An interview with Jackie Yeaney, Executive Vice President of Strategy & Marketing, Red Hat about the Enterprisers Project.
TEP: What did you like about the idea of The Enterprisers Project when you launched development of it?
YEANEY: I was intrigued with the notion of bringing together forward-thinking CIOs to engage with each other on topics they care about. I was curious about how similar or different their challenges were. I wanted to know how their role is evolving — how they balance the competing demands of efficiency, security, and innovation. I was hoping they could learn from each other’s strategies and successes. And then selfishly, I was excited to be a fly on the wall — to understand their challenges on a much deeper level so that Red Hat could serve them better in the future.
Another aspect that I was quickly excited about was partnering with CIO Magazine and Harvard Business Review. It’s rather uncommon for top-tier publishers to work together like this. We are thankful that two such prominent brands are willing to share a ‘stage’ together with Red Hat. CIO Magazine is an obvious choice for this set of executives. It is absolutely a brand they connect with proactively to stay on top of their fast-moving industries. But I also realized that CIOs want to be more business-oriented. They want a seat at their companies’ executive tables where they are adding competitive advantage, not just a standard service to their peers. Harvard Business Review is THE leading business publication and thought leader on most advanced business topics and so having them as part of the team got us all energized straight out of the gate.
I love that we’ve got a true mix of in-person, video, phone, and on-line connections with these folks. We started this effort by hosting in-person CIO Roundtable discussions with CIO Magazine, HBR, and Red Hat all present. As much as we all engage online these days, my opinion is that there is still no better way to truly understand and connect (especially at the beginning of a relationship) than to get people in the same room with each other. Even after the very first roundtable at the CIO100 in Colorado this past August, we knew we were on to something.
After some of our roundtables, we then asked several of the CIOs to conduct video interviews with us so that we could more easily share their insights with others. We also launched this site, enterprisersproject.com, so that the conversations could continue evolving and more people could join the community. We want the site to be ‘owned’ by the CIOs themselves, so we asked a few of the best to be on the site’s editorial board. The last thing I want is for Red Hat to assume that we know what these leaders care about and want to discuss.
Even with all that said, the truth is, The Enterprisers Project has far exceeded my expectations. I thought it would take longer to get CIOs excited about it. But I was wrong. Leading CIOs most definitely want to engage with each other and want to hear from CIO Magazine, HBR, and Red Hat. They want to help drive their businesses forward and they realize they need others’ insights to do it. I am so encouraged with how open, honest, direct, and transparent these folks have been with their successes, their challenges, and yes, their failures.
TEP: Why is it important for Red Hat to sponsor and contribute to programs like this?
YEANEY: Red Hat’s mission is, “To be the catalyst in communities of customers, contributors, and partners creating better technology the open source way.” It dawned on me that catalyzing a community of CIOs to come together and share their ideas is EXACTLY what Red Hat should be doing. I wish we had thought of it sooner, in fact. Who better to provide the platform and venue for these senior-level IT professionals to engage with each other? We have years of experience in open source philosophies — starting of course with software development. But open source philosophies go way beyond developing code. We believe that the more people you have contributing to any topic or problem, the better the answers that will emerge. But it doesn’t just magically ‘happen.’ You need to bring in the best and brightest into the fold, encourage the participants to share, create mechanisms for dialogue and feedback, find ways to capture the insights, and so on. Red Hat tends to be quite good at doing this and very much enjoys it.
It’s important to remember that this is absolutely not about selling Red Hat products. This is about allowing leading CIOs to engage with each other — believing that better ideas and solutions will emerge. Unless a CIO proactively asked one of the Red Hat executives, I don’t believe our products and services have been mentioned in the in-person or virtual roundtables, phone conversations and interviews, or in the articles published on the site. Yes, of course we do hope that the CIOs engaging with the Enterprisers Project see Red Hat as a thought leader, aiming to help them on their journey — especially to the open hybrid cloud, but we are not doing this to sell them our products and services. Luckily, Red Hat has a long history of contributing to communities without direct benefit to our business, so we believe our promise is credible.
TEP: You’ve attended Enterpriser roundtable events with least 50 CIOs and VPs of IT thus far. What has been most interesting and surprising about what you’ve been hearing?
YEANEY: Here are a few examples of topics I’ve heard. They tend to fall into categories of leadership, change management, innovation, customer-centricity, and talent management.
- How do I add more business value and competitive advantage for my business?
- How do I create stronger relationships with my peers?
- How do I help evolve the culture of my company?
- How do I best attract and develop talent?
- How do I ensure I’m a CIO of the future, not the past?
- How can I get closer to our end customer?
I didn’t realize that what actually keeps them up at night is not the technology at all. Yes, they know they need to keep the business humming, but they tend to have existing teams of talented people for that job. Instead, I was fascinated to learn that they worry about topics similar to what I, as a marketing executive, tend to worry about.
Jackie Yeaney is responsible for orchestrating Red Hat's strategy formulation and planning, Brand, Global Programs, Global Partner Marketing, Marketing Services, Marketing Operations, and Global Field Marketing. Prior to joining Red Hat, Jackie held CMO roles at PGi, a global communications company, EarthLink, and HomeBanc Mortgage Corporation. She was also the managing director of Consumer Marketing at Delta Air Lines. Before her career in marketing she spent several years with the Boston Consulting Group and was a captain in the U.S. Air Force. Jackie holds an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT and a BS, magna cum laude, in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
