CIO going on CEO: A Success Guide for Information Technology Professionals

By Houssam Kaddoura

You’ve done the hard work to succeed in the information technology field, but what comes after that?

Find out how to climb the organizational ladder to become a business influencer, decision maker, and even the CEO with this business guide written by a longtime technology and business management consultant.

Houssam Kaddoura pinpoints how technology professionals can tweak their behavior, thinking, and decisions to overcome conflicts and stand out from the crowd. Learn how to:

put aside a passion for technology to focus on what really matters to the overall organization;
forge valuable connections with the organization’s top decision makers; and
demonstrate that you have what it takes to move out of your comfort zone to assume a more important role.

If you’re business minded and want to do more to help your organization, then you need to first excel at what you do and show you’re willing and able to do more. Find out how to do it step by step with the lessons in CIO Going on CEO.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Nov 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483459530

Book preview

CIO Going on CEO

A Success Guide for Information Technology Professionals

Houssam Kaddoura

Copyright © 2016 Houssam Kaddoura.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5952-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5954-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5953-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016916720

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 10/20/2016

Contents

Abstract

Keywords

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Practice 1: Form Your CEO Character

Practice 2: Dress Well; Look Good; Touch the Eyes, Nose, and Heart

Practice 3: Create and Publish Your Long-Term Plan to Value

Practice 4: Don’t Burn Shareholders’ Money

Practice 5: It’s about Information, Not Technology

Practice 6: Learn, Understand, and Talk Business Acronyms Instinctively

Practice 7: Never Hate Your Work; Either Love It or Leave It

Practice 8: Stand Up and Speak; Fear of Public Speaking Hurts Your Career

Practice 9: Don’t Neglect Technology Governance

Practice 10: Talk Money and Dollarize It Before You Recommend It

Practice 11: Wink in the Light; Market Your IT Services

Practice 12: Identify the Actual Size of the Iceberg First

Practice 13: Walk the Talk and Be an Excellent Role Model

Practice 14: Amaze the Crowd with Constant Masterful Presentations

Practice 15: Plant, Grow, and Crop Your Own Luck

Practice 16: Extend the Organization’s Productivity Frontier with Mobility

Practice 17: Lead with Courtesy and Develop the Attitude of Gratitude

Practice 18: Figure the Cost/Price of Each IT Product and Service

Practice 19: Keep Hungry for Learning

Practice 20: Chargeback IT; Let Them Pay for Their Share of the Pie

Practice 21: Let Your IT Budget Speak for Itself

Practice 22: Don’t Light Your Victory Cigar; You Are Not Done Yet

Practice 23: Be Vigilant for IT Degraders

Practice 24: Shared Devices Drop Productivity; Centralize Wisely

Practice 25: Crack the Commercial Proposals Mystery

Practice 26: Know the Ugly Truth and Live with It

Practice 27: Deliver Quality in the Whole Kit and Caboodle

Practice 28: Don’t Allow Them to Shoot You Down

Practice 29: Know How to Say No

Practice 30: If You Are New, Spend Your First Week Effectively

Practice 31: Be the Boss’ Favorite

Practice 32: Identify Your Success Sponsors and Monitor Their Satisfaction Indicator

Practice 33: Eat Healthy, Sleep Well, Train Hard … Repeat

Practice 34: Be Seen by Having It Green

Practice 35: Take Advantage of a Sluggish Economic Downturn

Practice 36: Take Advantage of Vendors and Develop Your Team Technology Knowledge through Them

Practice 37: Social Media Is a Double-Edged Sword; Deal with It Cautiously

Practice 38: Don’t Let the IT Stationaries Distract You and Drain Your Energy

Practice 39: Apply Excellence in Project Execution; IT PMO Office Is a Must

Practice 40: Contain Their Frustration from Your Information Security Control

Practice 41: Learn How to Dance and Tango with the CFO

Practice 42: Don’t Give Them What They Want; Give Them What They Need

Practice 43: Step Out of Your Comfort Zone; It’s a Killer

Practice 44: See Through Your Key Performance Indicators

Practice 45: Don’t Padlock Your Company’s Growth with Dominant and Ineffective IT Outsourcing

