Confessions of a Successful CIO How the Best CIOs Tackle Their Toughest Business Challenges

Today's Chief Information Officers must be an entirely new breed of technology leader. With ever-changing demands from the business, and in an increasingly technology-centric business environment, CIOs must find game-changing innovations and process improvements that make a real impact on the bottom line. Business executives need their CIOs to be real partners—speaking the language of the business and donning their strategist caps—not just commodity managers. Those IT leaders who fail to break out of the order-taker, utility manager mold will, simply put, be looking for a new job.

In Confessions of a Successful CIO: How the Best CIOs Tackle Their Toughest Business Challenges, current and future CIOs will gain invaluable perspectives from the stories of today's best IT leaders. These acclaimed leaders—each profiled in their own chapter—explain the toughest business decision they had to make, and how the outcome influenced and impacted their leadership style. These in-depth anecdotes take the reader inside some of the most challenging business climates imaginable and chronicle how these elite CIOs made the decisions that mattered.

• Read detailed case studies of how some of the best CIOs have handled their most challenging business problems
• Learn how the best CIOs anticipate changes to their business and respond—before the business comes knocking
• Explore how these top-flight CIOs make critical decisions around strategy and IT to not only benefit their companies, but in some cases, to save them from becoming obsolete.
• Analyze their perspectives on managing people, crises and balancing the risks and rewards of their "bet the farm" strategies

Confessions of a Successful CIO is the new playbook for learning how to take risks, respond to crises, and create more value from IT. Each chapter presents a different challenge, giving present-day and future IT leaders the chance to examine, analyze and learn so that they can be just as successful as the CIOs they're reading about.

DAN ROBERTS is a 30-year veteran of the IT industry and the CEO and President of Ouellette & Associates Consulting, Inc. He is a contributing author of several books, including Unleashing the Power of IT (Wiley, 2013) and Leading IT Transformation. Dan is a frequent keynote speaker at CIO and IT industry events and is often quoted in leading industry journals. He graduated from UNH’s Whittemore School of Business & Economics.

BRIAN P. WATSON is the former Editor in Chief of CIO Insight and has contributed reporting and analysis to several media outlets focused on IT leadership. Since 2010, he has served as Director of Business Outreach for Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS), a 501c3 nonprofit company. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Bucknell University and a Master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Foreword xi

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

Chapter 1 The Anticipator: Filippo Passerini 1

Chapter 2 The Rocket Scientist: Rebecca Rhoads 17

Chapter 3 The Fixer: Steve Bandrowczak 33

Chapter 4 The Pilot: Carol Zierhoffer 51

Chapter 5 The Conductor: Lynden Tennison 69

Chapter 6 The Decider: Wayne Shurts 87

Chapter 7 The Realist: Don Imholz 103

Chapter 8 The Accidental CIO: Sheleen Quish 119

Chapter 9 The Innovator: Greg Schwartz 139

About the CIOs 155

About the Authors 165

Index 167

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