of data that are needed in order to determine how much it costs them to generate a kilowatt of energy. The arrival of the smart grid and smart meters has caused the data that an energy company has to process to skyrocket. Finally, security has become a constant topic of conversation as the importance of the national power grid has only recently started to be understood.

CIOs are people too. Just like everyone else they desperately want their work to be appreciated. This means that they need to work for a company that has real IT needs and will support them as they solve those needs. It may not be the case forever, but for now energy companies are a great place for CIOs to go looking for their next job!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: What is the one CIO skill that you think an energy company needs the most?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.
P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As a CIO it can be all too easy to feel overwhelmed by the decisions that you have to make: mobile devices, clouds, security, arrrgh! The CIOs that I’m working with are looking for clear directions on what they should be spending their time on. My advice to them is that they need to pick a few key questions that are closely tied to the overall business. Once they can answer these questions, everything else will take care of itself. The key is to know what questions to spend your time answering…

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Post tags: benchmarking, business enabler, competitive advantage, cost center, cyber security, energy company, generate power, smart grid, two-way meters

Why Is The CIO Position Reporting Structure Broken?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:00:28 +0000

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There's Something Broken When It Comes To The CIO Position

Don’t look now, but there’s something wrong in the world of CIOs. The CIOs that I’m working with are being asked to do more and more for their companies. It would be fair to say that IT has become an indispensible part of the companies that these CIOs work for. Then can you tell me why at some companies CIOs don’t report directly into the CEO?

The Bad News

In a recent survey of firms, less than half of the firms that responded said that the CIO reported directly to the CEO. This means that even as IT becomes more and more important to the economic well-being of a firm, the person who has been tasked to implement the firm’s IT strategy is being prevented from participating in the planning the company’s overall strategy.

What does this actually mean? In a nutshell, it means that a critical line of communication is longer and more apt to break than it needs to be. Considering all of the challenges that modern firms face, the CIO needs to be at the right hand of the CEO when ways to move the company forward are being discussed.

A good example of what can possibly happen if the CIO does not report directly to the CEO happed at Sony. Their Playstation network was hacked and confidential customer information was taken by parties unknown. As big and as sophisticated a company as Sony is, their CIO reports in to the Chief Transformation Officer who in turn reports in to the CEO. Talk about a broken pipe!

A Ray Of Hope?

The solution to this problem is clear: the position of CIO needs to report directly into the CEO. The challenge is finding out how to convince those 50% of firms that don’t have this structure to make the changes that will be needed in order to make it happen.

The big question is what will motivate these firms to make this kind of change? As with all things in business, the reason for making a change needs to be based on the company’s bottom line.

In the case of the CIO, it’s the IT department activities that don’t have anything to do with keeping the lights on that will provide a compelling story for having the CIO report directly to the CEO. Tasks such as mining the customer and sales data that the company has collected in order to gleam new customer needs and buying patterns are things that the CEO needs to both lead and respond to. The only way that this can happen is if the CEO and the CIO are directly talking.

Additionally, as the specter of digital break-ins becomes ever more possible, the CIO needs to be working with the CEO in order to determine what data needs to be stored, how long it needs to be stored, and when collected information can be disposed of. Only by agreeing on a company-wide policy and then implementing it can firms start to deal with creating an effective defense against being hacked.

What All Of This Means For You

All too often companies give lip service to the importance of IT to their overall success while at the same time relegating their CIOs to report to someone who is not the CEO. This contradiction clearly shows that something is broken at the top of many companies.

Recent surveys have revealed that CIOs reported directly to the CEO at less than half and maybe even fewer of the companies surveyed. What this means is simply that the CIO is not being heard where he or she needs to be heard: at the top of the company. As security threats grow and the value of business data becomes more and more important, this kind of organizational structure cannot be permitted to remain in place.

