CIO Leadership

CIO Leadership Mastery: Three Perspectives That Will Make You Larger Than Life (no cape required)

The CIO has an opportunity to make deep impressions in the life of their company and the lives of their people. They just need to keep three things in view: the need for more, the pace of momentum and the leverage of opportunity.

Scott Smeester

//

March 16, 2021

Photo credit:
Esteban Lopez

Name five people that have made a huge difference in your life.

Odds are, maybe one is a near household name or titan in their field of influence. Mostly, you are thinking of family, friends and folks whose character, love or timely intervention shaped you. They are larger than life people you wish others could meet, but they aren’t larger than life in the eyes of most. They are your superhero, and someone else’s employee.

As a culture, we are enamored with fame, failing to see all the outside factors that contributed to a person achieving such fame. Fame is both wonderful and highly illusory. Being asked for an autograph is a compliment; being given a heart-felt eulogy is an honor.

In other words, there are some people whose funeral I would travel to attend, and others whose televised funeral I wouldn’t choose to watch.

So let’s talk about your funeral. Kind of.

Larger than life leaders are those whose conviction and consistency moved people over a period of time from where they were to where they wanted to be. They are not necessarily the most forceful or the most charismatic; but they are proven, and have nothing to prove.

As a CIO, you have the opportunity, especially in today’s business climate, to loom as a larger than life leader. It won’t be by edict, it will be by example. It won’t be immediate, but it will be the result of being intentional and incremental.

You may achieve fame; but you will achieve honor.

To do so, there are three perspectives you must focus in on, three convictions that may be contrary to common practice.

More is Still More

It’s become popular to say “Less is more.” Try that at your compensation review. I didn’t think so.

Context, right? There are five contexts in which more is still more (six if we count your salary).

  1. More change
    People love change.
    I change my socks frequently. I was happy when the red light changed to green. I was once single and changed that to married (still glad I did). My wife and I brought a child into the world, and enjoyed the change so much, we did it again.
    The number one rule about change is that it must be toward fulfillment. If change is happening to fulfill a preferred future, people embrace it. Senseless change is resisted.
    The pandemic, a year plus of much change, isn’t a momentary spike. The future holds more change, and rapidly, not less.
    We are okay with that. In our corporate and individual soul, we have wanted more, and it was going to take a whole lot of different to get it.
  2. More leadership
    Change will not come at the hands of a few. You are a leader. You are used to getting things done, even if you need to carry the load on your back. The load is now too great to even attempt, and mostly, not because you are not strong, but because the load is too dispersed. You can’t get the grip you need.
    Involve more people.
  3. More communication
    Previous business didn’t require a lot of communication when things were in a steady state. Now, lack of communication has often been a complaint, but functionally, it wasn’t as essential. Now it is.
    Silos are gone, peer-designed strategy is here, and the need to know what each other are doing calls for over-communication.
  4. More people
    Automation may reduce certain positions, but innovation will require more people. User-centric business is user-success focused. More users mean more people behind the experience, even if how it is done tomorrow looks far different than how it was done yesterday.
  5. More Positivity
    People possess the emotional brain and the logical brain. Negativity induces fight, fright and flight. Hard to get things done in those conditions. The less command and control business posture means more compel and check-in business practice.

Momentum Over Mass Movement

A critical mistake in times of crisis and change is to get everyone to move at the same time and pace. It just won’t happen.

You are working with people who are biologically wired to survive, and they are working in an economic system designed to do the same.

Any sign of threat, whether associated with you or not, will cause people to approach with caution. You will have people on the spectrum between early adaptation and lagging behind. Don’t try to get the laggard on board the same train as the early and mid-adaptors.

Instead, your goal as a leader is momentum. If enough people are moving forward, it’s okay to have some being still - as long as they are watching what is happening. If they are looking and listening, you still have them. If they are pushing back, you may need some judo moves to use against them (but that’s another article).

Go Overboard On Opportunity

The famed Greek sculptor Lysippos created a bronze statue known as Opportunity. He stands on tip-toe, for he is ever running. He has a pair of wings on his feet, for he flies with the wind. His hair hangs over his face that one may take hold of him; the back of his head is bald that none may take him from behind.

We know about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In a pandemic, and in the aftermath of sorting through what happened, threats take a high profile.

Larger than life leaders look for the opportunities. They also get More, Momentum-oriented people thinking about opportunity.

John Kotter, author of Leading Change, tells of a time one of his clients lettered down the hallway the words, “Our big opportunity is….” just to get people thinking about it. I like it. What is your big opportunity?

Someday, people will attend my funeral. Who knows what funerals will look like by then. Whether people are speaking of me live, virtually or holographically, they will be talking about the dash between my birth and death. Such a very important dash.

Part of that dash is lived with people in a work environment. I know they will speak well of me if I kept three things in front of them: the more they were after, the momentum they wanted, and the opportunities they are so glad they didn’t miss.

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