Be the Business Quotes

“The CIO is that one leader who can see everything that is happening within the organization," says Victor Fetter, CIO of LPL Financial. "The CIO looks at every transaction and every customer service experience that takes place on the digital platform. With that unique perspective, the CIO understand where efficiency is happening and where it is not. The position, at its most basic level, has moved from someone who just accepted the way things were, to someone who uses that visibility to create aha moments for all leaders across the organization.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“As a CIO, you are the first to step into traffic, to stand alone during a period of change before people come on board. That takes personal courage...Traditionally, in IT, we like to please. But IT is not a popularity contest; it's a reality show where we often have to deliver tough information...Being a CIO means having the courage not to cut corners to please a stakeholder and delivering the hard message that this is not a risk we're willing to take.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“a fan of author Patrick Lencioni, Stevenson borrows from his concept of "company first" in her leadership program..."In every IT transformation, you make major tradeoffs between current and future functionality, and you need to let the company's needs drive your decisions around strategy, investments, and the sequencing of change. It's company first, your organization second, and you as a leader third.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“If you want to have an impact in your company, have a point of view that sometimes challenges the status quo but do the work required to make the point of view an informed one.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“But here's the rub: looking across silos for opportunities to improve capabilities is one thing; creating a vision for how to seize those opportunities as another. Communicating that vision effectively is harder still. But the real work, the deepest work, is in the deciding to stick your neck out in the first place.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“CIOs, more than any other executive, have an end-to-end view of how the business works and the tools to turn that view into insights. CIOs can see endless opportunities for improvement and change.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“Because IT people can see so much, it is their responsibility to influence investment priorities, not just execute on priorities set by internal business partners.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“Your first step in running IT like a business is to stop thinking of IT investments as OPM (other people's money) and treat it as if it were your own.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“The challenge of disparate systems, says Bunton, extends past technology and process. Disparate systems have a direct impact on the way employees think about their jobs. "If your legacy systems require users to break down processes into little pieces, you wind up with people who cannot think holistically about their problems," she says.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“First, you need to understand the attitude that the current executive committee has toward IT," says Richter. "Do they believe that IT is a back-office function and a necessary evil? If the executive committee does not believe in the strategic importance of IT, and you don't have the credibility to change their perspective, your chances of success are very slim. In that case, you may want to look for other professional opportunities elsewhere.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“Lately, however, I have changed my thinking on this. I have a new Greek mythological figure in mind for the CIO; Cassandra. Cassandra made the critical relationship-building error of spitting on Apollo. As retaliation, Apollo gave Cassandra the power of prophecy, but also the curse of never being believed. (Cassandra eventually goes insane, by the way, so you all have that to look forward to.)”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“In my previous book, The CIO Paradox, I called this phenomenon the "accountability vs. ownership" paradox, where CIOs are responsible for the outcomes of technology implementations but do not have the power to change the business process.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“Someone once told me that, when your operations are not good, you should not talk strategy," says Iyer. "Fair enough. But the opposite is also true. If operations are good, then you must talk strategy.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“Digital transformation is more than painting a shiny picture of the future: digital transformation means tying the back end to the front end, which CIOs have done over and over again.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“But moving from enabling the business to being the business is challenging work. It means changing governance models, organizational structures, delivery methodologies and hiring practices. It means transforming IT people from technologists to strategists, from constructing hard lines around IT to creating an environment devoid of organizational boundaries, and from clamping down on employees attempts to develop their own technology to embracing end-user innovation. It also means driving change in the most difficult of all arenas: the mindset, the psyche, the most deeply held ways that we understand our jobs, our success, and our professional identity.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“The most important thing we are doing here is collapsing the silos," says Eash Sundaram, EVP of innovation and CIO of JetBlue. "When we think about a program, we don't think about IT and finance and commercial operations. We think about how the program improves our customer or employee experience.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Eras of IT

“The worst mistake a CIO can make is trying accumulate all of a company's IT skills inside the IT organization.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“As anyone who has moved to an iterative development model will tell you, it takes two to be Agile. If”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“Product management is different in digital than in IT," says Donagh Herlihy, EVP of digital and CIO at Bloomin' Brands. "In IT, your business partners define their requirements. In digital, you don't have that luxury; you define requirements yourself based on deep consumer insight." This”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“Every company is becoming a software company because the products that people are using have some element of software in them," says Jim DuBois, CIO of Microsoft. "This makes the integration between IT and the product organization much more important for disruptive breakthroughs; there is very little that IT or product can do alone.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“We are seeing an emerging workforce of self-helpers," says Jim Fowler, CIO of GE. "Regardless of their discipline, college graduates are coming into our companies and creating models, spreadsheets, and even advanced analytical tools. They come in with the assumption that they don't need an IT organization—they can figure out how to digitize their work themselves. How do CIOs stay relevant in this world of self-helpers? They need to provide the right platforms and guardrails to these workers. They need to be seen as a catalyst and not a speed bump.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“I never talk to candidates about their CVs," says Dan Olley, EVP of product development and CIO of Elsevier, the global information solutions provider. "They can write and I can read; we know that." Rather than focus on skills and experiences, Olley interviews for two raw capabilities: "Clear thinkers—people who can cut through day-to-day ambiguity to create clarity on how to move forward; and strategic pragmatists—people who are strategic enough to make a plan but pragmatic enough to know that they might not implement all of it.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“As CIO, I know that part of IT's job is to fulfill requests, but our real job is to understand the business and come up with innovative ideas.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“You have to teach them the value of IT before they are willing or able to build IT into a business case. This is an uphill battle. It took me three months to convince my company to fund one small analytics workshop. They think we just want to spend money.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“If your legacy systems require users to break down processes into little pieces, you wind up with people who cannot think holistically about problems," she says.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“Senior executives love the strategy layer. And why not? Strategy is fun! It's fun to make declarations like, "We're one global company now! We've grown for one hundred years through acquisition, we run under the tyranny of the P&L, we've been fully organized by regions, but we're one global company now!"1 But the operating layer? Not so much. The”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“How do you know when the CIO and the CMO don't get along?" asks Jay Ferro, CIO of the American Cancer Society. "When the CEO hires a chief digital officer. The CDO role is a Band-Aid for two executives who can't get along.”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“We all know about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which points out that we tend to take care of food and shelter before worrying about socializing and self-esteem. This goes for CIOs as well, who should not waste their time proposing digital strategy if email isn't working. Being”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT

“What's more, chief digital officers are often really chief marketing officers (CMOs) who have boned up on digital technologies. But”
― Martha Heller, Be the Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT