CIO Summit - IT Leadership Development Program

THE CIO SUMMIT®
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E bclavir@ciosummit.com

Testimonials from participants in the IT Leadership Development Program

“As a participant and a supporter of the IT Leadership Development Program — I've attended and had my own staff attend — I can't recommend it highly enough. It uses current thinking and a widely varying faculty skill and experience set to deliver a compelling and practical educational experience. This program provides methods and means to deliver a very explicit alignment between IM/IT in your organization and the internal customers you serve. The IELP goes a long way in helping to transform high potential techies into business leaders.”
Michael Carpenter, Chief Information Officer (CIO), Information Management Branch, Government of British Columbia

“The IT Leadership Development Program is an excellent opportunity to learn from well-established, senior IT leaders whose insight, knowledge and experience really help put today’s IT challenges in perspective, and they offer both practical and theoretical solutions to meet those challenges. The program is also a great opportunity to network with fellow IT professionals and to share best practices with each other. I found the format, with three four-day sessions over six months, provided the right pace in an ideal setting for a program of this nature. Each session delivered valuable material that I was able to bring back and put into practice right away.”
Rick Coutts, Vice President, IT and Integration, TransCanada Pipelines Limited

“I highly recommend The CIO Summit to anyone wishing to improve their IT Leadership Skills or prepare themselves for a senior leadership position in IT. Barry has done a tremendous job of putting together an excellent mix of thought provoking world class IT Leaders, case study work, class participation and peer networking. The world class talent is worth the tuition price ten fold. I wish I had taken the program eight years ago. The program, right from the first module, has helped me work at a higher level and deliver better value to my company shareholders. I plan to take the advanced program in 2011. Barry is a pleasure to deal with and brings today’s collaborative work style to everything he tackles.”
Dean Hartley, VP IT, Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority, VP at CIPS Saskatchewan

“Barry has created a very valuable service for up and coming IT managers aspiring to become a CIO or other senior manager and for the companies that employ them. In his course the students are exposed to some terrific, world-class instructors and leading-edge thought in both IT and management. I recommend it highly.”
Lyle Kerr, former Chief Executive Officer, Sapphire Technologies Canada Ltd. and Irving Corporation

“Barry and team delivered an IT leadership development program for senior IT leaders in the Government of New Brunswick. He was well organized, adaptable, brought skilled instructors to the table and delivered measurable results in a very reasonable time frame. I am happy to recommend Barry highly.”
Danny Keizer, CIO, Government of New Brunswick

“The IT Leadership Development Program has proven to be one of the most insightful and pragmatic business resources available for senior technology leaders in Canada. As an alumnus of the program and having sent my senior staff to the course, I can speak first-hand of the tremendous value it has provided in the succession planning and professional development in my organization. The depth of experience and insight of the CIOs and instructors in the faculty is second to none and the content is focused on the challenges IT leaders are facing now. The CIO Association of Canada is pleased to recommend the program to our members, many of whom have reaped its benefits.”
Andrew Dillane, President, CIO Association of Canada; Group CIO, Randstad Canada Companies

“I have had the pleasure of knowing Barry Clavir and working with him to bring this unique program into the BC Government in 2007. Barry is a superb marketer and organizer of education programs and seminars for our CIO/ITM community, partners and clients. Barry and his team of seasoned university instructors and world-class ITM leaders successfully provide tools, techniques and networking opportunities to address today's issues, challenges and opportunities facing our organizations. Reviews of this program by our attendees, which include more than one hundred CIOs, senior business and ITM management professionals, consistently topped 90 per cent. I would highly recommend Barry's personable leadership and outcome/results focus as well as this unique program to any organization looking to enhance their effectiveness and strategic capabilities.”
Bruce Cuthbert, Director, Planning and Performance Management, Government of British Columbia

“The IT Leadership Development Program is an outstanding professional development experience. The opportunity to interact with and learn from successful industry leaders and collaborate with peers was very rewarding.”
Mark Cupryn, Director, IT Infrastructure, Mondial Assistance Canada

“The IT Leadership Development Program is an excellent program for aspiring CIOs. I also recommend it to anyone who is relatively new to their CIO role or as a refresher for those who have been a CIO for awhile. The program blends the right amount of theory with very practical tools and best practices. The instructors are top notch and are all knowledgeable practitioners. I wish I had taken this program five years ago when I started my current CIO job. It would have helped me significantly in implementing my agenda much more quickly.”
Siegfried Fuchsbichler, Assistant Deputy Minister and Chief Information Officer (CIO), Government of Yukon

