Building Shared Ownership Before Pushing Change

José Manuel Rodríguez Jiménez has led IT organizations across two continents, from global manufacturing in Spain to regional government in Oregon. His career includes a run as Group CIO at Cosentino, where he managed a $35 million budget and IT operations spanning 20 countries with a team of over 100. He is now four months into his role as CIO at Metro, a regional government agency in Portland, after two years as CIO at the City of Gresham.

That range of environments has shaped a consistent view of what the CIO role requires at its foundation.

"A CIO role is fundamentally about building relationships," Rodríguez said. "Building trust and building credibility across the organization. If you don't invest in that, you cannot lead effectively."

Leading With the Right Question

When Rodríguez joins a new organization, he begins with finance, HR, and operations. Finance reveals how decisions actually get made. HR reveals what the culture will absorb. Operations shows where technology either supports people or frustrates them.

The real signal comes from how he frames the first conversation.

"A lot of people ask, 'What technology do you need?' That's a super wrong question," he said. "What I ask is, where are you frustrated? What are your business goals? Then let me think how we can help you achieve those goals."

His instruction to business leaders is consistent: describe the problem, and his team will figure out how technology can help. He is deliberate about building relationships beyond the executive level. Executives manage the people who manage the operations. If a CIO only builds trust at the top, that confidence does not carry through the rest of the organization.

When Sponsorship Changes the Equation

Rodríguez has seen what happens when technology initiatives stay positioned as IT projects. Cybersecurity becomes a budget line competing with everything else. ERP implementations get treated as system upgrades.

The dynamic shifts when non-IT leaders take ownership publicly. When an executive frames cybersecurity as an institutional risk, it stops being optional and becomes a shared responsibility across the organization.

"An ERP implementation is an organizational redesign," Rodríguez said. "Without visible sponsorship from finance, HR, or executive leadership, it quickly turns into just an IT project. And when that happens, adoption suffers."

The 200-Hour Problem

Rodríguez is direct about the AI conversation dominating CIO circles. He finds the standard question at technology events, "What are you doing with AI?", to be the wrong one entirely.

"AI is a tool. What really matters to me are the outcomes and the value we deliver," he said.

His frustration centers on a pattern he sees repeated. A CIO describes saving 200 hours through an AI implementation. The room is impressed. Nobody asks the follow-up.

When someone is already on staff, using AI to save a few hours doesn't automatically translate into budget reductions. In some cases, you're actually investing more in technology before you see measurable returns.

The savings become real only when those reclaimed hours get redirected toward work the organization values. Deeper analysis, improved processes, more time on revenue-generating activity. Without that redirection, the efficiency claim is an accounting fiction.

Building the Case by Building Bridges

At Metro, Rodríguez is introducing a business relationship management process. It is the first time the organization's business side has experienced IT approaching them proactively, asking about their goals rather than waiting for service requests.

His team initially expressed concern that engaging every department could expand the backlog beyond current capacity.

Rodríguez acknowledges that risk, but sees visibility as essential. A transparent, well-documented backlog provides clarity about demand and allows for an informed conversation with executive leadership about priorities and capacity. Those discussions are only possible once strong relationships are in place.

"Whenever we are able to do that," he said, "is when we are doing our things right."