The change that needs to occur is that CIOs need to report directly the company’s CEO. It’s only by setting up this kind of reporting structure that the types of conversations that need to occur around data retention, infrastructure security, etc. will happen. Considering what the rest of the company is asking the CIO to accomplish, it sure seems as though inviting them to the big table is something that has to happen sooner rather than later.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership `Skills™

Question For You: If a CIO does not report to the CEO, who do you think the CIO should talk to in order to change this situation?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Everybody loves the cloud. Or at least that’s pretty much how it seems if you’ve pick up any of the IT trade rags in the past 18 months. They are filled with articles talking about how the cloud is going to save IT departments tons of money and how it’s the next great thing. Well, not all CIOs are convinced of this and considering some of the humongous security issues that are popping up, you might want to rethink some of your cloudy thoughts…

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Post tags: : reporting structure, ceo, information, layers of management, Playstation, Sony, strategy team, technology is a utility

Now What? When CIOs Make The Wrong Job Move…

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:00:50 +0000

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Oops -- That Job Change Was Wrong, Now What?

Sure you did all of the research, you talked with all of the right people, shucks you even followed up on every Google link that you could find on the company that you were thinking about going to work for before making the jump. However, now that you’ve made the jump you are finding out that perhaps you’ve made a mistake. Now what do you do?

How Did This Happen?

CIOs are supposed to be smart people, how come we can end up making mistakes when it comes time to switch jobs? The good news is that we are smart; however, what can happen is that we can find ourselves under a great deal of pressure and this can adversely affect how we make decisions.

One such type of pressure is mental pressure – how do we see ourselves? When we are considering making a job change, we tend to make up our minds about how we think the next job is going to be and then we only pay attention to the information that we encounter that confirms this view. Researchers call this thinking “confirmation bias”.

In order to counter this kind of thinking we need to be constantly asking ourselves one question: what happens if I am wrong? Only by doing this will you be able to make yourself aware of information that might not fit the way that you want the world to be.

Another type of pressure you need to deal with when you are considering changing jobs is social pressure. This is most often evident when you have become so unhappy with your current job that you’d almost rather be anywhere else.

Far too often these types of situations could be dealt with if you would only find the courage to sit down and talk things over with someone at your current company. However, all too often we are so resistant to having this kind of discussion that we’re willing to leave the firm and run to a new job.

Finally, the ever present specter of time pressure is always a factor when it comes to considering moving to a new job. When we don’t feel that we have very much time to make a decision, what happens is that we end up hastily making a bad decision.

The lack of time forces us to focus on the short-term gains that we’ll make by switching jobs. What happens is that we forget to take a look at the long-term impacts of making the switch. A good way of countering this tendency is to ask yourself questions such as “if the salaries & benefits were the same, would I make the job switch?”

What Do You Do Now?

Despite having taken the time to carefully consider all of the issues and to try to counter the pressures that will be driving your decision, sometimes we still end up making poor job change choices. The question then comes up: what should we do now?

The experts all agree on the answer to this one. You need to cut your losses and move on once again. However, this time around you need to do a better job. Don’t just flee a bad job and jump yet again into another poor position. Take the time to understand why you made a bad job change decision and make sure that you don’t repeat this mistake.

Ultimately the best way to protect yourself from making another bad career decision is to become more self-aware. You want to be able to understand your strengths and weaknesses so that you can evaluate your next job opportunity in a way that will reveal if it is really the right career move for you.

What All Of This Means For You

Despite our best efforts, sometimes we make mistakes when we are switching product management jobs. There can be a number of different reasons that we make this kind of mistake but more often than not they all come back to the different types of pressures that we are under: mental, social, or time.

If you find yourself having made the wrong choice in switching jobs, your next step is very clear. You need to cut your losses and move on to your next job. You need to be careful and make sure that you leave your new job carefully so that it doesn’t look like you are running away from it.

None of us is perfect – we all have the ability to make the wrong decision at some point in time. What can make us a great CIO is the ability to be aware that we’ve made a poor decision and then the ability to react and make the right decision.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: How long do you think that you should stay at a job that you know is the wrong job for you?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

First the bad news: it turns out that 25% of the best workers in the IT department are planning on leaving within the next 12 months. Do I have your attention now? Not to depress you even more, but it turns out that those internal job change programs that are intended to develop the next generation of IT leaders don’t work – 40% of the internal rotations that are made by IT “high-pots” (high potential) employees end up in failure. Let’s take a look at what problems you need to solve …

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Only A CIO Could Screw Up A Job Change!