“What more can I say - a great course given by some of the best IT practitioners in the world.”
Roman Mateyko, Executive Director, Regulatory Affairs, Government of British Columbia

“Over the next few years, Canadian employers must hire and develop tens of thousands of professionals who combine business knowledge, skills and acumen with information technology. In fact, this is the largest, and fastest growing, part of the IT labour market. The IT Leadership Development Program is an example of what we need to fill this critical gap. I worked with Barry Clavir's CIO SUMMIT conferences for several years, and can attest to his professionalism and focus on quality.”
David Ticoll, Executive Director, Canadian Coalition for Tomorrow's ICT Skills (CCICT)

“The knowledge I have gained from The CIO SUMMIT IT Leadership Development program has been put to good use time and time again. The speakers were on point, and provided me with the tools to move forward with technology innovations that enabled business success. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Barry and the IT Leadership Development Program to any IT professional looking for the key to moving forward.”
Liz Dowie, Manager, Application Services & IT, Region of Durham

“Barry is a superb marketer and organizer of executive education programs and seminars, with a network of contacts that comprise a strong base of university teachers and practitioners. I've worked with him for well over ten years; every program has been a success.”
Peter Keen, author, academic and lecturer

“As a participant of the IT Leadership Development Program, I can't recommend it enough. This is by far one of the best programs I have attended. Barry's ability to bring together speakers with balanced subject matter material and personal experiences is invaluable to the presentation of the program. Program content is excellent. Addresses core CIO and IT leader issues, challenges and opportunities in a straightforward manner.”
Christine Martinez, Director, IT Payroll and HR Systems, Government of British Columbia

“I have been a faculty member of The CIO SUMMIT IT Leadership Development Program for several years now, delivering a session on strategy execution and another on change management. This is the perfect program to help develop the IT leaders of tomorrow. The content is highly pragmatic and relevant; the faculty brings real-world insights and perspectives. CIOs concerned with delivering more value to the organization while strengthening the IT leadership bench should send their managers to the program. They won't regret it.”
Edmond Mellina, President, ORCHANGO - a division of TRANSITUS Inc.

“Over the past five years, this program has helped hundreds of aspiring professionals reach their intended goals. You may be taking the program to enhance your skills or learn leading-edge methodology that will make a difference for your organization. You may be a public-sector leader comparing practices with the private sector. Or, you may be an aspiring CIO. Regardless, you will find this unique program responding to your learning needs and making a difference.”
James Norrie, Professor & Director, School of Information Technology Management, Faculty of Business, Ryerson University

“I have had the pleasure of knowing Barry through a number of initiatives he has launched over the past 15 years. As a frequent attendee of The CIO SUMMIT I always came away with a broader perspective of what it takes to be a successful CIO. As he launched the IT Leadership Development Program I saw how it would positively shape aspiring CIOs and better prepare them for the challenge that they had taken on. The results of this program and comments from the attendees speak volumes about Barry's ability to engage people in the industry that have valuable expertise and his ability to motivate them to share.”
George DeWolf, President & CIO, DeWolf Enterprises

