CIO Classified

Latest Episodes:

Making IT a Competitive Differentiator with Srini Tanikella, Vice President of IT at SMART Global Holdings and Vipin Arora, previous Head of IT at Hilmar Cheese Company Mar 03, 2021

Show notes

Key Takeaways

Having a fear of failure inhibits innovation.
Ask your employees how you can best fit their IT needs, because some employees will be too shy to ask for help or assistance for more seemingly basic questions.
Be proactive in approaching your users—don’t wait for them to come to you.

Key Quotes

“People who are playing a role of a CIO now are more business-centric and less technology-centric.” - Vipin
"The CIO may not be the most technical talent in the company. What's very important is that they understand the business aspect of it or can relate to it. They can partner with the business side to provide solutions." - Srini
"The CIO role is evolving as the technology is evolving." - Vipin
“Invest in people. Invest in productivity tools. Invest in good whiteboarding tools. Invest in good collaboration software.” - Srini

Links:

---

Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.com

This podcast is brought to you by Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom. Modern employees demand the best tools at work. If your company wants to embrace the modern work environment, you need best of breed tools like Box, Okta, Slack, and Zoom.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Secret Advantage of Goal Setting with Sasha Siddhartha, Co-founder and CTO of Thrive Market and Nick Rockwell, Senior VP of Engineering and Infrastructure at Fastly Feb 24, 2021

Show notes

Key Takeaways

The path to growth is through excellent consumer experiences.
In order to effectively solve business problems you need to work cross-functionally.
Goal setting is key to creating successful business practices and achieving great outcomes.

Key Quotes

"Not every problem requires a technology solution. I think there are many cases where you can leverage processes or people in a thoughtful way to solve a lot of problems versus necessarily having to invest in a technology solution." - Sasha

"You just can't separate the business problems from the technical problems. They all are completely intertwined and you can only do the best work when you have that cross functional team with a clear set of goals." - Nick

"The better the customer experience, the better the business growth." - Sasha

“It's completely fundamental to get good goals and good goal setting processes.” - Nick

Sasha Siddhartha LinkedIn

Nick Rockwell LinkedIn

Thrive Market

Fastly

Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How to Drive User Adoption with Uzi Dvir, Global CIO of WalkMe and Hitendra Mishra, VP of Information Technology at Stitch Fix Jan 27, 2021

Show notes

Uzi Dvir, Global CIO of WalkMe and Hitendra Mishra, VP Information Technology at Stitch Fix, discuss how digital adoption impacts all of us. They also dig into how to collaborate while working remotely, and how they’re applying AI to push their companies forward.

Key Takeaways

Digital adoption is a key part of any industry. Make sure you’re investing in onboarding so that your employees can feel confident starting out.
The more your company incorporates AI into your day-to-day, the more innovation is possible.
Finding ways to incorporate human connections while working remotely is imperative to having a successful team.

Key Quotes

"People need someone to talk to, and Zoom is obviously a good solution and you can be effective and you can be efficient, but at the end of the day, people need people. So I don't think we have challenges with technology. I think like all the rest of the world, we have challenges with human needs." - Uzi

"How you join a company and how you leave a company leaves either a bitter or a really good taste in your mouth. You want your past employees to be ambassadors of your company. So we go the extra mile and make sure that the employees are comfortable, both onboarding and offboarding." - Hitendra

"We all have the data necessary for us to forecast our next steps. So the cool initiative thing to do is taking it and putting it in front of the business leaders." - Uzi

“Have flexibility and empathy when you're designing your employee onboarding and offboarding experience, especially during these times. Meet your workforce where they want you. Put in the extra effort. It just goes a long way in building an amazing corporate culture.” - Hitendra

Links

Uzi Dvir LinkedIn

Hitendra Mishra LinkedIn

WalkMe

Stich Fix

Thanks to our friends

Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Power of Mentorship with Alvina Antar, CIO of Okta, and Sharon Mandell, SVP/CIO of Juniper Networks Jan 20, 2021

Show notes

Alvina Antar, CIO of Okta and Sharon Mandell, SVP Chief Information Officer of Juniper Networks, discuss the importance of mentorship on the road to becoming a CIO. They also unpack how a strong network of industry peers can help you not only do your best work but help you decide what work is worth focusing on.