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 19:00:44 +0000

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It Can Be Easy To Take A Wrong Step When Changing Jobs

The global economy is roaring back again and it sure seems like everyone is starting to take stock of their job and decide if they want to stay where they are or move on to greener pastures. CIOs are no exception. Perhaps you’ve grown as far as you can or perhaps you feel that you’ve done everything that you’re going to be allowed to do where you are at. If you are thinking about moving on, you had better be careful that you don’t screw up your job change…

Failing To Do Enough Research On Where You Are Going

Considering the fact that doing research, collecting data, and then making the best possible decision is such a key part of the job of being a CIO, you’d think that we’d all do this well when it comes to looking for our next job. Well, guess again.

The folks who know such things, search consultants, say that CIOs are dropping the ball in several areas. The first is that they don’t do a good job of sizing up the market for their skills. What this means is that CIOs don’t have valid assumptions for how long it’s going to take to find their next job.

Next, CIOs somewhat surprisingly don’t do a good job of checking out the financial health of the company that they are thinking about jumping to. Sure they may check out the technology, but not the bottom line situation.

Additionally, the culture of the new company is rarely considered. If a CIO is coming in from a free-wheeling Silicon Valley company and is considering going to work for a 100-year old insurance firm, culture becomes a big deal.

Finally, all too often CIOs assume that they are getting what’s being advertised – that the job title matches the job. Just because the new company calls the job “CIO” does not mean that you’ll have the same level of control that you had in your old job.

Going When They Show You The Money

Hey, I like money, you like money. However, as hard as it is for both of us to understand, you can’t leave one job and go to another just because the new job pays more. This is a sure recipe for disaster.

When CIOs were asked to rank what they were looking for in a new job, pay came in at the fourth or fifth place on the list. However, all too often CIOs bump this factor up to first place when it comes time to make a decision — bad move.

Deciding To Go “From” Rather Than “To”

Just like everyone else out there, CIOs can become dissatisfied with their jobs. When this happens, they can start to make poor career decisions.

When a CIO decides to switch jobs, it should be a carefully planned career move. However, if they are really upset with their current position, then all too often it becomes just a desperate jump to the nearest lifeboat. Since this often happens with little or no serious research into the firm that the CIO is fleeing to, these new positions rarely last for long.

As a CIO bounces from firm to firm, you can quickly develop a reputation as a job hopper and it will become that much harder to get your next job. No matter how bad your current job is, take the time to plan out what your next career step should be before you do anything.

What All Of This Means For You

CIOs are like everyone else: when the opportunity to move to a new job comes along, they can decide to make the jump for all of the wrong reasons. If you are aware of the most common mistakes that other CIOs have made, then you’ll have a chance to avoid them.

The mistakes that CIOs make are easily avoidable. The most common mistakes include not doing enough research on the company that they’ll be joining, being seduced by an offer of more money, and focusing on leaving the firm where they are and not taking a careful look at just exactly where they’ll be going.

Ultimately, being aware of the most common mistakes that CIOs make is the first step in avoiding them. You can switch jobs smoothly and end up in a better place, just make sure that you’re switching for all the right reasons!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: Do you think that going to a company in trouble for a lot more money would be worth it?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

CIOs understand that they are responsible for conducting performance appraisals with their team every so often. What many CIOs don’t realize is that they are also responsible for what comes next: coaching…

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Post tags: career, challenges, dissatisfaction, job moves, misstep, mistakes, offer, risks and realities, search consultants, setback

What It Takes To Become A High Potential CIO

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 04:01:38 +0000

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High Potential CIOs Are The Ones Who Become Successful

What is it going to take to make your CIO career a success? Sure, you can deliver IT value and get your projects done on time, but will that be enough? The answer is no. For you to be seen as a successful CIO you are going to have to be seen as a “high potential” CIO – one who is going to go places beyond your current assignment. Clearly you need to know what it’s going to take to get others to consider you to be high potential…

The Intangibles

The reason that many CIOs get stuck in their current job with the current responsibilities is because others don’t believe that they have “what it takes” to handle other responsibilities. The things that it will take for you to be viewed as being a high potential are intangible (can’t really be expressed in words) and generally can’t be written down on job descriptions or yearly evaluations.

