CIO Classified

Key Takeaways The age of the untrained employees having to double as IT staff is over. The IT roadblocks of the past have been paved over by more end-user-friendly systems that dedicated IT staff can use to run complex information architectures seamlessly.CIOs can't afford to work with blinders on. Staying plugged into your industry's ecosystem, and in lock step with industry experts is absolutely critical to make sure you're thinking ahead and making the right decisions for your company.Data tells you a lot, but it doesn't tell you everything. In the age of remote work, you need to check in with your team and have earnest conversations to see how they're keeping up with the pace of their work and ensure they're staying connected and motivated.Key Quotes"There's almost nothing that's happening in any department of any company at this point that isn't technology driven or at least where technology isn't an important part of the solution." - Karl"The opportunity for us as IT professionals working for a business, whether it is a smaller business or a bigger business, is to bring solutions which can really transform the company and actually help them leapfrog over the competition." - Avon"Internally, one of the key things is making sure that we bring data to where people are. That's much better than having yet another tab open and trying to stitch together data yourself in a lot of different places." - Karl"IT works both ways. Teams get what they need from new products, new innovation. But, also around the company, the product companies, they get real validation of their use cases, what they're trying to solve." - AvonLinksAvon Puri LinkedInKarl Mosgofian LinkedInSequoia CapitalGainsight--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.

George Llado, SVP & CIO at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and Phil Fasano, CEO of Gigster, discuss the essential role CIOs play at this moment, and trace their influence in digital transformation. As two heralded CIOs, George and Phil share the lessons they've learned in their careers and look at the future of the CIO.Key TakeawaysCIOs need literal and figurative investment from the executive team of their company in order to be able to drive digital innovation. Investing in the future can give companies a tremendous competitive advantage down the road.The pace of innovation has changed. Companies can't afford to build every single piece of infrastructure they need. To move fast, they have to leverage world-class third party services — from adopting a new API suite to integrating with a new cloud service.CIOs have to keep growing their skillset and use those new skills to remain competitive in their field, and in their company. In order to avoid being relegated to the back seat of the C-suite, CIOs have to be on the lookout for the next wave of technology that can push their business forward.Key Quotes"We're the lifeline. Digital, technology, and CIOs have become lifelines for corporations now. Because frankly, they're not able to do business without what we either have and they never used, or with what we can bring to bear they're very, very quickly." - George Llado"We've quickly evolved from the role of provider, to the enabler, to now this innovator, which I think a number of us are taking advantage of."  - George Llado"There isn't a transformation on the planet that's a straight line. In fact, a lot of transformations fail or attempts at them fail before you get to the point you actually executed it well." - Phil Fasano"Now, you can create a great customer experience. And, you can do it in days. What a difference, what a phenomenal difference it is. And it's a shame if we don't take advantage of this opportunity." - Phil FasanoGeorge Llado LinkedInPhil Fasano LinkedInGigsterAlexion Pharmaceuticals 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 TakeawaysSecurity and productivity shouldn’t be at odds with each other. Teams need to build security into their architecture intelligently so security standards are embedded in the way teams work, not added on as an afterthought.The best CTOs, CIOs, and CEOs craft their businesses processes with security in mind. If you’re building with blinders on, just focusing on eliminating all risk, you can end up putting up barriers to your business processes.It’s becoming more common for newly hired employees to join companies without having met their colleagues in person. CIOs, CTOs, and CEOs need to clear the space and design the processes that help employees connect and build a sense of camaraderie remotely.Key Quotes“For digital transformation, securing the edge, and being able to move quickly as possible as you’re developing new applications and services — you’ll need capabilities that scale.” - Mark Kuhr"We’ve entered into this new phase of digital enablement of communication and collaboration technology, which has made people a lot more efficient. " - Tim Campos“It’s good to be vigilant and bake into the culture of your company that security matters and everybody’s part of that. Everybody is part of that journey.” - Mark Kuhr“How we are going to spend our time has become incredibly valuable, especially when productivity is paramount, as it is for most knowledge-based professions.” - Tim CamposLinks Mark's LinkedInTim's LinkedInWovenSynack__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.

