The CIO Playbook


Book Description

As our economy shifts from recession to recovery, our current economic climate is ripe for transformation. CIOs are in a unique position to leverage technology in order to drive innovation and boost business growth. The CIO Playbook is the handy desk reference for CIOs, CEOs, CFOs, and up and coming leaders, revealing a dynamic seven-step framework (Partner – Organize – Innovate – Deliver – Support – Protect – Grow) that will guide you in making essential changes to your organization. The proven strategies, tools, and techniques in The CIO Playbook make it the ultimate "how-to" resource for creating a high-performance IT organization that delivers value-added products and services to employees, customers, and shareholders. Author Nicholas Colisto provides solutions to the issues that concern business leaders and IT practitioners, including: How to truly partner with business peers Delivering high-quality products and services that are embraced by your user community How to ensure your team is focused on the right innovations Measuring performance and running your department like a business Ways to attract, motivate, and retain a talented team working toward a common vision Managing risks to operate effectively and protect corporate reputation Featuring online templates for each of the seven steps described in the book, The CIO Playbook can help you transform your IT department from a mere order taker to a high-performance organization that delivers extraordinary business outcomes, despite this era of turbulent economic challenges.




The CIO Playbook


Book Description

As our economy shifts from recession to recovery, our current economic climate is ripe for transformation. CIOs are in a unique position to leverage technology in order to drive innovation and boost business growth. The CIO Playbook is the handy desk reference for CIOs, CEOs, CFOs, and up and coming leaders, revealing a dynamic seven-step framework (Partner – Organize – Innovate – Deliver – Support – Protect – Grow) that will guide you in making essential changes to your organization. The proven strategies, tools, and techniques in The CIO Playbook make it the ultimate "how-to" resource for creating a high-performance IT organization that delivers value-added products and services to employees, customers, and shareholders. Author Nicholas Colisto provides solutions to the issues that concern business leaders and IT practitioners, including: How to truly partner with business peers Delivering high-quality products and services that are embraced by your user community How to ensure your team is focused on the right innovations Measuring performance and running your department like a business Ways to attract, motivate, and retain a talented team working toward a common vision Managing risks to operate effectively and protect corporate reputation Featuring online templates for each of the seven steps described in the book, The CIO Playbook can help you transform your IT department from a mere order taker to a high-performance organization that delivers extraordinary business outcomes, despite this era of turbulent economic challenges.




CIO Best Practices


Book Description

CIO BEST PRACTICES Enabling Strategic Value with Information Technology SECOND EDITION For anyone who wants to achieve better returns on their IT investments, CIO Best Practices, Second Edition presents the leadership skills and competencies required of a CIO addressing comprehensive enterprise strategic frameworks to fully leverage IT resources. Filled with real-world examples of CIO success stories, the Second Edition explores: CIO leadership responsibilities and opportunities The business impacts of both business and social networking, as well as ways the CIO can leverage the new reality of human connectivity on the Internet The increasingly inextricable relationships between customers, employees, and their use of personal information technologies Emerging cultural expectations and standards outside the workplace Current CRM best practices in terms of the relationship between customer preferences and shareholder wealth Enterprise energy utilization and sustainability practices otherwise known as Green IT with all the best practices collected here, in one place Best practices for one of the Internet's newest and most revolutionary technologies: cloud computing and ways it is shaping the new economics of business




Be the Business


Book Description

Remember the '70s? Way back then, IT was a mainframe that sat in some room and only a few people had a key. Flash forward a decade, and IT was a limited set of systems irrelevant to the vast majority of employees and customers. But today, all of the sudden, technology belongs to everyone. Because of the suddenness of this revolution in technology adoption, most IT organizations have not had enough time to evolve into a "comfortable integration" with the rest of the company. This lack of comfortable integration has led to confusion over who is truly accountable for the return on technology investments, how much influence IT leaders should have over a company's business strategy, and whether CEOs need to hire Chief Digital Officers onto their senior leadership teams. Through interviews with dozens of CIOs, Heller has created a snapshot of what CIOs are doing to lead IT in a climate where technology belongs to everyone. She addresses how CIOs are changing their operating models, their approaches to talent development, and their assessment of the new IT provider marketplace. Most importantly, Heller defines the top ten skills and behaviors that CIOs will need to develop if they are going to be successful in an ever changing landscape. As a master storyteller, Heller incorporates philosophy, humor, and pragmatic advice into a book that both informs and entertains.