The good news is that Dr. Douglas Ready and a team of researchers have been looking into what it takes for an IT worker to move from regular to high potential workers. They’ve uncovered four factors that can transform you from everyday to high potential in the eyes of others.

Drive Time

Do you have what it takes to succeed? Can others tell that you have this drive? Just being good isn’t enough for you – you have to want to be great and it needs to show.

The key here is that others need to be able to determine that you are willing to make the extra effort to succeed. This means that they are going to have to be able to see you make sacrifices in order to advance in your career. Everyone has to know that your personal life comes second when it comes to your job.

The Ability To Learn / Do

High potential CIOs are always learning new things. However, this isn’t enough. Just because you are willing to constantly be learning new things doesn’t make you a high potential IT worker.

Instead, you need to show others that you have the ability to not only learn new things, but to also take what you’ve learned and apply it to what is happening right now. The use of new ideas to make IT more productive for the company is what is going to set you apart from everyone else.

Become A Risk Taker

Despite all of us understanding that IT is all about change, it can be too easy for CIOs to get comfortable in their jobs. When this happens, they lose the desire to take new risks and they are no longer viewed by others as being high potential CIOs.

What we need to do is to be willing to take on new ways to make the company more productive. Sometimes this involves starting a risky new project, or developing a new set of IT skills that will require us to leave what we already know behind.

Develop Your “Spidy Sense”

The comic book hero Spiderman has what he calls his “spidy sense” which tingles when there is danger approaching. High potential CIOs need to develop their own version of this type of sensing that allows them to detect when a danger to their careers is approaching.

Career dangers can include such things as projects that are doomed to fail from the start, or avoiding providing feedback to senior managers that could help the company do better. High potential CIOs have a highly developed sense that allows them to know when to push forward and when to pull back.

What All Of This Means For You

Just being a CIO is not enough. In fact, just being a good CIO is not enough either. What you want to be is a high-potential CIO. This will open doors to new opportunities at the firm that you are working for and at other firms also.

In order to start to be seen as being “high potential”, you are going to have to start doing several things. These include showing a keen sense of drive to succeed, the ability to both learn new things and then apply what you’ve learned, take proper risks, and sense when an opportunity is either a good thing or a bad thing for your career.

The good news is that any CIO can become a high potential CIO. Simply by adopting these traits you can quickly move from being seen as simply a good CIO to being seen as a high potential CIO.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills™

Question For You: Would you be willing to make sacrifices in your personal life in order to be seen as a high potential CIO?

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Will these Internet crazes never end? Just in case you’ve been living under a rock someplace and haven’t heard about the “Twitter” revolution, guess what: it’s arrived and this time around as a CIO wanta-be you should be an active participant.

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© Dr. Jim Anderson for The Accidental Successful CIO, 2010. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: applying what you’ve learned, avoid risks, constant learning, drive to excel, enterprising, foolish decisions, good judgment, pull back, read situations

Is Your CIO Resume Blackberry Ready?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:01:51 +0000

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How Will Your Resume Look When Viewed On A Blackberry?

When you go hunting for your next IT job (and it may be sooner than later), will your resume be up to the job? Come to think of it, when was the last time you dusted off and updated your resume? Do you still have that quaint “objective statement” or “career goal” hanging out at the top? If so, you may be in for a shock – that’s not going to be the best use of resume real estate when it’s being reviewed on the hiring manager’s Blackberry…

The Need For A New Resume

Parting is such sweet sorrow… or so the classic line goes. Look, when did you first create your resume? Awhile ago? Even if it was only a couple of years ago, the world has changed dramatically since then and it’s time that you (and your resume) kept up with it. It’s time to say goodbye to your old style resume.