Robert Dixon, Former CIO of PepsiCo, and Rick Rioboli, EVP and CIO of Comcast Cable, both remember when the role of the CIO was relegated to the back office. Now, CIOs are leading critical business initiatives as more and more companies go through digital transformations. On this episode of CIO Classified, they discuss how to be successful as a CIO and build with customers in mind.Key TakeawaysIn the early days of the role, CIOs did more order-taking than business transformation. Now, they've developed their role and increased their impact, moving from the back office to the forefront of customer experience thanks to digital transformation.CIOs need to communicate with diverse sets of internal teams from product managers, to tech incubators within an enterprise, to various engineering teams. Seeing your company from different perspectives gives you a better sense of what work is most important.When you're optimizing for customer experience, don't lose track of customer identity. One customer interaction might leverage several different cloud services. CIOs need to ensure that those systems powering that experience can track and source a user's identity seamlessly and securely.Key Quotes"I've seen business leaders step up in technological transformation. They're coming to the table looking at this as a way to leverage technical capabilities to create better value or new value for customers."  - Robert"Don't feel like your job is just to take orders from the business. Teams should take a step back, understand what's important to their business, figure out how to leverage their technology in an innovative way to change things while partnering with the business." - Rick"When you see an opportunity to overlap what's needed from a business perspective to create value and what's possible with technology, you put those two things together with the right teams and that's going to be really beneficial for your customer."  - Robert"When we started our digital transformation, identity was at the center. It's hard to have a digital relationship with a customer if you don't have a digital identity of that customer. In our customer experience, that's a key component." - RickLinksRobert Dixon LinkedInRick Rioboli LinkedInPepsiCoComcast—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 TakeawaysEven when you're working remote, you can still stay connected to your community. Whether it's sending out a weekly email to your peers, joining a group chat with your colleagues, or checking in on Twitter — you can stay close to the folks you'd normally see at the office or in-between talks at a conference.Building smart, well-rounded teams can seem daunting. Companies that focus too narrowly on the process of hiring, rather than the people they're hiring, can struggle to build successful teams. It helps to remember that hiring is deeply human.There's one thing almost all CIOs have in common — their most uncuttable budget item is employee training. Investing in team training is investing in success. Going to conferences, taking courses, and levelling up skills not only makes employees happier in their roles, but more productive, too.  LinksCassidy's LinkedInIan's LinkedIn—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 TakeawaysWhat we view as "soft skills" or "social skills" are really catalytic skills that drive connections between coworkers, forge alliances between departments, and make teams more productive. CIOs have to build infrastructure to support those skills.The idea of building a secure perimeter around a physical location is fading in the age of remote work. Instead, CIOs are focused on securing their infrastructure to keep valuable information protected whether an employee is working from their kitchen or corporate HQ.Companies can't afford to kick their adoption of Zero Trust architecture down the road, even if they're undergoing constant change. The debate is more centered around how you should adopt the architecture, rather than when.Key Quotes"You have to extend your thinking to realize that the large portion of your corporation's infrastructure is now in people's homes, and it's only as secure as that infrastructure is."  - Atticus"The larger the organization and the more legacy there is in place,  the more it's about working through planning so that you don't break something. In the end, we all have to keep the business running at the same time we're rearchitecting." - Julie"Security is a team sport as well. You have to have a strong culture of trusting your employees and enabling them to move fast and to produce great experiences for customers and great products." - Atticus"What I'm most focused on is really productivity and being thoughtful, not just about, people can get their work done, but are they able to do it in the most effective and productive way that they can?"  - JulieLINKSJulie Cullivan LinkedInAtticus Tysen LinkedInForeScout TechnologiesIntuit__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. Don't forget to register for Zoomtopia, happening October 14th and 15th. Learn more at Zoomtopia.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Key TakeawaysThe role of the CIO is intertwined with the role of the CTO. To build efficient processes, you have to have the right tech stack in place in addition to the right systems for leveraging that tech stack.Tech debt piles up when you're moving too fast. When a project's finish line is in sight, don't sprint to it and gloss over dependencies that could bog down your engineering organization for years to come. Be smart, not impatient.Design information systems for your users to share information easily, and effortlessly. Information silos can lead to coworkers repeating their colleague's work, slowing down your company and taxing your employees.Key Quotes"I look at the experience as we can deliver. Our participants are inundated with different people like schools, giving them directions, certification partners, they need coherence. They need information real-time. They need tools that are created and available to them to do their work." - Sandeep Chellani"What is our core value proposition? What are the things we absolutely have to be really good at? Let's be thoughtful. Let's try to do them in a way that we can create experiments that allow us to build upon successes allows us to make incremental changes." - Grant Ingersoll"You really need to be set up in a different way of working than the old hierarchical way of thinking. But in addition to that, the pressures from outside to innovate are really large. I think the bar just keeps getting higher and higher when it comes to what people expect from you." - Sandeep Chellani"We have a very complex ecosystem. Of course, I would love to have more speed, but we have a dynamic as well with our community. We're very much with the community. So, there are times where for us, it makes a whole lot more sense to actually slow down." - Grant IngersollLinksSandeep's LinkedInGrant's LinkedInTeach for AmericaWikimedia FoundationThanks to our friends! This 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.  Learn more about CIO Classified at CIOpod.