Key Takeaways

There's a common misconception that your company or your product's value hits its peak once your customer gets it up and running. The true value is in longevity, flexibility, and your company's ability to mold your product to your customer's needs.
Mentorship can fuel your career if you're intentional about it. You can't expect a C-level executive to coach you at every step, every day. But, you can reach out to people who inspire you and ask for their guidance. Their insight can help you during critical career junctures.
For CIOs, your employees are your customers. You should be building the same type of seamless, effortless, online experience for your employees that you are for your customers. Giving them the right environment in which to work, especially remotely, pays dividends.

Key Quotes

"When I'm mentoring someone,I want somebody who's going to have the courage to raise their hand when they need something. In addition to anything more formal we might structure, you have to ask. You have to have the courage to ask." - Sharon

"It's all about experiences. It's about how we optimize our customer experience and deliver the most delightful, most optimal, most seamless, most secure customer experience. The same principle applies for the employee experience, too. " - Alvina

"With my CIO network, I don't have to learn what other people have learned before me. I'm not a reinventing-the-wheel kind of person. I want to use my brain cycles for when I truly have to innovate. " - Sharon

"In this new year, I think about the opportunity to further evolve the positioning of IT and business technology in driving business growth in streamlining processes so that companies can evolve and grow and scale. We should look at IT and business technology as a business, as an integral part of the business. " - Alvina

Links

Thanks to our friends

Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Taking the Friction Out of Remote Work with John Stecher and Anisha Vaswani Jan 14, 2021

Show notes

Key Takeaways

Your team doesn't have the time or patience to hunt for the resources they need to do their work. CTOs and CIOs have tremendous power to build more robust, essential knowledge hubs to help their teams find the information they're looking for, or document a newly minted process.
Prioritizing projects is an art. CIOs have to learn how to weigh one project's impact against another's while juggling the work they have in-flight. Agile workflows help teams prioritize and move swiftly, as opposed to burning time and money on a years-long project.
Teams might be working outside of the office, but their expectations haven't changed. Someone working remotely still expects the speed of the office WiFi, the VPN capacity, and more. CIOs have to fine tune their infrastructure to help teams work together from afar.

Key Quotes

"Surprising and delighting people is just making technology more transparent in their lives. I focus a lot on those types of things as well as removing friction." - John

"To be a good CIO, I think you have to have genuine passion and interest in understanding the business and what it's trying to accomplish. The technology comes later. It's really about understanding the business." - Anisha

"Innovation comes from really listening to what people need and hearing what they're actually saying." - John

"Gone are the days of the five year IT project and boiling the ocean. It's about building flexible, iterative, agile delivery models and having the ability to respond to shifting demand as it appears. " - Anisha

Links

Thanks to our friends

Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Season 1 Recap Jan 06, 2021

Show notes

Every week, we sit down with CIOs from some of the world’s top companies to uncover the strategies that have been fundamental to their skyrocketing success.

In each episode, we ask our guests which three areas of investment are so important, that they consider them uncuttable budget items. Tune into this episode to hear the budget items our CIO guests couldn’t live without!

Key Takeaways

Your employees are key. Investing in the people in your IT department, in both compensation and training, was a major theme.
Product was another frequently highlighted theme. Any time you as an IT department can be involved in the actual product and customer experience, you shouldn’t waste the opportunity.
Digital transformation was also touched upon multiple times. As our CIOs pointed out, digital transformations are never fully complete and can’t be deemed completed and forgotten about.

Key Quotes

"The area I struggle to cut the most is development, skills building, and staying fresh on technology. You have to invest in your teams, your skills, and keeping up on technology - I can tweak a lot of other things, but I really don't want to touch that.” - Julie Cullivan, CTO, ForeScout
“It's the people. Especially in times like this, it has to be the people because they're the ones who have the institutional knowledge. They're the ones who have been caring and feeding for everything you're doing. All the rest you can figure out, but if you don't have good people on board, none of it matters.” - Grant Ingersoll, CTO, Wikimedia Foundation
“I will say training. I will fight for that. I fought for there to be more training and I will always fight when they try to cut it back because if your team members don't have the skills to do what you're asking them to do, everything suffers. The business can't be successful.” - Jonathan Reichental, Founder and CEO, Human Future, Former CIO, City of Palo Alto

Thanks to our friends

Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Season 2 Trailer Dec 15, 2020

Show notes

What is coming on season 2 of CIO Classified? On this episode, we give you a sneak peek.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Building for the Future of MultiCloud Nov 18, 2020

Show notes

Key Takeaways

The age of the untrained employees having to double as IT staff is over. The IT roadblocks of the past have been paved over by more end-user-friendly systems that dedicated IT staff can use to run complex information architectures seamlessly.
CIOs can't afford to work with blinders on. Staying plugged into your industry's ecosystem, and in lock step with industry experts is absolutely critical to make sure you're thinking ahead and making the right decisions for your company.
Data tells you a lot, but it doesn't tell you everything. In the age of remote work, you need to check in with your team and have earnest conversations to see how they're keeping up with the pace of their work and ensure they're staying connected and motivated.

