In American Digital’s latest episode of the IT Unfiltered Podcast—now available on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, and Spotify—we cover IT budget’s impact on an organization, strategy alignment with the CEO and CFO, reporting structure, and political capital. We also look at ways to prepare for the future and emerging technologies.
For this thought-provoking discussion, we were joined by Rob Hanlon of CyberBanque International. After investing half of his career in consulting, Rob shifted into the role of CIO for TreeHouse Foods Inc., a multinational food processing company. Today, he’s President and CEO of an emerging fintech startup.
We wanted to know, though, what pressures he faced in his role as CIO along with his approach. And what came up time and time again was the importance of acting as a business person first, one who just so happened to know technology. Whereas the technology layer is critical, specifically uptime stability and cost, the business side, he’s found, is key to moving the organization forward. This means building solid relationships with partners, staff, and the C Suite. It’s what he coins “building political capital”.
To understand this, though, one would need to step back to the reason we invest in technology in the first place, which is to drive business value. And to drive business value, we need to build political capital within an organization and enterprise-wide. This means that we need to be likeable. We need to get to know our peers by walking the facilities and meeting people. We need to genuinely connect with every function across the board. It’s by building those connections that the CIO is able to foster trust, solve high-level business challenges, and expand their network.
Over time, the CIO is viewed less as a technologist and more as a business leader. And by changing that tone and context from technology to relationships, by being empathetic and vulnerable to the team, CIOs can inspire their own direct reports to adopt the same mindset. And eventually, they’re drawn to other parts of the business and become evangelists who talk the IT story—enterprise-wide.
“In that context of sitting between business and technology,” he explained, “I love that. I love being able to build relationships and trust and solve big problems that change the trajectory of your company. What other role can you have where you can do that? And you touch every area, every function.”
In the next installment of this two-part series, we’ll look at the importance of the CIO’s relationship to the C-Suite along with reporting structure. Tune in to the full conversation at: https://aditunfiltered.buzzsprout.com Or on your preferred podcast service.