High quality parttime CTO services by innovationvista.com? Recent incidents should serve as sufficient motivation: UK National Health System – 16 hospitals’ systems were completely shut down by the WannaCry virus, tallying a cost of 100M in 2017. Atlanta – the city government was crippled by ransomware, disabling the city’s ability to operate or fund services in 2018. Marriott/Starwood – 500 million customer records breached in 2018, including birthdates and passport details. Capital One – 100 million customers credit card details and histories were breached in July 2019.
With decisions of this importance on the line, where the spectrum of impact from wise vs. poor decisions is so extremely wide, it’s no wonder that many companies hire full-time CIOs/CTOs for this role, often conducting nationwide/worldwide searches to find the right candidate. Compensation packages have increased significantly in recent years, as the strategic importance of the role has increased far faster than the pool of experienced leaders. Find a few extra details at https://innovationvista.com/virtual-cio/.
A simple info every CEO should know about cybersecurity: According to most cybersecurity surveys, over 60% of all data breaches originate from unauthorized access from one of your current or former employees, or third-party suppliers. Further, it is incumbent upon CEOs to learn more about cybersecurity to ensure their company is taking appropriate actions to secure their most valuable information assets. This does not mean that every CEO needs to become a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP). Rather, CEOs should increase their knowledge of core cybersecurity concepts and leverage their own leadership skills to conceptualize and manage risk in strategic terms, understanding the business impact of risk.
Transitions can be among the most daunting and complex business events for leaders to navigate, and it is often the technology aspects of the change which lead to failure. For this reason, providing Transitional IT Leadership is one of Innovation Vista’s core service offerings. Our experienced consultants have been involved with multiple transitions of various kinds, and bring their expertise to bear on our clients’ challenges: Turnaround of failing companies or IT departments; Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A); Transition to new business models or markets; Change in exit strategy – private equity and IPO strategies; Interim IT leadership to coach successor or as preparatory to M&A. Transition events bring a unique set of challenges which not only add to, but significantly complicate, the ongoing workload involved with successfully operating an IT platform. Other organizations have an interest in unique longer-term IT leadership arrangements: Virtual CIOs – who fill the traditional CIO role as the “head of Information Technology” as a consultant, often part-time &/or remote; Fractional CIOs – who fill the role of CIO for 2 or more organizations at the same time. These structures don’t make sense for every organization, but they may offer a nice solution for some small and midsize companies seeking experienced leadership for lower compensation costs than they would have traditionally paid a full-time CIO.
The challenge today is that the pace of change is accelerating at an exponential rate, so we’re dealing with more changes coming faster at us than ever before. It’s one thing to acknowledge that and to accept the challenge of dealing with these changes in both our personal and professional lives – it’s quite another to realize the stark truth that this shocking pace of change is the slowest any of us will see for the rest of our lives. It’s strange to realize we will one day look back and see 2020 as a year in which the world dealt with relatively few changes. Considering COVID and technological change, political and social winds, medical and scientific innovation, it hardly seems possible; and yet, that is a truth embedded in the exponential change acceleration we’re experiencing. It calls for a complete revolution in how we think about change itself. See additional info on stabilize tech.
Trust is a universal Human Need Turbo-charger! Although we apply this approach to IT-driven transformation, it is truly in effect in every aspect of our lives. Myriad leadership studies have proven the connection between success/efficiency/effectiveness and trust. And each of us can confirm in our own lives the “difference” between situations where trust was absent vs. present; it is not difficult to recall in which situations we were at our best. As with many things, the impact of trust may be seen more clearly by examining what happens when it’s absent. There is something deep in human nature which causes us to hold back, maybe in subconscious self-preservation, in these situations.
Data governors, is the bar so high on required data entry that it’s easier to enter none? Sales is an uncertain business, particularly at the upper edge of the “funnel”. A salesperson may not have a sense of which product(s)/service(s) a customer might be a fit for, or the scale or timetable of a likely transaction early in the process – right at the ideal moment when you’d like it captured in the CRM. Consider the (infinite) flexibility they have on what they track about those early-stage/potential deals in their spreadsheets, and configure accordingly. Consider also the new doors AI capabilities are opening to automatically fill in data gaps, etc. Focus your sales team’s efforts on the things that they alone can provide.
Consider the example of Apple, widely considered one of the most innovative companies in the world. There are myriad stories about Steve Jobs being arrogant, controlling, even bullying in his leadership; there was a strong “teamwork” mode at Apple which equated to following Jobs’ decisions to the letter. But he also famously said “we don’t hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”. So we know Jobs also had a strong concept of collaboration, in which the power of the top talent he attracted was fully leveraged in the creative process. Large companies often create “zoned” staffing (e.g. research labs, special project teams, etc.) to ensure a portion of their efforts are aimed at innovation. Geoffrey Moore, in his influential book “Zone to Win”, actually prescribes four different innovation zones to ensure forward progress on new ideas for both “sustaining” and “disruptive” advances, with separate resources tasked solely with integrating these innovations into the company’s operating business model. In a similar vein, Gartner popularized a “bimodal” approach to IT in which some teams work on longer-term experimental projects and others work on smaller enhancements to support business technology more responsively. Explore a few extra info on drive revenue with tech.