GET TO KNOW
3
What style of management
philosophy do you employ
with your current position?
At my core, I will always remember that those in fear will not
innovate and I share this theme in almost every meeting, keynote
and mentoring session I hold. Spend time on self-reflection, know
the two or three things at which you are great and delegate or
‘outsource’ your disinterests and weaknesses to those better than
you. True love for those for which you are responsible will also take
you places; often in IT we lack the emotional intelligence for this.
4
What do you think will
emerge as the technology
trend of 2018 and why?
The use of machine learning to illuminate and care for our IT
environments, especially the devices we’ve ignored in the past,
particularly in security. The amount of data that needs to be
analysed daily is staggering. Over time, human response deviates
in coverage and in training, but that’s not the case for a machine.
Additionally, people can’t scale to the data, nor can they be trained
(and re-trained) quickly enough. The use of machine learning to
make sense of your IT world – and then doing something about
it with intelligent response – is incredibly exciting and is already
happening today.
5
What do you currently
identify as the major areas of
investment in your industry?
7
If you could go back and
change one career decision,
what would it be?
There isn’t one event that I’d change, but I would have fired some
bad bosses (people to whom I reported). There were far too many
who were OK with burning out and causing undue stress to their
staff. Interestingly, these ‘undesirable’ characteristics provided the
bedrock of leadership philosophies that I deploy today, so maybe
they were secretly paying it forward by teaching me what not to do!
Next, I’d say to understand the power of ‘notables’ outside your
current employer. Earlier in my career I never thought about
contributing to our larger technical community: volunteering and
creating shared content.
8
What advice would you
offer somebody aspiring to
obtain a C-level position in
your industry?
If a CIO, or especially a CISO, never forget to follow the money. Stop
struggling with relevance and be friendly. Understand the sales,
marketing and legal teams and how you can help them. Be a great
simplifier. Go down and brief the sales team during sales kick off.
How does your work help retain or acquire new customers? Provide
written talking points explaining how your area of the company
is a differentiator in the industry. The board and your executive
leadership team cares about this . . . a lot.
I’m seeing great investment in centralising vast organisational
information for analysis within data lakes and then attempting to do
something with it via either DevOps or orchestration. This becomes
almost an investment in IT method and culture.
Without help, direction and goals, these can turn into nothing
more than science experiments that provide little operational
value, but scoped properly, the philosophy and output is impactful
and career changing.
6
How do you deal with
stress and unwind outside
of the office?
Even if short on time, a brisk walk is always on the docket. Several
years ago, I had a serious health scare that made me rethink my life
and formulate the ingredients of an ideal day.
Included in my list is a walk to our nearby village to clear my
mind and making time to help someone else. You simply don’t
know how many days you have left, so make each ideal by your
definition. I ask my mentees to evaluate the situation at hand and
ask if you will remember it in one year. That’s a good start and
cuts out most worry.
102
INTELLIGENTCIO
“
I GOT TO SEE
THOSE I HAD MENTORED
MOVE INTO LEADERSHIP
POSITIONS, AND SENIOR
LEVEL POSITIONS, AND
THAT MAKES ME INCREDIBLY
PROUD; TIE YOUR
ACHIEVEMENTS TO THE
GROWTH OF OTHERS.
www.intelligentcio.com