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Earl Newsome and Jonathan Reichental are like most CIOs in that they think at scale. But, what sets them apart from the pack is their ability to think so thoughtfully about the future, plan their goals, and accomplish them. On this episode of CIO Classified, Earl and Jonathan lay their plans for the smart cities of the future, discuss why culture is a key ingredient to a thriving company, and dive into what exactly an "infinity crisis mirror" is.  Key Takeaways CIO's have to be both technically savvy and socially adept. Any effective leader has to have a strong social IQ that guides their work as an orator, telling the story of IT's impact, and as a listener, gathering feedback from their colleagues and understanding company culture.The smart cities of the future have to leverage technology to make democracy more inclusive and accessible. Town hall meetings can happen on Zoom, as opposed to being relegated to a stuffy conference room. Local representatives can be everywhere, without leaving their office. Technology has to keep constituents in touch with their representatives.Successful CIOs have to get their business passport stamped. Meaning, they need a ground-level understanding of their company's culture, their competitors' tactics, their sales team's strategies, and their marketing team's movements. This can only be accomplished through experience.Key Quotes"You need to know how your culture operates. That's the difference between strategy—what we do, and culture—how you do it. If you're not an effective orator, if you're not aligned with that culture, you won't be an effective CIO." - Earl Newsome"Empower your people. Great leaders give their teams the room to work, and the tools they need. Then, they get out of the way. When that happens, people will do great things." - Jonathan Reichental"As we look at this new world of work, we need to be intentional about it. We can choose to let it happen to us, or we can choose to design it. And so I think this is a great opportunity." - Earl Newsome"The way we work has changed forever. There's a recognition that speed is important, that reinvention is important, and that innovation is daily. It's not something you plan for and put on a to do list. It's a way of working, thinking and behaving." - Jonathan Reichental LinksEarl's LinkedInJonathan's LinkedInJonathan's TwitterJonathan's Book Thanks to our friends! This 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. Don't forget to register for Zoomtopia, happening October 14th and 15th. Learn more at Zoomtopia.comLearn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.com   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For Eric Tan, CIO of Coupa, and Lev Gonick, CIO of Arizona State University, succeeding as CIOs has meant finding solid footing in a rapidly shifting landscape. On this episode of CIO Classified Eric and Lev discuss how they're designing IT systems to support remote work, using storytelling as a key tool for tech adoption, and preserving the culture of their IT organizations. Key TakeawaysCIOs need to embrace the ambiguity that comes with running, supporting, and transforming a business.You can give your team the right tools, but that doesn't mean they'll use them the right way. To empower remote teams, you need to engage your organization with a story-led campaign that informs them while capturing their attention.Maintaining the culture and social context of your work environment is critical. If one team's work is centered on face-to-face interaction, they need a technical solution that gets as close as possible to that type of interaction. Key Quotes"We're not just buying things and being responsible for keeping the lights on. We're helping people build their success in ways that they've never experienced before," - Lev Gonick"CFOs are looking for us to provide input in terms of opportunities where we can further automate and use technology to help drive the business."  - Eric Tan"Everyone wants the delivery of the solution yesterday. They want it fully integrated and they want it free. Not all three of those expectations can happen just because we wave a magic wand on it. This, in the end, is about talent. Talent is hugely important." - Lev Gonick"How do we change our policy, our processes, and stitch all these things together to make sure that people can come to work in whatever shape and form that looks like and enjoy work and remain productive." - Eric TanLinksLev's LinkedInEric's LinkedIn ASUCoupaThanks 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.

Your office probably looks a bit different these days. It might look a lot like... home. As more and more companies are moving to a remote-based work model, IT professionals are working to stay ahead of that seismic shift in the way we work, by building the systems that we need to stay productive. On this episode of CIO Classified, we talk to Wendy Pfeiffer, CIO of Nutanix, and Tony Saldanha, President of Transformant, about how they're crafting IT systems that enable their coworkers to stay productive and stay connected while working remotely.Wendy and Tony dove into everything from designing IT systems that account for the flexibility we need when working remotely, to finding the true metrics of productivity by measuring by objective rather than measuring by tasks, and how they both plan on building for our rapidly shifting definition of "new normal."Key TakeawaysTo be successful while working remotely, the enterprise has to learn from consumer-facing technology. The software your employees use to get work done should be as seamless and as personalized as the apps they use when they're done working.Sure, you have the right tools for a digital transformation, but are the people in your company prepared to use them? Revamping your technical infrastructure is only successful if you have a cultural infrastructure to support it.Teams work a little differently these days. It's time to adapt to that new behavior and invest in the ways that your teams prefer to work. Adopting new remote-friendly workflows can make your team more successful.Quotes"When we first pivoted to have everyone working from home, we all sort of said it was a sprint. Then everyone was saying, 'Oh, it's a marathon.' There are some folks who have sprinter muscles and some folks who have marathon muscles. And, and so we're all adapting in our own ways." - Wendy Pfeiffer"Digital transformation is about rewiring an entire enterprise. So not just creating a technology platform, which is what they set out to do, but also changing the DNA of every part of the organization." - Tony Saldanha" The gauntlet's been thrown down. How can we make enterprise applications and the enterprise experience stand up to the consumer experience that we're surrounded with in our own homes? And how can we still do that securely over public internet with all the other challenges we face?" - Wendy Pfeiffer"I think that's the big change people are looking at — the ways in which, not just collaboration tools, but the entire workday has got to be redesigned into these three different buckets of work — collaborative work, direct work with teams, and individual work."  - Tony SaldanhaLinksWendy's TwitterTony's TwitterNutanixTransformantThanks to our friends!This 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.