10 CIO Leadership Success

1. Hire the best people.
Any CIO or manager will definitely look good if he’s surrounded with the best people for the job. People that simply gets the job done. If you think you have these types on your team, then you could probably say you’re half-way to be a successful manager/CIO.

2. Proper Delegation
Delegation is the act of empowering someone to act on your behalf. An all too common pitfall among new managers is over delegation of tasks. Some others tend to micromanage and finds comfort in handling most of the tasks instead of delegating. Either way, too much or the lack of it can render a manager inefficient in the work place.

3. Balance Technology Feature with Business Value
It’s always nice to have the latest and greatest hardware or software to play with but does the cost really justify such purchase? A CIO or CTO must think more like a businessman and determine if such purchase will translate to a better service without sacrificing the cost of providing service to consumers.

4. Metrics, metrics, metrics
Performance of any entity, big or small, cannot be determined without any form of measure. It is similar to driving a car without any gauges like speedometer or worse – a gas gauge. Without it, there is no real proof of knowing if a department’s objective has been achieved and at what cost? Applicable metrics for an IT department may include: help desk metrics and change management metrics to name a few.

5. Outsource
Our world is fast becoming smaller each passing year while the internet pipeline is getting bigger. Because of this and some other factors that play, many of the in-house tasks can be outsourced to third-party service providers that can better do the job and at a very reasonable cost. Companies nowadays should start refocusing itself on its core business and outsource other tasks that aren’t. An example of these tasks may be: network management, emails, programming, and system administration.

The way I see things in the next five to eight years, IT department will be non-existent and everything will be outsourced.

6. Learn to communicate well
No one leader has been successful without being able to learn to communicate well – period. If one aims to be a good leader, learn to communicate well be it spoken or in writing. There is no exception to this rule.

7. Reposition IT as a business entity not a cost center
IT has always been the cost center with its expensive equipments and highly paid employees. Companies can start tapping the potentials of its IT department by repositioning it as an income generating department.

There are many ways to identify where a company can make money from their IT infrastructure and their talent pool. The best way to start is identify an inventory of its available resources and its strengths.

8. Effective networking
The only sure fire way to learn and be recognized is through networking. Start by joining civic or social groups and be active with it. Consider also attending symposiums, IT expos and seminars to gain good exposure on making new friends and opportunities.

9. Adopt best practices
The fastest way to IT success is to learn from other companies’ best practices. The best starting point is to adopt an ITSM initiative (IT Service Management) or IT Governance.

10. Put on a healthy dose of paranoia
Never be satisfied or be comfortable with how your most trusted staff manage their assigned tasks. Always check what they do and ow they do thinks, this way nothing is left to chance.