CIO Classified

Key TakeawaysCIOs provide a unique and invaluable perspective for boards.CIOs need to be bold and seek out board seat opportunities. Even the most accomplished CIOs can't just wait for the right opportunities to find them.Manage your board portfolio in a realistic and exciting way that makes you excited to get to work.Key Quotes“As a CIO, we see everything. We are the people that are between the people trying to do their job and their ability to get their job done. We see everything from a change management perspective, which gives us an awful lot of experience to then weigh in at the board.” - Diana"To be a good board member, you have to be a good listener." - Yousuf"Regardless of the type of board you’re on there's an element of humility and what they want is not only where have you seen things that have worked, but where have you seen things that haven't worked." - Diana“The best board members are the ones who don’t just listen and provide advice. They are the ones who can actually follow up and actually get things done.” - Yousuf LinksDiana McKenzie LinkedInYousuf Khan LinkedInWorkdayRidge Ventures Thanks to our friendsLearn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.comThis podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Key TakeawaysYou need to proactively analyze your systems and data to ensure they are secure.Make sure your employees networks are protected at home during remote work.Do not rely too heavily on black boxes. Key Quotes“Remote work has opened more windows and doors for the bad guys. And they'll just have a field day if we're not careful.” - Fleming"As the CIO, every single project you have needs to have a security component to it, period." - Raffy"Make sure high quality data and high ethics are being applied in your training models." - Fleming“There is a little bit of the danger in cybersecurity where they're building black boxes left and right. Nobody understands what they actually do and you make critical decisions based on them.” - Raffy LinksFleming Shi LinkedInRaffael Marty LinkedInBarracudaForcepoint Thanks to our friendsLearn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.comThis podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Key TakeawaysHaving an excellent employee experience is the first step to having a great customer experience.You need proactive support. Don’t wait for a user to come to you with a problem.Figure out what’s best to build versus buy. Key Quotes“If you get the best talent in and you get bad tools, then there is no way you're going to be successful.” - KC"Start with the business problem and business value that you're creating and who is the beneficiary. Then work backwards to see what you need to do to achieve that business outcome." - Prakash"Remove any friction that's there that comes in the way of employees being at their best." - KC“The key to frictionless experience to the users is understanding the user and giving them what they need rather than overwhelming them with 300 different tools.” - Prakash LinksArvind KC LinkedInPrakash Kota LinkedInGoogleAutodesk Thanks to our friendsLearn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.comThis podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. . Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Key TakeawaysHaving a fear of failure inhibits innovation.Ask your employees how you can best fit their IT needs, because some employees will be too shy to ask for help or assistance for more seemingly basic questions.Be proactive in approaching your users—don’t wait for them to come to you.Key Quotes“People who are playing a role of a CIO now are more business-centric and less technology-centric.” - Vipin"The CIO may not be the most technical talent in the company. What's very important is that they understand the business aspect of it or can relate to it. They can partner with the business side to provide solutions." - Srini"The CIO role is evolving as the technology is evolving." - Vipin“Invest in people. Invest in productivity tools. Invest in good whiteboarding tools. Invest in good collaboration software.” - SriniLinks:Vipin Arora LinkedInSrini Tanikella LinkedInHilmar CheeseSMART Global Holdings---Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.comThis podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Key TakeawaysThe path to growth is through excellent consumer experiences.In order to effectively solve business problems you need to work cross-functionally.Goal setting is key to creating successful business practices and achieving great outcomes.Key Quotes"Not every problem requires a technology solution. I think there are many cases where you can leverage processes or people in a thoughtful way to solve a lot of problems versus necessarily having to invest in a technology solution." - Sasha"You just can't separate the business problems from the technical problems. They all are completely intertwined and you can only do the best work when you have that cross functional team with a clear set of goals." - Nick"The better the customer experience, the better the business growth." - Sasha“It's completely fundamental to get good goals and good goal setting processes.” - NickSasha Siddhartha LinkedInNick Rockwell LinkedInThrive MarketFastly Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.comThis podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Uzi Dvir, Global CIO of WalkMe and Hitendra Mishra, VP Information Technology at Stitch Fix, discuss how digital adoption impacts all of us. They also dig into how to collaborate while working remotely, and how they’re applying AI to push their companies forward.Key TakeawaysDigital adoption is a key part of any industry. Make sure you’re investing in onboarding so that your employees can feel confident starting out. The more your company incorporates AI into your day-to-day, the more innovation is possible. Finding ways to incorporate human connections while working remotely is imperative to having a successful team.Key Quotes"People need someone to talk to, and Zoom is obviously a good solution and you can be effective and you can be efficient, but at the end of the day, people need people. So I don't think we have challenges with technology. I think like all the rest of the world, we have challenges with human needs." - Uzi"How you join a company and how you leave a company leaves either a bitter or a really good taste in your mouth. You want your past employees to be ambassadors of your company. So we go the extra mile and make sure that the employees are comfortable, both onboarding and offboarding." - Hitendra"We all have the data necessary for us to forecast our next steps. So the cool initiative thing to do is taking it and putting it in front of the