Media Reports

Win friends, influence business: IT Executive Leadership program gives senior IT professionals the skills they need to leap into the CIO’s chair By ACNielsen, Computing Canada, May 14, 2004
A killer golf swing may be the most important skill an aspiring chief information officer needs to succeed. That’s because much of a senior IT executive’s job entails relationship-building – within their departments and with other decision makers in the company, says Mimi Hunt, Athabasca University’s program director in the IT management department. “I always tell CIOs to create a schmoozing line item in their budgets because it’s important,” she says. Hunt was in Toronto last month lecturing a group of 24 students enrolled in the IT Executive Leadership program, a forum that offers practical and academic instruction in the skills needed to make the transition to an executive-level position with IT. The program, co-sponsored by the CIO Summit and Ryerson University, is comprised of three modules, each containing four days of classes, says Barry Clavir, executive director of the CIO Summit. “In each module, we’ve paired a leading academic in the field along with an experienced CIO to ensure participants gain insight into both theory and practice,” he says. It’s that practical focus organizers say will differentiate the program from others out there. “These guys can go to school and hear academics anywhere,” says program director Craigg Ballance. “What they don’t have access to is real CIOs.” The transition to becoming a CIO is a difficult one and education is a practical avenue to ease that, says James Norrie, professor and director of Ryerson University’s School of IT Management. “The transition from being a functional leader in IT is very different to being a member of the executive team – taking on responsibility for providing leadership to the technology function as it relates to integrating business strategy and IT strategy,” says Norrie. “Nowhere along the way do we educate these folks and then they wonder why their first stint as a CIO is a failure.” Parviz Mohamed says the program is exactly what she was looking for. As the director of IT development services for TransAlta Corp. in Calgary, Alta.,Mohamed is just one step below the CIO. Although she’s not interested in pushing anyone out of a job, she says she’s eager to develop as an IT professional. “This isn’t necessarily about a promotion,” she says. “It’s more about my professional development. Mohamed says the training has helped her sharpen her skills in strategic execution and political maneuvring, essential tools in a CIO’s arsenal. “One of the challenges is how to become more effective politically,” she says. “Not so much with the execution of IT, but more around the value of IT and how to interact with other business leaders in an effective manner.” How well a CIO leads her team, says Mohamed, is also an important measurement of success. “At the end of the day, if you’ve been able to build relationships and articulate the value of technology, that’s a good thing,” she adds. The program has offered Wayne Millar an opportunity to re-examine his leadership style, something Millar sees as crucial to being a successful IT leader. “My approach has always been intuitive. I lead by common sense,” says Millar, director of onsite support for Sunlife Financial in Toronto. “I need to sit down and figure out what kind of leader I want to be and plan a more structured approach.”Millar has about 80 people on his team and says the program has already had an impact on the way he deals with his direct reports. One of the bonuses of participating in the leadership program, adds Millar, is the opportunity to network with other IT professionals from across the country. “Most people, because of their time commitments, spend a lot effort looking inside the organization. I realize I need to look outside more often and here we have top IT people from across the country.” The next IT Executive Leadership program will take place in Calgary this June.\ The cost for the program is $8,900.

Binary code: IT directors are heading back to the classroom to learn how to speak the same language as CEOs By Andrew Wahl, Canadian Business, April 26, 2004
Any executive will tell you that often the most important business doesn’t take place in the boardroom, but in the elevators and hallways of a corporation (if not in restaurants, bars and golf courses). That’s where relationships are built, over time, in small snatches of conversation and quick impressions, not some long PowerPoint presentation. People working in sales or finance get this stuff. In fact, they got where they are today in part because they mastered, at an early stage of their career, the political art of small talk with the boss. But techies? They don’t speak the same language – or at least the other executives don’t think so. In their eyes, the CIO knows servers, networks and e-commerce systems – things most execs struggle to understand. That disconnect poses a big problem for IT professionals moving up the ranks. Recently, I found out just how much of a problem it is when I chatted with several IT directors (generally the people who report to the chief information officers and the prime candidates to take over those positions). It didn’t take long to find out what they really think. The classic problem is that, when they get on the same elevator as the CEO or other top executives, the topic of conversation is – you guessed it – their laptop. “It’s unbelievably insulting,” said one director of IT. “These are the same people who you stand in front of to make strategic presentations about your interpretation of their business, and they give you funds for it so you can help them do business. And they see you in the elevator and it’s, ‘Oh,my laptop isn’t working,’ and ‘Do you think you can get me a BlackBerry?’ You know what? F— off!” You can’t say that to the boss, of course. (Well, you could, but only once.) So the challenge for high-level IT professionals who closely interact with other high-level execs in the corporation is to learn the nuanced language of business, and the kinds of management skills that resonate with senior-level people. That’s why a group of about 30 IT directors signed up for a six-month (parttime) IT leadership course jointly organized by the CIO Summit, an annual speakers’ forum, and Toronto-based Ryerson University. (A similar course will begin at the University of Calgary in June.) This pilot group of students hail from across the country, with jobs at mid-size and large publicly traded companies from almost all industry sectors, as well as the public service. Not only did the program address topics like how to transition from manager to leader, how to structure a department for better IT governance and how to manage expectations, but it also gave participants a chance to network with their peers and swap stories. And the IT directors seemed happy to discover that the problems they’ve encountered – knuckleheaded CEOs included – were not all that unique. The pressures keep ratcheting up. IT is constantly putting out new fires – from security, privacy and business continuity threats to spam, Microsoft patches (they were specifically mentioned) and cameras in cellphones – and it draws attention to all the wrong parts of the job. “Like most service organizations,” said Jay Giblon, Gennum Corp.’s director of IT, “people tend to only pay attention to you when something’s going wrong.” But CIOs and IT directors (especially those hoping to get promoted) can’t get into those kinds of details if they are to play a leading role in the executive suite. That job operates at a higher level and is more about communication, navigating corporate politics and, especially, how to cope with budgets.And all of that requires less tactical thinking – something tech managers are accustomed to – and more strategic thinking. It’s a hard shift, but it’s absolutely essential for IT professionals to make if they are to be effective in their jobs, and especially as IT becomes more closely integrated with individual business units – or face being outsourced altogether. What many of the IT directors I spoke to made clear was that those skills need to also change how other executives perceive their contributions to the organization. A good start would be to find a way to politely remind CEOs that fixing their laptops isn’t what they’re paid to do.