About that “objective statement” up at the top – ditch it. The next company that will be hiring you really doesn’t care about what you are looking for. Instead, they are facing pain right now and they are looking for someone whom they can hire to come in and make that pain go away. That’s what really matters.

This means that we’re going to have to make some changes to your current resume. Prepare to get out the sharp knife.

Length

How long is too long? How long is too short? This rule of thumb has not changed even in the 21st Century – a resume should be two pages max. In fact, it’s really only the first 25% that you can count on a hiring manager reading so that’s where you’ve got to really shine.

If you’ve had some amazing IT department experiences that you think would really help your case, then feel free to include them – as an addendum. This extra stuff can be anywhere from 4-12 pages long; however, remember that there is no guarantee that anyone is going to read it.

Skills

Are you the world’s best Cobol / Fortran / Java programmer? Drop it. Look, you’re going for a IT leadership job and it’s really your finance and people management skills that are going to get you the job – not your programming chops. Use your limited resume real estate to explain how your leadership skills have made your past departments successful.

Skip The History Lesson

A resume is designed to tell your next employer about how you’ll perform in the workplace. This means that pretty much anything that does not have to do with the workplace should be dropped. This list will include civic accomplishments, professional associations that you belong to, charity work, etc. Use the freed up space to provide more details about your most recent job and how it relates to the job that you are applying for.

Say No To Descriptions, Yes To Accomplishments

I must confess that this has been a mistake that I’ve made in the past and I found it hard to stop doing it. Instead of providing your work biography by listing every single job you’ve ever had, use the space instead to list your accomplishments. Ultimately this is what your future employer really cares about. Don’t worry about all of those “title only” promotions that you’ve gotten over the years, instead just focus on the teams that you’ve managed and the challenges that you’ve mastered.

What All Of This Means For You

Everyone has a resume. However, not everyone has a resume that will work for them. In this day and age of everyone having too much to do and too little time to do it in, you’re going to need to shape your resume to be scanned quickly on your future boss’ Blackberry as he/she dashes off to their next meeting.

What this means is that you’re going to have to cut to the bone and get rid of everything that doesn’t pertain to how you would do in your next position. Detailing what you’ve accomplished in your most recent leadership positions is what that Blackberry scanning hiring manager is going to be looking for.

Take the time to craft a new resume that is tailored to read quickly in digital form and you’ll be one step ahead of everyone else who is applying for the same job. If you make it easy for them to see why you are the perfect fit for the job, then you’ve just shown them why you’re the type of IT talent that they need to hire…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills

Question For You: If a hiring manager is only going to scan the first half of the first page of your resume, what do you think that you need to put there in order to land the job?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Successful CIO Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

CIOs are learning that they need to develop the staff and tools that are needed in order to start using analytics to make the company more competitive…

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© Dr. Jim Anderson for The Accidental Successful CIO, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: accomplishments, addendum, Blackberry, descriptions, irrelevant skills, leadership ability, maximum length, personal details, professional organizations, resume

CIO’s With No Time Find An Alternative To An MBA

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 04:01:37 +0000

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If You Really Want An MBA But Don’t Have The Time, Maybe There’s Another Way…

As CIO wanna-be’s who live in troubling times we are always trying to do two things: hold on to our jobs and be more successful. One of the best ways to do both of these, or so we have been told, is to go out and get an MBA. Well that’s all great and fine if you’ve got four or five years to burn, don’t need to do anything else at night, oh and have a big chunk of cash sitting around that you had no other plans for. Maybe it’s time to look for a better way to accomplish what we’re trying to do…

Say Hello To The Alternative To The MBA

Before you decide to either quit your IT job and go back to school in order to get an MBA (really, really expensive) or start going to night school to get an MBA (just really expensive), maybe you should take a moment and consider all of your options. Maybe what you really want is a specialized Master’s degree.