business leaders." - Uzi“Have flexibility and empathy when you're designing your employee onboarding and offboarding experience, especially during these times. Meet your workforce where they want you. Put in the extra effort. It just goes a long way in building an amazing corporate culture.” - HitendraLinksUzi Dvir LinkedInHitendra Mishra LinkedInWalkMeStich FixThanks to our friendsLearn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.comThis podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Alvina Antar, CIO of Okta and Sharon Mandell, SVP Chief Information Officer of Juniper Networks, discuss the importance of mentorship on the road to becoming a CIO. They also unpack how a strong network of industry peers can help you not only do your best work but help you decide what work is worth focusing on. Key TakeawaysThere's a common misconception that your company or your product's value hits its peak once your customer gets it up and running. The true value is in longevity, flexibility, and your company's ability to mold your product to your customer's needs.  Mentorship can fuel your career if you're intentional about it. You can't expect a C-level executive to coach you at every step, every day. But, you can reach out to people who inspire you and ask for their guidance. Their insight can help you during critical career junctures.  For CIOs, your employees are your customers. You should be building the same type of seamless, effortless, online experience for your employees that you are for your customers. Giving them the right environment in which to work, especially remotely, pays dividends.  Key Quotes"When I'm mentoring someone,I want somebody who's going to have the courage to raise their hand when they need something. In addition to anything more formal we might structure, you have to ask. You have to have the courage to ask." - Sharon"It's all about experiences. It's about how we optimize our customer experience and deliver the most delightful, most optimal, most seamless, most secure customer experience. The same principle applies for the employee experience, too. " - Alvina"With my CIO network, I don't have to learn what other people have learned before me. I'm not a reinventing-the-wheel kind of person. I want to use my brain cycles for when I truly have to innovate. " - Sharon "In this new year, I think about the opportunity to further evolve the positioning of IT and business technology in driving business growth in streamlining processes so that companies can evolve and grow and scale. We should look at IT and business technology as a business, as an integral part of the business. " - AlvinaLinksAlvina Antar LinkedInSharon Mandell LinkedInOktaJuniper NetworksThanks to our friendsLearn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.comThis podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Key TakeawaysYour team doesn't have the time or patience to hunt for the resources they need to do their work. CTOs and CIOs have tremendous power to build more robust, essential knowledge hubs to help their teams find the information they're looking for, or document a newly minted process.Prioritizing projects is an art. CIOs have to learn how to weigh one project's impact against another's while juggling the work they have in-flight. Agile workflows help teams prioritize and move swiftly, as opposed to burning time and money on a years-long project.Teams might be working outside of the office, but their expectations haven't changed. Someone working remotely still expects the speed of the office WiFi, the VPN capacity, and more. CIOs have to fine tune their infrastructure to help teams work together from afar.Key Quotes"Surprising and delighting people is just making technology more transparent in their lives. I focus a lot on those types of things as well as removing friction." - John"To be a good CIO,  I think you have to have genuine passion and interest in understanding the business and what it's trying to accomplish. The technology comes later. It's really about understanding the business." - Anisha"Innovation comes from really listening to what people need and hearing what they're actually saying." - John"Gone are the days of the five year IT project and boiling the ocean. It's about building flexible, iterative, agile delivery models and having the ability to respond to shifting demand as it appears. " - AnishaLinksAnisha Vaswani LinkedInJohn Stecher LinkedInBlackstoneToastThanks to our friendsLearn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.comThis podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Every week, we sit down with CIOs from some of the world’s top companies to uncover the strategies that have been fundamental to their skyrocketing success.In each episode, we ask our guests which three areas of investment are so important, that they consider them uncuttable budget items. Tune into this episode to hear the budget items our CIO guests couldn’t live without!Key TakeawaysYour employees are key. Investing in the people in your IT department, in both compensation and training, was a major theme.Product was another frequently highlighted theme. Any time you as an IT department can be involved in the actual product and customer experience, you shouldn’t waste the opportunity.Digital transformation was also touched upon multiple times. As our CIOs pointed out, digital transformations are never fully complete and can’t be deemed completed and forgotten about.Key Quotes"The area I struggle to cut the most is development, skills building, and staying fresh on technology. You have to invest in your teams, your skills, and keeping up on technology -  I can tweak a lot of other things, but I really don't want to touch that.” - Julie Cullivan, CTO, ForeScout“It's the people. Especially in times like this, it has to be the people because they're the ones who have the institutional knowledge. They're the ones who have been caring and feeding for everything you're doing. All the rest you can figure out, but if you don't have good people on board, none of it matters.” - Grant Ingersoll, CTO, Wikimedia Foundation“I will say training. I will fight for that. I fought for there to be more training and I will always fight when they try to cut it back because if your team members don't have the skills to do what you're asking them to do, everything suffers. The business can't be successful.” - Jonathan Reichental, Founder and CEO, Human Future, Former CIO, City of Palo Alto--Thanks to our friends Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.comThis podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is coming on season 2 of CIO Classified? On this episode, we give you a sneak peek. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.