Key Quotes

"There's almost nothing that's happening in any department of any company at this point that isn't technology driven or at least where technology isn't an important part of the solution." - Karl
"The opportunity for us as IT professionals working for a business, whether it is a smaller business or a bigger business, is to bring solutions which can really transform the company and actually help them leapfrog over the competition." - Avon
"Internally, one of the key things is making sure that we bring data to where people are. That's much better than having yet another tab open and trying to stitch together data yourself in a lot of different places." - Karl
"IT works both ways. Teams get what they need from new products, new innovation. But, also around the company, the product companies, they get real validation of their use cases, what they're trying to solve." - Avon

Links

Thanks to our friends

Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

CIOs Take Center Stage with George Llado and Phil Fasano Nov 11, 2020

Show notes

George Llado, SVP & CIO at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and Phil Fasano, CEO of Gigster, discuss the essential role CIOs play at this moment, and trace their influence in digital transformation. As two heralded CIOs, George and Phil share the lessons they've learned in their careers and look at the future of the CIO.

Key Takeaways

CIOs need literal and figurative investment from the executive team of their company in order to be able to drive digital innovation. Investing in the future can give companies a tremendous competitive advantage down the road.
The pace of innovation has changed. Companies can't afford to build every single piece of infrastructure they need. To move fast, they have to leverage world-class third party services — from adopting a new API suite to integrating with a new cloud service.
CIOs have to keep growing their skillset and use those new skills to remain competitive in their field, and in their company. In order to avoid being relegated to the back seat of the C-suite, CIOs have to be on the lookout for the next wave of technology that can push their business forward.

Key Quotes

"We're the lifeline. Digital, technology, and CIOs have become lifelines for corporations now. Because frankly, they're not able to do business without what we either have and they never used, or with what we can bring to bear they're very, very quickly." - George Llado

"We've quickly evolved from the role of provider, to the enabler, to now this innovator, which I think a number of us are taking advantage of." - George Llado

"There isn't a transformation on the planet that's a straight line. In fact, a lot of transformations fail or attempts at them fail before you get to the point you actually executed it well." - Phil Fasano
"Now, you can create a great customer experience. And, you can do it in days. What a difference, what a phenomenal difference it is. And it's a shame if we don't take advantage of this opportunity." - Phil Fasano

George Llado LinkedIn

Phil Fasano LinkedIn

Gigster

Alexion Pharmaceuticals

Thanks to our friends

Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Why Security is A Pillar of Company Culture Oct 28, 2020

Show notes

Key Takeaways

Security and productivity shouldn’t be at odds with each other. Teams need to build security into their architecture intelligently so security standards are embedded in the way teams work, not added on as an afterthought.
The best CTOs, CIOs, and CEOs craft their businesses processes with security in mind. If you’re building with blinders on, just focusing on eliminating all risk, you can end up putting up barriers to your business processes.
It’s becoming more common for newly hired employees to join companies without having met their colleagues in person. CIOs, CTOs, and CEOs need to clear the space and design the processes that help employees connect and build a sense of camaraderie remotely.

Key Quotes

“For digital transformation, securing the edge, and being able to move quickly as possible as you’re developing new applications and services — you’ll need capabilities that scale.” - Mark Kuhr
"We’ve entered into this new phase of digital enablement of communication and collaboration technology, which has made people a lot more efficient. " - Tim Campos
“It’s good to be vigilant and bake into the culture of your company that security matters and everybody’s part of that. Everybody is part of that journey.” - Mark Kuhr
“How we are going to spend our time has become incredibly valuable, especially when productivity is paramount, as it is for most knowledge-based professions.” - Tim Campos

Links

__
Thanks to our friends

Learn more about CIO Classified and find other episodes at CIOpod.com

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected