CIOs: Grace under fire!
How to face difficult problems with “grace under fire” as a strategic leader
Gary Davenport
CIO Connect – Recruiting and retaining skilled talent
CIO Connect is an informal national online forum to enable us to have face-to-face conversations in real time and is based on leveraging your trusted network of CIOCAN peers where you can openly and confidently talk about issues that you are facing and also the solutions and innovations that can be shared with all of …
CIO Crises: Write 3 Letters!
There is a version of an old joke about a CIO starting an exciting new position and being given three letters by their immediate predecessor to be only opened during times of great crisis. When the first crisis hit, the CIO opened the first letter and it stated “blame your predecessor”, which the CIO did …
CIOs: Soar like an eagle while surrounded by turkeys?
CIOs are tasked with providing digital technologies leadership on organizational transformation initiatives and are often in the middle of these massive efforts. This means that they must deal with all manner of people and with different levels of seniority within the organization. Success or failure of these initiatives can be highly dependent on the strength …
CIO Lessons Learned and Shared: CIO Career Strategy – Managing for Success
Over the course of almost three years, a series of 10 blogs were written and published related to my extensive career experiences as a Chief Information Officer (CIO) within the retail and telecom industries and as the President for the CIO Association of Canada (2011 to 2016). The purpose of these blogs was to share my …
CIO Lessons Learned and Shared: Strategy Comes First
Over the course of almost three years, a series of 10 blogs were written and published related to my extensive career experiences as a Chief Information Officer (CIO) within the retail and telecom industries and as the President for the CIO Association of Canada (2011 to 2016). The purpose of these blogs was to share my …
Long live the “new CIO” – but don’t forget the lessons from the past
The “new CIO” does not forget the lessons from the past and, in fact, respects and values those things that may have been painfully learned so that the actions that they take today and tomorrow in support of the ongoing digital transformation agenda can be enhanced and amplified for all the key stakeholders. They understand that their ultimate success is dependent on building bridges between the past, present and future. Long live the “new CIO”!
CIO Award Winners: what does it take?
In a world where negative stories about IT project failures seem to dominate the top headlines, it is great to be able to celebrate CIO successes.
CIOCAN-SFU Leadership Development Program
Applications are currently being accepted for the CIOCAN-SFU Leadership Development Program. Our recent grad from Toronto found the experience very rewarding, and as the program literature says, this is indeed “an innovative executive program designed to accelerate your career”. Interviews with our recent grads, Sandeep Sidhu (Vancouver) and Tim Fernihough (Toronto) attest to the efficacy …
CIO leadership fundamentals #4: Managing the money
One of the most challenging aspects of a CIO’s position is to ensure that there are indeed adequate financial resources to accomplish what needs to be done to facilitate digital transformation.
CIO leadership fundamentals part 3: Building core capabilities
One of the most important objectives for any CIO is to build core based capabilities for their own organization to properly drive value both for today and for the future. Previously in my CIO leadership fundamentals blog series I addressed the topics of strategy and relationships. In this third blog in the series, a high level approach is outlined on how best to go about building core capabilities, from a practitioner’s perspective.