Practice 46: IT Negotiation Is a Skill You Must Master

Practice 47: Prioritize and Attain Business Quick Wins

Practice 48: How Much Did You Save This Year? A Misapprehended Question You Must Always Be Ready For

Practice 49: Build Your Sales Force of IT Relationship Managers

Practice 50: Train to Gain; It’s Your Responsibility to Build the Organization’s Capability

Practice 51: Personally Prepare and Deliver Management Presentations

Practice 52: Take Out the Average; Hire and Keep Top-Notch Employees Only

Practice 53: Don’t End Your Vendor’s Negotiation without a Win-Win Agreement

Practice 54: Implement a Winning IT Management Framework

Practice 55: ART Your Persuasion Ability

Practice 56 :Adopt at Least Two of These Four Winning Cards

Practice 57: Get Noticed; Try Breaking Some Rules to Save the Organization

Practice 58: Raise Your Fame Out of Blame

Practice 59: Show How Your FTE Requirement Is Estimated

Practice 60: Develop Your Team Skills for Free

Practice 61: Introduce a Motivating IT Project Reward and Recognition Structure

Practice 62: Recognize Your Weak Skills and Complement Them

Conclusion

About the Author

Figures

Figure 1: IT-Business Goals Alignment Example

Figure 2: CIO’s Operational and Strategic Value Delivery Map

Figure 3: Calculation of the Investment’s Free Cash Flows

Figure 4: Calculation of the Discounted Cash Flows

Figure 5: Calculation of the ROI

Figure 6: Calculation of the NPV of Investment Cash Flows

Figure 7: Calculation of the Investment’s Payback Period

Figure 8: Calculation of the Cumulative Five-Year ROI

Figure 9: Calculation of the Investment’s IRR

Figure 10: The Formula of Good Luck

Figure 11: Leading with Courtesy Essentials

Figure 12: Example of Service Pricing/Costing

Figure 13: IT Budget Components

Figure 14: IT Success Sponsors and Influencers

Figure 15: The Inverse Impact of Increased Security Measures

Figure 16: Uncompromisable Business Objectives

Figure 17: Winning Framework of IT Management

Figure 18: ART’s Persuasion Characteristics

Figure 19: The Four Winning Aces

Figure 20: FTE Estimation (Bottom-Up Approach)

To all great CIOs everywhere

To those whom I worked with and learned from

To my family, friends, and colleagues

To all ambitious IT professionals out there who are changing their way of thinking and wanting to create and deliver what is with real value for more efficient and effective IT services.

To whom I started my IT career with and owe most of my experience and knowledge.

W hy do most IT departments fail and/or suck? Why do most CEOs and CFOs still treat IT as a cost center? Why do more than 70 percent of IT projects not deliver their promised business value? Why are most IT leaders not persuasive? Why do most CIOs not make it further to the top and remain stuck within IT department boundaries?

W hat actions should CIOs/IT leaders do to change this ugly truth? What habits should they adopt to become a value center instead of a cost one? What areas they should focus on to regain management trust and climb further? How can they drive the organization instead of following it? How can they influence business decisions? How can they become CEOs?

W hile all these questions are currently spinning inside your head, it is a promising indication of your readiness and openness for transformation. Your mind-set is open, accommodating, and ready to adopt the transformational practices that will guide you to achieve further success.

A New CIO Perspective

Business-minded

Pragmatic

Value architect

Persuasive negotiator

Productivity- and growth-driven

Transformational

Inspirational and motivational

Business-aligned

Role model

Capability developer

People skills

Efficiency- and effectiveness-focused

Abstract

A few words to describe this book can be a guide to direct IT management’s focus, behavior, and practices toward what really matters to achieve personal and organizational success.

C-level is recognized to be on top of every organization, department, division, and function of a certain field. A chief marketing officer is at the top of the marketing function, a chief financial officer is at the top of finance function, and obviously a chief information officer is at the top of the information technology (IT) pyramid.

The awkward and hard-hitting question is what comes next for a CIO. It has been known and accepted that most technical leaders are uninterested in being at the top of managing business organizations. In fact, they may not be ready or suitable to make it to the higher levels. They usually prefer staying behind the scenes to practice their passion for learning new technologies, adopting new systems, designing new architecture, implementing new applications, and maintaining existing infrastructure. Many CIOs chose to focus on the technology need of the organization and leave the company’s financial value, strategic directions, growth plans, and bottom-line fluctuations for someone else to bother and worry about.

