Premium virtual CTO services from innovationvista.com? Recent incidents should serve as sufficient motivation: UK National Health System – 16 hospitals’ systems were completely shut down by the WannaCry virus, tallying a cost of 100M in 2017. Atlanta – the city government was crippled by ransomware, disabling the city’s ability to operate or fund services in 2018. Marriott/Starwood – 500 million customer records breached in 2018, including birthdates and passport details. Capital One – 100 million customers credit card details and histories were breached in July 2019.
Our firm’s unique approach offers small- and mid-size companies the guidance and IT leadership services of expert consultants who have served in a C-level IT role in one or multiple successful tenures, and who have experience in your industry. Our consultants: Possess decades of experience with the strategic decisions needed for success in enterprise technology; Have familiarity with the business model(s) and terminology of your industry; Are armed with our proprietary Innovation framework and toolkits to Stabilize, Optimize, and Monetize your organization’s IT; Provide virtual IT leadership services to clients on a part-time/fractional retainer basis, to make this expertise accessible to any budget. Discover a few extra info at https://innovationvista.com/virtual-cio/.
A thing every CEO should know about cybersecurity: Achieving information security compliance with one or more government regulatory standards for information security (i.e. ISO 27001, NIST 800-171, HIPAA, NYDFS, etc.) is good, but not sufficient to ensure real cybersecurity. Further, it is incumbent upon CEOs to learn more about cybersecurity to ensure their company is taking appropriate actions to secure their most valuable information assets. This does not mean that every CEO needs to become a Certified Information System Security Professional (CISSP). Rather, CEOs should increase their knowledge of core cybersecurity concepts and leverage their own leadership skills to conceptualize and manage risk in strategic terms, understanding the business impact of risk.
Transitions can be among the most daunting and complex business events for leaders to navigate, and it is often the technology aspects of the change which lead to failure. For this reason, providing Transitional IT Leadership is one of Innovation Vista’s core service offerings. Our experienced consultants have been involved with multiple transitions of various kinds, and bring their expertise to bear on our clients’ challenges: Turnaround of failing companies or IT departments; Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A); Transition to new business models or markets; Change in exit strategy – private equity and IPO strategies; Interim IT leadership to coach successor or as preparatory to M&A. Transition events bring a unique set of challenges which not only add to, but significantly complicate, the ongoing workload involved with successfully operating an IT platform. Other organizations have an interest in unique longer-term IT leadership arrangements: Virtual CIOs – who fill the traditional CIO role as the “head of Information Technology” as a consultant, often part-time &/or remote; Fractional CIOs – who fill the role of CIO for 2 or more organizations at the same time. These structures don’t make sense for every organization, but they may offer a nice solution for some small and midsize companies seeking experienced leadership for lower compensation costs than they would have traditionally paid a full-time CIO.
This succinct summary of the challenge of modern life is a quote from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, from his keynote at the Davos World Economic Forum in 2018. And although that organization tried to downplay the sentiment later that year, Trudeau’s claim seems an accurate summary of our times. Change is hard for human beings; we are accustomed to a great deal of consistency from one day to another: in what is expected of us, in the tools we use to perform those duties, in how we’re perceived by others and how we interact with others, in what constitutes the necessities of life, and in how we obtain those necessities. Most of us feel we can “handle” change, but when we say that we usually mean one change at a time, and with a pause after each change before we’re forced to confront the next one. Find even more details on accelerating innovation.
Trust is a universal Human Need Turbo-charger! Although we apply this approach to IT-driven transformation, it is truly in effect in every aspect of our lives. Myriad leadership studies have proven the connection between success/efficiency/effectiveness and trust. And each of us can confirm in our own lives the “difference” between situations where trust was absent vs. present; it is not difficult to recall in which situations we were at our best. As with many things, the impact of trust may be seen more clearly by examining what happens when it’s absent. There is something deep in human nature which causes us to hold back, maybe in subconscious self-preservation, in these situations.
One critical piece of the puzzle often missed is making every effort to fill/infer data wherever possible to find the optimal balance of complete/accurate data with efficient data entry. If salespeople and support staff see that the system does “everything it can” automatically, they’ll be more willing to enter the unique data points which truly add value to the organization’s view of each customer and opportunity. CRM adoption success is more in the hands of Executive leadership than most leaders realize.
Innovation isn’t a Task to Check off – it’s the Outgrowth of a Culture of Collaboration and Teamwork: Innovation is like mom and apple pie; ask for a show of hands of who likes and wants it, and few hands will stay down. If it were a matter of choosing it, everyone would be doing it. So why is real innovation so rare? Because it depends completely on the most difficult challenge of workplace alchemy that leaders face – Culture. Without a culture of Collaboration, innovative ideas will stay locked in staff’s brains, or they’ll get put on a backlog list which never sees the light of day. Without a culture of Teamwork, new ways of operating will fail due to technical or political hurdles which are only surmountable as a team. And complicating all of this even further is the fact that, when it comes down to it, these two concepts have an in-built friction. Explore more details on tech business impact.