I had the pleasure of speaking with Joe Hayes and Jim Brusnahan on the topic of business relationship management (BRM). Hayes is the CIO at Prudential’s Group Insurance business unit, and Brusnahan is the Director of IT Business Partners at Johnson Controls. Both of these individuals are extremely knowledgeable and supportive of the BRM as…
Most CIOs who have integrated IT systems in a merger of two large enterprises will tell you they’d rather spend an afternoon getting root canals. The challenge, which some CIOs have likened to changing the engine on an airplane while it’s in flight, is to ensure that business doesn’t miss a beat amid complex systems…
It’s a hiring worst-case scenario: A job candidate aces every aspect of the interview process, but after joining the company, they can’t get the job done. Or perhaps worse, the new coworker is capable but so disruptive the rest of the team suffers. It happens. Even when resumes and references check out, the hiring process…
“History is written by the victors,” Winston Churchill famously said. (The irony, I’m sure, was unintentional; Churchill himself being one of those ‘victors’ who, while best known for leading Western Europe through WWII, was a white, straight, cis-het man with violent imperialist ambitions and was unabashedly racist.) In artificial intelligence (AI), too, it seems, future…
CIOs should hope for the best but prepare for the worst when transferring personal information across the Atlantic. That’s the advice of experts watching the European Commission conduct its second annual review of the Privacy Shield data-sharing agreement. Privacy Shield allows businesses to export the personal information of their customers or employees to the U.S.…
CIOs have many reactions to shadow IT. Some complain that IT is generally measured as a success only by delivering something the business wants. However, IT organizations can get caught up in just doing cost control, security and overarching governance. With this context, CIOs say, it’s important to realize that shadow IT is not the…
Jessie Burgess has learned a valuable lesson over the past few years: You can only duck digital disruption for so long; eventually those legacy systems catch up with you. That’s why the CIO of G6 Hospitality, parent company to Motel 6 and Studio 6 hotel brands, is migrating critical business applications from creaky on-premises systems…
As corporate technology leaders pursue their digital transformation strategies, many are looking to IT service providers as potential partners in those change efforts. However, a one-size-fits-all approach to outsourcing providers is not likely to serve CIOs well in meeting innovation goals. In fact, bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better in the digital change era. “Traditionally, size…
What makes a great leader? Although there’s no single set of personality traits, background experiences or talents that can predict who can lead effectively, there are certain leadership competencies that all good leaders and executives have mastered. An understanding of your organization’s products, market position and technology stack is fundamental. So too is a focus…
We’ve heard a lot about “draining the swamp” in U.S. politics, but this phrase has been around a long time, especially in management circles. I created a management model titled “Drain the Swamp” in 2002 when I wrote my book, IT Management Models, but I heard the phrase many years before that. Drain the swamp…