Yeah, yeah – I know what you are thinking. We’ve all been drinking the “get an MBA” Kool-Aid for so long that it’s hard to imagine doing anything else. However, depending on what you want to do with your life, this might actually be a better solution for you.

If having spent time being on the IT side of the company has gotten you interested in what goes on over on the business side, then getting an advanced business degree of some sort is probably a good idea. However, one of the things that keeps us from doing this is often the time involved to get the degree.

The Appeal Of Specializing

Business schools and online universities are starting to get the message. They are beginning to offer more and more specialized business programs that are only 12 months long. In the 2008-2009 school year there were 645 programs offered. This is up from the 614 programs that had been offered just two years earlier.

What these types of degrees offer are parts of the typical MBA curriculum, but they are often more technical in nature and generally spend less time on general management skills.

Here in lies the rub: these types of specialty business degrees are not designed to get you promoted to eventually become the CEO. Rather what they are designed to do is to sharpen your business skills in a narrow area and make you more valuable to the company in your current job. Since we’re interested in becoming the CIO, not the CEO, this might be just what we’re looking for.

This type of continuing education especially appeals to nre IT professionals: those who don’t have the five years of work experience that most MBA programs require for entrance. No matter if this is your case, or if you’ve just found some part of the company’s business side that you are really drawn to, a narrowly focused master’s degree might be just the ticket for you.

What To Do With Your New Degree

Ok, so let’s say that you bite the bullet and run off and skip the MBA and instead get a very focused master’s degree in marketing, finance, or some other business discipline. What then?

It turns out that taking this path, might feel like the right thing for you to do, but as they like to say on TV, your results may vary. Since specialty master’s degrees are not as well known as MBA’s you’re going to have to deal with some lack of recognition issues.

Although it may change in the future, right now MBA students still seem to get the best deal when it comes to getting the economic benefits from going through the effort of getting an advanced degree. The people who design the GMAT test that everyone takes to get admitted to graduate programs are reporting that MBA students are saying that they get a 73% increase in salary after graduating while students with specialty master’s degrees are only reporting a 26% increase.

What All Of This Means For You

In the end the decision rests with you. We all know that continuing our education is an important thing for every up-and-coming almost CIO to do. Going back to school almost seems like a no-brainer until you realize that you need to spend some time thinking about just what you want to get out of doing so.

A specialty master’s degree offers IT professionals who have been working for less than five years or who found one particular part of the job most interesting with a new option. By investing 12 months of study, they can walk away with both another degree as well as a deep understanding of one area of business.

The value of taking this educational route will really depend on the career that you want for yourself. If you are comfortable working inside of the business instead of running it, then a specialty master’s degree might be the right way to go for you!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills

Question For You: Do you think that specialty master’s degree will become more or less valuable in the future?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As though running an IT department wasn’t enough, now CIOs are being asked to become more valuable to the business – to start thinking about the company’s bottom line. If only there was some methodology that we could use to unlock all of that business value that we know is within the IT department. Oh wait, there is: it’s called the IT-CMF.

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© Dr. Jim Anderson for The Accidental Successful CIO, 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2 year degree, business school, career advancement, career counselor, economic benefits, general management skills, increase in salary, master’s degree, MBA, more focused, specialized business degrees, two year degree

Does A CIO Need To Have An MBA Or Is There Another Way?

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 12 May 2010 04:01:31 +0000

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CIO’s Who Really Want An MBA But Don’t Have The Time Have Another Way…

If you want to be a CIOs, then there’s no need for me to tell you that we are living in troubling times We are always trying to do two things: hold on to our jobs and find ways to move up the corporate ladder. One of the best ways to do both of these, or so we have been told, is to go out and get an MBA. Well that’s all great and fine if you’ve got four or five years to burn, don’t need to do anything else at night, oh and have a big chunk of cash sitting around that you had no other plans for. Maybe it’s time to look for a better way to accomplish what we’re trying to do…

Say Hello To The Alternative To The MBA

Before you decide to either quit your current job and go back to school in order to get an MBA (really, really expensive) or start going to night school to get an MBA (just really expensive), maybe you should take a moment and consider all of your options. Maybe what you really want is a specialized Master’s degree.