Awkwardly, this is the heartfelt truth or at least the opinion of most business leaders. However, this is not the same for some IT leaders and professionals who decide to keep climbing the organization’s hierarchy, identify new business goals, apply their leadership skills, take business decisions, and change the organization.

The name of the book, CIO Going on CEO, has been inspired from those CIOs who are working, practicing, and behaving as business executives. They are successful in their job and are business-oriented and ambitious enough to want to climb further steps and become CEOs. To be the next CEO of your organization, you first need to be successful at what you are doing as a CIO. Second, you must have the recipe and required landscape of a CEO. The recipe or key of a future CEO requires additional ingredients besides your technical skills. It requires a tweak in your mind-set toward business priorities, a passion for achieving organizational goals and objectives, strategic thinking ability, effective communication, customer orientation, and the ability to direct your compass and efforts toward maximizing the shareholders’ return on equity (ROE).

This book will set the spotlight on various valuable tips and tricks/guidelines for CIOs and IT leaders who are seeking a new effective way to reach success. It will basically guide them to acquire and practice some important IT management behaviors that most technology leaders unfortunately ignore.

This book is not for those who still insist on practicing and managing information technology in the traditional way of a technical mind-set. It will neither improve their knowledge about latest technology trends nor harden their technical CIO abilities.

The book has gathered and summarized the secrets that have influenced many successful CIOs and IT professionals around the world. It will reveal extremely simple but effective habits and practices that will outline the forte of being a business-minded CIO. It will put aside the passion toward technology and guide you to focus on what really matters for the organization. It’s a mind-set change and will definitely help break the wall to the other side where the folks who are ruling the organization are gathered.

If you are working in the IT field and are ambitious enough to climb the organizational ladder to influence business and make decisions and be crowned at the top of the organization, this book is for you. The author of this book is targeting all levels of ambitious information and communication technology professionals who have set their objective to climb the ladder of the organization and reach the top. The author intends to help the technology geeks apply some tweaks in their concentration, behavior, thinking ability, and decisions that will help them overcome the common ancient conflicts occurring among them and other business function leaders.

The book is useful to CIOs; CTOs; IT managers, team leaders, project managers, and financial managers; systems administrators; application developers; business architects; network technicians; security specialists; help desk engineers; and all other technology professionals. It is for those who reject to bind their skills and experiences to merely the technical (zero-one) binary arithmetic calculations and technical configuration knowledge. It’s for those who want to take on and seize the opportunity that will lead them to the organization’s business management. This book will also help IT professionals acquire new IT management skills, activate their business mind-set, enable business growth, and drive the organization to achieve its objectives.

CIO Going on CEO can also be of significant value for university students who are setting the path of their upcoming careers in the ICT field. It offers them the know-how of practical and effective IT management, along with guiding them to the right way for starting their future jobs and drawing a line that separates their technology passion and the actual sanity of business life.

This book is distinguished in addressing various facts, practices, behaviors, and habits that most IT management disregards. It is easy to read, absorb, and adopt. It emphasizes on what you are supposed to do as a IT professional, what you are to keep your eyes on, and how to behave with superiors as well as subordinates.

Most IT management books focus on one subject that takes a whole chapter formed from tens of pages. They are overfilled with thousands of words and examples to explain one key point or idea. These ideas oftentimes are self-illustrated in the heading of the chapter or the first few pages. This book addresses its subjects in a short, simple, and clear message with a few short pages, providing the author’s recommendation and keeping the rest on the reader to practice and realize its value.

Keywords

• Back-end projects: the essential but unappreciated efforts (the unknown soldier)

• Behavior: your reaction for actions

• Business strategy: the IT plan’s guidebook

• Business: the organization’s core business domains and all other non-IT functions

• Capabilities: resources and infrastructure

• Chief executive officer (CEO): the visionary, the commander, the idol

• Chief financial officer (CFO): the tango partner, the influencer

• Chief information officer (CIO): the vision and business enabler

• Comfort