How the IT Executive Academy can help

Raised expectations and inadequate response

Corporate IT professionals, already squeezed by downsizing, are in more danger of being marginalised than ever before. Why? By appearing reluctant to embrace new consumerised technologies and methods that promise so much and are having an impact in every part of the business. You may be a personal enthusiast for some of these products and services but you you may find yourself unable to respond to them effectively as a professional leader of enterprise IT.

Your colleagues across the business are having their expectations dramatically raised by their personal experience of consumer technology and its speed of development. At the same time your suppliers, threatened by unprecedented rates of change, are promising them the earth. Your average business leader needs guidance and leadership, but may not be looking for it from you.

Traditional skills and experience are no longer sufficient

This is a travesty! You have years of experience and technical know-how acquired in a variety of situations. You are familiar with a range of suppliers and their behaviours. You know how technical people think and you have proven ability to succeed in a traditional technology market for people, skills and services.

But to thrive in the new enterprise culture that is so quickly developing you need more than this. You must be seen to embrace change and learn the newer, softer skills of consensual leadership. You must be able to argue, persuade and demonstrate your ability to influence and lead the business through this phase of accelerating change.

You need to convince your business colleagues that their IT function is just as relevant and critical to them in this new world as it always was. And that they can look to you for effective, powerful leadership in the transformation they are going through.

What are the essential new skills you need?

Today, alongside your hard won experience in harnessing technology and managing those who supply it, you need a far deeper understanding of the business and markets you are working within. Being able to engage with your business colleagues on their terms has always been an advantage but it has now become an essential for your career to bloom.

Effective engagement means you need to be comfortable with the language, financial concepts and market drivers of your industry. More than that even, you must be the persuasive voice of technology professionalism in your business. You must be able to lead your business colleagues enthusiastically to appropriate technology solutions.

How will the new skills differentiate and benefit you?

Enterprise IT is evolving more rapidly than ever before. As it does, the market for enterprise IT professionals is also having to evolve. Those who go forward to succeed and thrive in this new era will have become a critical part of business leadership. We believe you have it in your corprate DNA to step up to this new form of technology business leadership. If you choose to do that you will have become the new IT executive the market needs and the head hunters are searching for.

And what’s the IT Executive Academy advantage?

Here at CIO Development, we have have built strong alliances over several years with market leading parters in executive search, organisational research and enterprise IT development consulting.

We are already working with over 300 enterprise IT managers and executives in various parts of the public IT Executive Academy programme. This includes our market leading CIO Pocket MBA course with Boston University, the London Workshops for developing your personal performance and leadership skills, career development through our diagnostics and coaching, and more.

We know the Academy Programme works and we have many success stories and testimonials to share of IT professionals and executives who have gone on to achieve their aspirations at the very top of their profession. You can check these out as you look through the site. When you are convinced there is something here that you could use to develop your own potential do please get in touch. It will be one of the smartest career moves you can make.