At the conference

Prepare for success 

I tend to unpack, iron and hang my clothes immediately when I get to my hotel room. Get it done first and once. Don’t waste time ironing in the morning when you could be networking over breakfast. Get up early, shower, put on your badge and get out the door without a care in the world and an open mind. 

Help by volunteering 

The foundation of any community is the volunteer effort. Most often, presenters aren’t compensated for their time. Vendors at the expo aren’t compensated for their time. Everyone gives something to be there — their time, sponsorship dollars or both — and wants the conference to be a huge success. That’s why volunteers go above and beyond every single time. 

If you’re at the event early, find someone with a badge and ask to help. Conferences usually appear seamless on the surface and are often absolute mania below it. Ask to set up chairs or be a speaker assistant. Maybe you know audio/video to help plug in some equipment. Help fill up the conference backpacks with goodies. There’s plenty to do. Nobody is going to refuse help, especially in a volunteer-run event, and it’s a great way to see how everything works and build new relationships. 

Ask questions

Ask speakers questions during the session, after the session, in the elevator, if you spot them at Walgreens, etc. That’s why they’re in town. 

If you have a burning technical question, just ask anyone. At a conference, there’s almost a guarantee that the person you ask can introduce you to the person who may have the answer. Often, there are panels with a named moderator. If you’re too shy to take the mic and ask in front of a couple hundred people, find the moderator in advance and give them your question. That’s what they’re there for. Be sure to attend the panels. 

Network with vendors 

Go to the expo and meet every vendor. Get their souvenirs, stress balls and t-shirts. Yes, they’ll likely contact you afterward. I’ve experienced the expo as a customer and as a vendor. As a customer, you might not be able to use the product or solution today or tomorrow, but you can pass it along to someone down the road who may be in the market for it. Additionally, the vendor may give you solid advice you can use immediately. Not everyone at the expo is there to sell a product per se. They’re there as a vendor to show what they can do for you, not what they can sell you on. 

I remember I went to an IBM Lotus conference as a customer in 2007 and attended a Domino performance session. I was having performance problems and asked what the speaker thought while visiting his booth at the expo. He gave me simple and solid tech advice. I went back home, and it immediately fixed my problem. I didn’t buy anything, and he didn’t sell me anything. But I remembered his name. Several months ago, I saw him post on a Facebook group question, so I thanked him nearly 20 years later. I’ve even sent people to his company for different solutions over the years. 

Vendors have so much value to share with the community. There’s give and take. They do more than just sponsor events. And you never know when a contact like that will come in handy. 

Attend social events 

Don’t stay in your hotel room. Conferences are full of introverts, especially in the tech world. Get out of that comfort zone as best you can. Find out which social events are happening and show up. I guarantee you’ll make far better use of your time than scrolling through your phone alone in your room every night. 

Conference attendees often wear badges well into the night to identify themselves. Find a group or even someone standing alone and introduce yourself. You’ll be surprised how fast people accept you because they’re often afraid to make the first move themselves. 

Speaking of introverts, I’m very much an introvert who’d be happy most days not talking to anybody. I’m an “extrovert on the outside” after years of practice, and most people can’t tell now. It’s paid off because of the friends and contacts I’ve made at conferences. 

Provide feedback 

Be sure to give honest session feedback. Good speakers are constantly fine-tuning and changing their sessions. They’re always wondering if their content is too easy or difficult or if they’re talking too fast or slow. Did you expect 75 minutes of solid content and only get 30 minutes of decent content with 45 minutes of irrelevant banter? Did you go to a technical session but were disappointed when it turned into a product marketing session? Did you feel engaged? Did a speaker miss the mark entirely? What were your expectations, and did it match the session title and abstract? 

Fill out feedback sheets or online surveys. Tell the presenter face-to-face what you think. You’d be surprised how much a little constructive feedback helps shape their next effort. Moreover, you may get some immediate value from them one-on-one because they’ll likely want to make it right and send you home happy. And be sure to tell speakers what they got right, too. We like to hear we’ve made people happy. 