Geeks break glass ceiling: Out of the computer room and into the C suite By Laura Pratt, Financial Post, National Post, February 2, 2004 (cover story) TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS Keith Powell, left, a former chief information officer at Nortel Networks, and Barry Clavir, president of THE CIO SUMMIT, have organized a new program for information technology professionals who want to put more focus on business. Even if they have the right stuff for the executive suite, information technology professionals often are passed over when companies fill top management jobs. However, specially designed management education programs are giving ambitious information technologists the tools they need to break through the glass ceiling. The IT Leadership Development Program is a unique collaboration between the School of Information Technology Management at Ryerson University in Toronto and THE CIO SUMMIT, an organization that has been running executive leadership programs for Canada’s IT industry since 1993. The new program is designed to give upwardly mobile mid-career IT professionals preparation for becoming business managers, possibly making them candidates for the position of chief information officer. “IT professionals have a glass ceiling,” says Keith Powell, who was CIO at Nortel Networks between 1996 and 2000. “There are people in the IT [arm of an] organization who have the capability to become CIOs, but they’re being passed over by the CEO, who is bringing in business people.” Powell says that is because “the IT fraternity” often has difficulty talking about business. “I’d see very bright executive-calibre people who just weren’t getting the opportunity to [become] CIO. And it’s because they were technology-focused and not business-focused.” Powell says he was an exception. He was plucked from inside the company to become CIO.More typical, he says, is for a company to bring in an outsider for the position. It is not fair, he says, but it is understandable. Powell, along with a handful of others who recognized the same shortcoming, is one of the catalysts for the IT Leadership Development Program. “I think it’s good for business and it’s good for IT,” Powell says of the program.“The more people we can broaden, whether it’s IT into business or business into IT, the more positive it is for business overall. We’ve only seen the thin edge of the wedge in terms of the impact that IT is going to have, not only on business, but our on whole lives. I think this is a way to throw the doors wide open.” Barry Clavir, president of THE CIO SUMMIT and founder of the Ryerson program, says CIOs who do not know such business basics as how to read balance sheets are not doing themselves or their companies any favours. “If you want to become a vice-president of anything in a large business organization, you must understand the business drivers so you can relate to your peers.” One option, Clavir says, is for CIO aspirants to return to school to earn a masters of business administration. But many have neither the time nor the budget to go that route. What’s more, an MBA would expose them to the theoretical side of business, but might not give them much practical experience. Clavir says the Ryerson program “combines the rigours of academe with the practicalities of business life.” In addition, founders created an advisory board of CIOs that vet the program to ensure the material is relevant to what is required in a workplace. Two-thirds of the Ryerson program faculty are industry experts, so students get to enjoy a mentoring experience. The other third are academics. The program’s first module was last November. The second module was last week, and the final one is in March. A module is four days long, with three months between each module. James Norrie, director of the School of Information Technology Management at Ryerson University, says the program is based on an Austrian academic approach called “the reflective practitioner.” The idea is that adults who already have career experience learn very differently from students who are academically inclined. Professionals, he says, learn best by acquiring new knowledge, applying it, seeing the results, and then making choices about whether to integrate it into their management style. Between the modules of the IT Leadership Development Program, Norrie says,“there’s an expectation that you’ll go back to the business and put into practise what you’ve learned.” Lecturers ask students to journal their experiences and look for any changes that result from the program. “It’s imperative, as professionals, that they experience a change in outcomes as a result of a change in behaviour,” Norrie says. “Because what we know about adults is, unless they see the value of a change, they don’t continue to do it.” Participants are selected with great care. “It’s a competitive mission,”Norrie says, “and we pick them to all be more or less at the same spot in their careers, with the same experience and so on, so they can all draw on one another.” There are 24 participants in the current student group. Of these, 80 per cent are either in the public sector or with publicly owned companies. Andrew Dillane, Chief Information Officer of the Toronto-based IT staffing firm CNC Global Ltd., is part of the initial group. “Most of my expectations have been realized,” he says. “As anticipated, the cohort and faculty have been phenomenal. If we continue at the same pace, level and relevance, I think this program is going to have a very long and prosperous following and future.” Clavir plans to take the program to other universities. The next launch will be later this year.

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