Any organization managing change and growing rapidly will encounter unexpected turns in the road – even roads that lead straight off the cliff into the unknown. So, Enterprisers Project asked six top IT executives what some of the scariest moments have been in their careers, especially when there is no roadmap to follow. Here’s what they shared:
Facing the fear
“I like going to work scared. I like going to work nervous about what’s around the corner. And the pace of change in the industry and the technology shifts and the generation coming out of school now, the way they manipulate technology, that really motivates me when I go to work. How can I use this to implement new products and services for the company?” - Alan Pawlak, Executive Director of Client Services, Aetna
Entering an IT tornado
“In any IT or enterprise culture with a lot of swirl, I’ve often found a prevailing sense of futility. We’ve tried this before, in other words, so why will this person or their ideas be different? Surviving the first few months is often about getting to small wins for the power players. And by that term, I don’t mean the stars of the org chart but those who stand out from a political perspective. They are often the ones driving a lot of the direction. Figure out who they are, partner with them and make a difference. Then you can continue building a coalition of supporters.” – Sven Gerjets, CTO Pearson Education
Steering clear of a cloud disaster
“At our organization, we made the decision early on to create a cloud computing commodity board. Why? We already could see that we would need to align all our business functions as people started getting excited about cloud computing. If everyone had to create his or her own deals, it would become a disaster. If you don’t know where your data is, or the contract terms, you’re much more susceptible to a security breach and data loss. And as many companies have discovered, one tiny security breach can bring the whole ship down.”
– Tom Soderstrom, IT Chief Technology Officer, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Scared to death
“I was really fortunate that someone knew me and sought me out to be their CIO. To be honest, I was scared to death. I did not feel like I could possibly be qualified. I didn’t think I had what it took to be a CIO. It was one of those things when you face your fears and seek the opportunity, and see what happens. The longer that I was in the role, though, the more I realized how qualified I was to evolve in that direction. But I never knew it at the time. It was a leap of faith and it was scary for me to move into that role.” – Tim Elkins, CIO, PrimeLending
Denial-of-service attacks
“When I talk about security these days, I tell folks not to picture a kid eating pizza and drinking Jolt Cola. The picture you should have in your mind is of a corporate boardroom with everyone in a coat and tie. It’s very professional and coordinated because there’s so much money involved. We’ve gone from being able to ignore zero-day attacks because they weren’t targeted at us, to having every zero-day targeted at us. At this moment, we have nation states actively targeting us with disruptive denial-of-service attacks." – Curt Carver, Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer for the Board of Regents, University System of Georgia
Stormy Weather
“Being brave as a CIO means that you're willing to stand up and be wrong. You have to be willing to have bad days and to make bad decisions. That's okay, because you can learn from them. There's actually a correlation between my industry, weather, and my job. When I wake up every morning, I don't know what I'm going to face. I don't know what challenges we're going to have. Trying to predict my day, I have about the same accuracy as predicting the weather, which means I get it wrong about 30 percent of the time.” - Bryson Koehler, Executive Vice President and CIO, The Weather Company