After the conference 

Consider becoming a presenter 

If you think you can present a session, submit one for consideration! It’s not rocket science — you’re just telling a story. That’s all a presentation is when you boil it down. Just present what you know. If I do a session on penetration testing an IBM i, you’ll get exactly that from start to finish. If I do what I call Rapid Fire Admin, it’s me stapling you to the wall with 150 tips in 75 minutes. Pick your title and abstract, then tailor your content to match it. It’s very straightforward. 

Presenting will often help with your travel and hotel costs. You bring formal value. Why do you think I started speaking to begin with? It’s not because I loved standing up in front of people with a microphone. When I started, I was terrified. Presenting what I knew and sharing my stories helped me grow professionally and as a public speaker. Most importantly, it reduced my company’s cost to send me for education as a customer. 

Share your knowledge 

Lastly, share what you’ve learned and the value you received with your company after you come home. Tell them who you’ve met and what tips you picked up that will save your company time and money. It’ll make the next conference far easier to get approved if they understand it’s an investment, not an expense. 

Put these tips to work! Use what you’ve learned from this blog to join us at an upcoming event. 

CIOs Can Become Better Business Partners

Technology plays an integral part in all areas of an organisation. To improve technology outcomes, Information Technology (IT) departments must work strategically with each business unit to understand their objectives and the operational plan to achieve their goals. This is a tall order. IT teams already face the challenge of providing support and expertise for current technologies, while striving to stay a step ahead of any new technology that a department wishes to roll out. To help organisations to adapt and thrive in the world of constant change, CIOs’ business strategy must also shift from the singular role of service provider into an expanded role of strategic business partner to the C-suite. Below are the five steps to take on your CIO business strategy journey.

1. Drive Change vs. Maintaining Status Quo

CIOs are traditionally expected to maintain the internal technology environment of an organisation. This expectation comes with an emphasis on cost reduction and efficiency, and CIOs have historically excelled in this role. Today, however, organisations demand more insight into results and revenue, and technology is critical in providing this data. To align with the push to maximise revenue, it is crucial for CIOs to develop a robust strategic plan with an external focus, driving the business with result-producing changes wherever possible. This external focus requires IT to ask what value they bring to the customer. The CIO should understand the pain points of the customer and offer better, faster or more advanced options to reduce or resolve customer challenges.

To add customer value, the CIO’s business strategy must include engaging with others, often internally. IT is no longer the “go-to” for other departments, since technology is better understood by today’s average employee vs. a decade ago.

Within an organisation, team members seek out new software and hardware to tap into greater efficiencies and improve performance. The CIO and their team should proactively identify areas of improvement along with viable solutions, rather than waiting on a request for IT’s help in finding a technology solution. Who better to look for solutions than the team that understands how new technologies will fit into the entire IT ecosystem?

Operating with a proactive mind-set requires a holistic understanding of the organisation’s business processes and insight into how processes impact customer pain points. It is imperative that the CIO’s strategic plan dedicates time and effort to cultivating this mind-set within IT and helps IT employees to take a more comprehensive approach to support. It is the CIO’s responsibility to create and sustain an externally focused IT culture.

2. Build Accountability Into Tech Innovation

Every year, organisations make significant investments in new technology. The deployment and management of these technologies put CIOs in a unique position to hold the rest of the C-suite accountable for the return on investment (ROI) of said technology. In this role, a CIO needs to understand what each technology investment should achieve and take the initiative to follow up on results.

For example, if IT were directed to implement the newest million-dollar “got-to-have-it” marketing technology, would the CMO want IT to alert them that only a handful of people were using it effectively? Of course. With this information, the CMO has the opportunity to make changes to how the technology is being used to achieve the desired results.

CIOs can no longer be technicians who emerge from the data centre when there is an issue; they must be strategic business partners who are willing to challenge the perceptions of their colleagues with viable and relevant data.

By ensuring that the organisation invests in results-driven technology, not only is the CIO eliminating waste, but they are also (and much more importantly) identifying where the organisation can improve. By coming alongside other leaders to capitalise on technology spend ROI and to cultivate a level of transparency in the C-suite, the CIO’s business strategy is a key component in helping the organisation to better leverage its resources.

