Article Library

CIO Leadership

Industry Articles

Why CIO Advisory Services Often Fail to Strengthen Leadership

Advisory services promise CIOs a path to stronger leadership. The more common result is a technology leader who is better informed but whose organizational authority has quietly eroded. This article examines why that gap opens up and what distinguishes advisory relationships that actually develop leadership from those that substitute for it.
Scott Smeester
March 17, 2026
READ MORE

Why CIOs Avoid Explicit Tradeoffs... And Why It Hurts Them

CIOs routinely omit the one piece of information executives need most: what is being given up to fund the ask. The executive room reads that omission as incomplete prioritization, and adjusts trust accordingly. The CIOs who declare the sacrifice ... and stand behind the call ... earn a kind of credibility that thorough analysis alone cannot produce.
Scott Smeester
March 2, 2026
READ MORE

Why Ineffective Communication Is Failing CIOs

Most CIOs assess themselves as effective communicators. The real problem is a pattern of hedging, driven by fear of judgment, that trains the C-suite to route authority elsewhere. Communication efficacy measures whether the communication produced the outcome it was intended to produce, and on that standard, most CIOs are underperforming without knowing it.
Scott Smeester
February 23, 2026
READ MORE

Leadership Blogs

The Weight That Transfers

Justin Sherwood spent a decade as Deputy CIO/Assistant Director before stepping into his first role as top technology leader at Franklin County, NC. He arrived knowing how decisions are made but less prepared for where the weight lands when they are yours. Six months in, he is building on an inherited foundation while deliberately meeting his team, his departments, and his organization where they are.

March 30, 2026

Justin Sherwood

Read More

The Work That Comes Before the Technology

Cesile Johnson arrived at Core Bank with a clear view: the internal structure has to work before the technology can. She spent her first months rewriting job descriptions, rebuilding team alignment, and deploying a cross-functional pod model she had refined across thirty years of IT leadership. The result was a model that earned credibility through incremental wins before it earned broad adoption.

March 17, 2026

Cesile Johnson

Read More

What Sitting on the Vendor Side Teaches You About Choosing the Right One

Joe Fousek spent 33 years in legal IT before taking a year on the vendor side at Aiden Technologies. That round-trip gave him a direct read on what separates trusted technology partnerships from transactional ones. The same lens shapes how he works with attorneys and develops his team at McDougall Gauley LLP.

March 3, 2026

Joe Fousek

Read More