A Few Of My Favorite Things: The 2023 Year-End CIO Edition

Better late than never, right? Each year many of us spend an inordinate amount of time drumming up the perfect goals for the looming new year. Most times, those ideal-esque perfect goals are based solely on a person’s previous year’s not-so-great experiences or aspirational goals seen accomplished by others on social media – or both.

In planning for 2024, let’s not set goals based on personal missteps or heavily filtered wins of others.

Start with the right now.

What intrigues you? What piques your interests? And, especially for those of us middle-aged folks, how do you want your efforts to leave an impact on rising leaders?

In preparation for ‘24 goals, think about current curiosities and lean in a bit deeper to that positive trajectory. Run towards the compelling, not blindly away from the regrettable.

First things first

Goal setting for a new year is increasingly portrayed as a negative. Michelle Turk, a licensed marriage and family therapist with the virtual primary and mental health care platform PlushCare, shares that establishing annual resolutions or goals, “can lead to feelings of inadequacy, which can harm self-esteem and lead to self-criticism.”

How about we not take this so seriously? How about we allow those that prefer to start a new year fresh, with fresh ideas and mindsets, to do exactly that without judgmental diatribes? How about we think about what we love and strive to do more of those things in the coming days?

As leaders, it’s important to rise above daily intricacies to identify meaningful next steps, objectives and aspirations.

As a leader, what are you seeing now that draws you in to learn more? Start there.

As a technology leader, 2023 showed me some things. Within the past year I’ve experienced confirmation that ideals can evolve into reality. Those experiences?

Service-first team

Technology departments have not always been the most engaging, approachable environments. In addition, technology leadership roles are typically served with unimaginable technical baggage – physical, emotional and (almost always) within the team itself.

Within all industries the running joke in information technology has been, ‘Imagine how was this would all be without these blasted users!’ Yes, a joke, but tinged with a shameful reality.

Yes, technology is highly complex, fraught with risk, unimaginably stressful to support and drive. Despite many leaders making it look easy, the automations and machinations of technical advancement have simply shifted around the hard parts into less visible yet equally impossible parts. In the end, what really matters?

It’s the service we provide.

As Dr. Seuss’s Grinch said, “Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”

Maybe technology excellence doesn’t come from its core. Maybe technology excellence…perhaps…comes from a little bit more!

The service we provide, the teams we build to support our users, the ability to make the highly complex not only approachable, but exciting.

While the tech decisions remain hard(ware), the service and support need to feel effortless.

Partnerships

If proprietary, home-grown and self-managed represent yesterday, then today and all the tomorrows are physical transitions to the work smarter, not harder mantra. Sure the road can be driven solo, but the path softens when you find those partners to work alongside rather than direct.

We all support businesses that mean something to someone. Find those someones and let them understand the strength that comes from professional reciprocity.

Have a weak spot of internet connectivity on your campus? Find your partner. Ours happens to be Jason Hall, Cox Business.

Running lean and need to fill a gap with high-level service excellence? Find your partner. Ours is Matt Romine, IFWORLD. How about cybersecurity support? Our partner is Andrew Bryant with eSentire.

Looking to build a world-class, wander-able, endlessly seamless technology environment? Find your partner. Ours are Rich Benson, Trent Townsend and Adam Booth of Next Step Innovations who link us with Aruba, Palo Alto, and so many more.

Are we perfect? Infallible? Nope. But we are stronger together.

Our partners don’t need to be your partners. But if you can’t name your partners and recognize them in a professional lineup, you likely don’t have the level of partnership that will exponentially lighten your burden. Find your partners.

Allies

As individuals, we are not for everyone. Despite how strong we or others think we are, there are always going to be a handful of colleagues that we cannot win over. And that is okay!

This about this. Do we all love avocado toast? No. Do some of us question others who rattle on and on about avocado toast as an acceptable food choice? Yes. The same goes for us as people. I might find myself delightful and unbelievably effective. Others – as unbelievable as it might seem – may find me to be entirely unappealing.

This is where allies come in to carry us through those that need avocado toast to get through a day.

For those that we rub the wrong way. For those that need to work with someone different, when that difference might even be genetic (ew, David, right?). For those that respond to personalities that are different than ours. Find your allies. And BE the ally to others.

So…now what?

The aforementioned serves as my favorite things of ‘23, next step basics and/or, as a native New Orleanian I might call it, the leadership roux.

Small steps lead to big change.

For my 2024, I choose to build upon what 2023 continued to teach me. My ‘holy trinity’ of leadership success: (1) focusing on service, (2) leaning into valued partnerships and (3) accepting help from my allies.

Keep learning, stay teachable, lean into what’s effective and bring on 2024!