3. Train Departments With a Focus on Results

The CIO’s team has a unique 360-degree perspective on technology and how it fits into the broader technology ecosystem. With this expertise and insight, the IT team trains end users on the technical capabilities of a hardware or software solution. But more inclusive training incorporates a business focus; it teaches not only the technical aspects of a tool but also how the tool will improve the productivity of the end user. The end user should know what to anticipate as their proficiency grows – whether that is increased speed, improved reporting or better customer service.

Expanding the focus beyond tech capabilities will require a significant investment of time and resources. But if a tool is not launched (and supported) well, the chances are great that it will be under-utilised and will under-deliver.

In addition to maximising the potential for the user, the technology and the organisation, the CIO’s strategic investment in training with a business focus can uncover and mitigate security concerns. Users are the greatest security threat within an organisation and are often unaware of the risk they create. By understanding how teams utilise tools, IT staff can train users on safe practices and help to identify unsafe ones. Security is a priority for every C-suite member, so avoiding risks and providing peace of mind is one of the surest ways a CIO can become a better strategic business partner.

4. Develop IT Employees to Align With Business Objectives

It is not enough for only the CIO to understand the strategic business side of the organisation. To align with all business units successfully, all IT employees must possess a thorough understanding of business concepts, vocabulary and tactics. As noted earlier, IT teams need to understand the business objectives to find needed technologies and communicate how those technologies are best used – but how do IT professionals learn about these relevant topics?

CIOs can enable their teams by implementing periodic training on the business basics. IT employees should come to understand the business model, value propositions and sales cycles. Development should include reviewing business plans, relevant annual reports, operations schedules and marketing strategies. Terms such as “product mix”, “COGS” and “channel management,” to name a few, should be discussed on a routine basis.

Investing in broader business-related training requires a considerable commitment. With careful strategic planning and execution, the investment will develop the IT team’s capacity to meet departmental and organisational demands successfully.

5. Be Agile

In a business environment that is rapidly changing, opportunities must be acted on immediately to capture a competitive advantage. In the past decade, the most successful organisations were able to scale with ease. Being an adaptable organisation hinges on the CIO’s ability to implement agile IT management and swiftly equip the organisation so that it can pursue opportunities.

Consider becoming a more agile CIO and overall IT department in the following ways:

Mentality
CIOs need to embrace a mentality that not only accepts, but also keeps pace with, change. This can mean frequent course corrections and quick action. Hitting a moving target can be challenging, but tolerating all the reasons a project cannot be done is not an acceptable role of an effective strategic business plan. Agility starts with a mind-set prepared for challenges, open to new objectives and communicating realistic and innovative solutions.

Infrastructure and platform
Behind any agile CIO is an agile IT infrastructure and platform. Opportunities are missed if the IT infrastructure or platform is not able to remain secure, scale swiftly or incorporate new technologies sufficiently. CIOs should be able to strategically describe what this agile IT environment will look like. Detailed questions must be answered, such as: Is it cross-platform? Does it utilise flexible vendors? How much is outsourced? How is the architecture written?

Talent
CIOs should consider building agile IT talent pools to match an agile infrastructure and platform. The CEO does not want to learn that the IT team is incapable of delivering a critical project. While consultants can dispense needed project knowledge, their investment and understanding of the organisation is limited. CIOs should instead close the IT talent gap by hiring individuals whose skills and strengths can meet current and future IT needs.

Project Management
Agility is also found in flexible project management. CIOs should question what is absolutely necessary to the three- or five-year plan according to their strategic plan. All other projects should be on shorter six-month, one-year or 18-month plans. Strategically utilising shorter plans more often builds in greater flexibility so IT teams are better able to support new opportunities.

Final Thoughts

There is a great deal of change, innovation and determination involved in becoming a better strategic business partner. Each shift comes with its own set of challenges, so practice patience. Regardless of your long-standing focus as an IT leader or the current status of your IT team, you can take steps today to increase your value, strengthen your impact and build a highly capable IT department with your strategic business plan.

How to implement an agile IT management plan

1. Stop

In today’s world, stopping may be the most difficult step to achieving agility.

IT culture is wired to take constant action, with a tendency to reward employees based on the volume of tasks completed rather than recognising vital tasks that directly impact organisational objectives. The IT professionals who do strategise which tasks to focus on risk being labelled slow or indecisive.

In his book A More Beautiful Question, Warren Berger argues that people need to stop taking constant action and start asking more questions. Specifically, leaders should ask why, what if and how, in that order. Glossing over or rushing through any of these questions cheats an IT leader of the self-reflection needed to fully understand a problem, dream of a new possibility and strategically plan for that possibility.

The former CEO of Steelcase, Jim Hackett, asked: “When did the balance between thinking and doing get out of equilibrium?”

In recognition of the “over-celebration of getting things done,” Hackett used agile IT management by role modelling and formal courses to teach his team critical thinking, which played a large part in turning the company around.

2. Change Direction

While the first step in implementing agile IT management is to set clear expectations for an agile culture and mentality, the second step focuses on agility in IT processes and infrastructure.

Just as the design of a ship affects its ability to change direction, the design of the IT system effectively determines an IT team’s ability to change direction as needed.

One way to plan for quick directional changes is to build flexibility into the IT budget. As mentioned in our article “Three Budget Challenges of IT Leaders,” it is important to consider vendors who offer customisation and cancellation options in their agreements. These vendors provide flexibility and allow IT leaders to allocate resources to areas of need as they arise.

Another way to promote agility is the creation and implementation of a comprehensive “flexibility first” infrastructure and architecture plan. Many companies are equipping their plans with virtualisation strategies that include public clouds, private clouds, hybrid clouds and software-defined data centres.

These agile strategies allow new images and applications to be quickly spun up anywhere within the IT infrastructure, instead of the slower model of building hosts. Similarly, Gartner advocates the use of a bimodal IT approach that allows the organisation to split itself into two modes of IT – one traditional and one agile – until it has the capacity to move entirely to the agile IT management mode.

Each company’s strategic approach will require its own unique plan that takes into account the organisation’s objectives, size, structure and needs.

Ultimately, to build an agile IT infrastructure that is able to adapt to change requires the right human capital. IT leaders must hire professionals with the capability to address change successfully. Each IT member is continually called upon to learn new systems, new modes of operation and even new ways of thinking. Identifying current and future goals, implementing new solutions and consistently delivering innovative service is the standard for agile IT management.

3. Accelerate

The third step of an agile IT management approach is helping the team to reach full productivity and utilising the benefits of a new technology as soon as possible.

An important element of quick acceleration in agile IT development is project management. There are many theories on how to approach it. IT teams may implement a “scrum” system, advocating the use of short time-frames called sprints during which deliverable projects are created and then improved upon in subsequent sprints. Other teams use hybrid “agile” IT management mentalities that utilise high levels of communication and prioritisation. Regardless of method, the key concept of batch processing is the same. People are most effective when they focus on only one task at a time. Project management should help employees to narrow their focus to tackle one issue at a time.

Quick acceleration in agile IT management also requires continuous improvement to help to identify areas of any system that are not working well and make corrections to eliminate bottlenecks and waste. Since continuous improvement is an ongoing effort, each improvement builds on the last and creates exponential efficiency.

Six Sigma and Lean Production are two well-known approaches to continuous improvement for IT professionals. The support of colleagues is another element that has a significant impact on acceleration. An IT leader will have access to the resources and information necessary to move more quickly towards the goal with the backing of their colleagues. We address creating greater support and understanding in the article “Five Ways a CIO can Become a Better Business Partner”.

Conclusion

By building the correct platforms, IT teams add the capability of other departments to drive value and respond to changing business dynamics through agile IT management.

IT is tasked with equipping the organisation with the right systems and infrastructure to be able to respond to changing business demands effectively at every turn. Only by maximising team agility will IT leaders be able to keep pace with multiple challenges and implement the best technology solutions. Using the simple model of stop, change direction and accelerate can help IT leaders to empower their teams and their organisations to engage successfully with the constant change in our world.