The Chief Information Officer's Body of Knowledge


Book Description

Down to earth, real answers on how to manage technology—from renowned IT leaders Filled with over thirty contributions from practitioners who handle both the day-to-day and longer term challenges that Information Technology (IT) departments and their parent businesses face, this hands-on, practical IT desk reference is written in lay terms for business people and IT personnel alike. Without jargon and lofty theories, this resource will help you assist your organization in addressing project risks in a global and interconnected world. Provides guidance on how business people and IT can work together to maximize business value Insights from more than thirty leading IT experts Commonsense, rational solutions for issues such as managing outsourcing relationships and operating IT as a business Offering solutions for many of the problems CIOs face, this unique book addresses the Chief Information Officer's role in managing and running IT as a business, so the IT department may become a full strategic partner in the organization's crucial decisions.




The CIO Edge


Book Description

Great CIOs consistently exceed key stakeholders' expectations and maximize the business value delivered through their company's technology. What's their secret? Sure, IT professionals need technological smarts, plus an understanding of their company's goals and the competitive landscape. But the best of them possess a far more potent ability: they forge good working relationships with everyone involved in an IT-enabled project, whether it's introducing new hardware or implementing a major business transformation. In The CIO Edge, the authors draw on Korn/Ferry International's extensive empirical data on leadership competencies as well as Gartner's research on IT trends and the CIO role. They prove that, for IT leaders, mastering seven essential skills yields big results. This new book lays out the people-to-people leadership competencies that the highest-performing CIOs have in common—including the ability to inspire others, connect with a diverse array of stakeholders, value others' ideas, and manifest caring in their relationships. The authors then explain how to cultivate each defining competency. Learn these skills, and you'll get more work done through others' enabling you to successfully execute more IT projects, generate better results for your company, and concentrate your efforts where they'll exert the most impact. The payoff? As the authors show, you'll work smarter, not harder—and get promoted far faster than your peers.




The Security Leader’s Communication Playbook


Book Description

This book is for cybersecurity leaders across all industries and organizations. It is intended to bridge the gap between the data center and the board room. This book examines the multitude of communication challenges that CISOs are faced with every day and provides practical tools to identify your audience, tailor your message and master the art of communicating. Poor communication is one of the top reasons that CISOs fail in their roles. By taking the step to work on your communication and soft skills (the two go hand-in-hand), you will hopefully never join their ranks. This is not a “communication theory” book. It provides just enough practical skills and techniques for security leaders to get the job done. Learn fundamental communication skills and how to apply them to day-to-day challenges like communicating with your peers, your team, business leaders and the board of directors. Learn how to produce meaningful metrics and communicate before, during and after an incident. Regardless of your role in Tech, you will find something of value somewhere along the way in this book.




The AI-First Company


Book Description

Artificial Intelligence is transforming every industry, but if you want to win with AI, you have to put it first on your priority list. AI-First companies are the only trillion-dollar companies, and soon they will dominate even more industries, more definitively than ever before. These companies succeed by design--they collect valuable data from day one and use it to train predictive models that automate core functions. As a result, they learn faster and outpace the competition in the process. Thankfully, you don't need a Ph.D. to learn how to win with AI. In The AI-First Company, internationally-renowned startup investor Ash Fontana offers an executable guide for applying AI to business problems. It's a playbook made for real companies, with real budgets, that need strategies and tactics to effectively implement AI. Whether you're a new online retailer or a Fortune 500 company, Fontana will teach you how to: • Identify the most valuable data; • Build the teams that build AI; • Integrate AI with existing processes and keep it in check; • Measure and communicate its effectiveness; • Reinvest the profits from automation to compound competitive advantage. If the last fifty years were about getting AI to work in the lab, the next fifty years will be about getting AI to work for people, businesses, and society. It's not about building the right software -- it's about building the right AI. The AI-First Company is your guide to winning with artificial intelligence.




The (Delicate) Art of Bureaucracy


Book Description

A playbook for mastering the art of bureaucracy from thought-leader Mark Schwartz.




Taking the Reins as CIO


Book Description

An executive’s transition into any leadership role can be a challenge. Such transitions do not always go smoothly, and the negative consequences can be significant. This is particularly so for Chief Information Officers (CIOs), as the role has evolved significantly over the years yet remains deeply ambiguous. This is despite information and technology moving from the periphery of an organization to a fundamental driver of innovation and competitive advantage. This book is to help the newly appointed CIO “take charge”: the process of learning and taking action that the newly appointed CIO goes through until s/he has mastered the new assignment in sufficient depth to be effective in the role. This book provides keen insights into the challenges faced by today's CIOs while transitioning into a new role and enlightens readers on how to navigate the organizational environment in order to implement necessary changes. With plenty of practical tools and insights it will help you to: • Decide how best to approach the job • Prioritize the first areas of the business you should attend to • Draw up your goals for the first few weeks and months into the role • Find out if there are there any decisions that you can postpone making Based on over 200 interviews with CIOs, CxOs, and recruiters, this book offers readers guidance on how to take on the role of a business executive with special responsibility for information and technology, with ten key prescriptions to maximize success.