If having spent time in your job has gotten you interested in the business side of the company, then getting an advanced business degree of some sort is probably a good idea. However, one of the things that keeps us from doing this is often the time involved to get the degree.

The Appeal Of Specializing

Business schools are starting to get the message. They are beginning to offer more and more specialized business programs that are only 12 months long. In the 2008-2009 school year there were 645 programs offered. This is up from the 614 programs that had been offered just two years earlier.

What these types of degrees offer are parts of the typical MBA curriculum, but they are often more technical in nature and generally spend less time on general management skills.

Here in lies the rub: these types of specialty business degrees are not designed to get you promoted to eventually become the CIO. Rather what they are designed to do is to sharpen your business skills in a narrow area and make you more valuable to the company in that niche.

This type of continuing education especially appeals to new IT mangers: those who don’t have the five years of work experience that most MBA programs require for entrance. No matter if this is your case, or if you’ve just found some part of the business job that you are really drawn to, a narrowly focused master’s degree might be just the ticket for you.

What To Do With Your New Degree

Ok, so let’s say that you bite the bullet and run off and skip the MBA and instead get a very focused master’s degree in marketing, finance, or some other business discipline. What then?

What All Of This Means For You

In the end the decision rests with you. We all know that continuing our education is an important thing for every up-and-coming member of the IT department to do. Going back to school almost seems like a no-brainer until you realize that you need to spend some time thinking about just what you want to get out of doing so.

A specialty master’s degree offers IT workers who have been working for less than five years or who found one particular part of the job most interesting with a new option. By investing 12 months of study, they can walk away with both another degree as well as a deep understanding of one area of business.

The value of taking this educational route will really depend on the career that you want for yourself. If you believe that when you become CIO that you’ll need to be able to have a detailed understanding of how your business works, then a specialty master’s degree might be the right way to go for you!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Department Leadership Skills

Question For You: Do you think that specialty master’s degree will become more or less valuable in the future?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you become CIO, it turns out that you’re going to have a lot more on your mind than just how to use the latest and greatest technology to help the company run faster. You’ve got a problem that starts with “F” and rhymes with “Baud” and that stands for Fraud…

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© Dr. Jim Anderson for The Accidental Successful CIO, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2 year degree, business school, career advancement, career counselor, economic benefits, general management skills, increase in salary, master’s degree, MBA, more focused, specialized business degrees, two year degree

What CIOs Need To Do In Order To Get Some Respect

Dr. Jim Anderson — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:01:37 +0000

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An Article Over At CIOZone.com Talks About CIO Respect

When you become CIO things are going to be different aren’t they? You’ll be one of those CIOs that has the respect of both their peers in the company and in their industry, right?

Lisa Yoon over at CIOZone.com just got done interviewing me for an article that she was writing titled “CIOs and the Road to Validation in the C-Suite”. I think that she’s done a pretty good job of answering the question of what CIOs need to do in order to get some credibility.

For her article, Lisa and I had a free ranging discussion that covered a lot of different points. The big issues that we touched on included just exactly why today’s CIO’s don’t seem to be able get a seat at the company’s planning table with the other C-level executives.

The reason that I think that you might want to pop over and take a look at Lisa’s article is that instead of just talking about the problem, we also discussed what an up and coming CIO (like you) needs to do. I don’t want to give the answer away, but let’s say that just like with everything else in life it has to do with who you know…

What do you think that a CIO needs to do in order to get a seat at the company’s strategic planning table?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Successful CIO Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you become the CIO, you’re probably hoping that you’ll be spending your time setting the strategic direction for your company’s technology future. However, perhaps you’ve forgotten about the lawyers…

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© Dr. Jim Anderson for The Accidental Successful CIO, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: article, author, C-level, C-suite, CFO, CIO, CIOZone.com, Lisa Yoon, second-class C-level position, technology skills slipping away