Leadership comes at a cost and demands many lines of expertise. Are you ready to deliver? A CIO is no longer just an IT leader, he or she needs to be able to deliver business strategies using technology expertise. Are you there yet? Is your team behind you? The top position comes at a price to personal life. Are you ready for the balancing act? Are you willing to do what it takes to be a leader?

Contributor

• • Jim Smith, CIO, Office of Information Technology, State of Maine.

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Top 6 Learning Points

1. How do you plan a path to a successful leadership role?
2. What role do environment, motivation and the will to help play in becoming a successful leader.
3. Having skills, goal, as well as a purpose, makes the best kind of leader.
4. While having a vision is good, you need to be flexible about the outcome, which may not always be as planned or desired.
5. Leadership qualities include some skills that need to be constantly honed- understanding the purpose, influencing others to follow, communicating the objective- and of course, creating the vision.
6. There will be some compromises on the way to being a leader- perhaps on the work-life balance?

Show Notes

• One may have the ability, but motivation and the right environment is critical to developing a leader.
• Having a goal for leadership is really the biggest motivator for working towards becoming one.
• The difference between a person who executes something already outlined, and someone who has the vision to create.
• A leader needs to have more of soft skills, about communication, being a lifelong learner, understanding how to work in teams, since technology is continuously changing.
• Leaders think about what they can do to make the world a different place, make their organization better, or have a bigger purpose.
• Understand the vision you come out with today, may not be where you end up tomorrow.

Summary

Leadership comes naturally to some, while some others even with the talent need vision, skills and the ability to create a path that others can emulate. They can blossom in a conducive environment and good motivation, and then they can actually chart the course for the whole team to touch their goals. The journey will require a constant skills upgrade, especially in communication, creating and sharing a vision, but will also involve compromises on work-life balance, in most cases.

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  • Future-proofing Leadership Strategy and Culture
  • Acing the Security Leadership Recipe for Digital
  • AI Enabled Leadership
  • Leadership Recipe for VUCA

Transcript 

Sanjog Aul [00:01:01]:

Hello, welcome to this segment on CTN. To learn more, please visit ciotalknetwork.com. Our topic for today Is Leadership For You?   Our guest for today is, Jim Smith, who is the Chief Information Officer with the Office of Information Technology, State of Maine. Hi, Jim.

Jim Smith [00:01:19]:

How are you? Good morning. I’m doing well. Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:01:23]:

Very good. So this topic is being put out there, and we wanted to discuss this because we have spoken about leadership, what does it take and what you can do, which kind of assumes that everyone has a leader in them or because even if they pursue the path of leadership, that’s because they feel that they have it. But there are many people, as we have seen over time while they have been rising up the ranks, who have been debating where they should align themselves. So the goal here is to see whether everyone is a leader and we can develop and nurture someone, or we should have some framework or some questions that we can ask ourselves and save ourselves the trouble and the pressure and the insanity that goes with it when you go to the top, and be someone who enjoys what they do. Because leadership, if you don’t enjoy it, then it’s going to be a painful journey. So that said, what do you think is the path to it? So when, of course, not you in particular, but when you started your journey, I mean, you may have started through the technology side or the business side. But did you think that, okay, I’m going to work towards becoming a leader and be at the top and that’s how you planned it? Is that how typically it works? 

Jim Smith [00:02:56]:

Yeah. It’s such a fascinating topic and it’s so timely as we think about all the opportunities and challenges out there. For me personally, it wasn’t that type of journey. It was sort of a journey of discovery where, after college, you’re sort of saying, okay, now what’s next? Having a love of technology, I was involved in technology. But really when I came out of college — I’m an older gentleman — computer science programs were really just starting when I was an English major. So it’s really just starting at that time that people began to think about a concentration on technology. We really didn’t have that before. So I was very, very lucky to happen to get into this field, and I can’t imagine having done anything else. When I first walked into the job as a COBOL programmer back in 1980, to think that one day I’d aspire to be a CIO or other type of leader — that just wasn’t there. It wasn’t happening that way. Part of it, I think, was the industry wasn’t as well known. It’s much more well known today, both on the entrepreneurial side and the organizational side. The pathways are much, much more well known. But for me, it wasn’t the destination when I started out.

Sanjog Aul [00:04:14]:

So while you did not start out, at some point the reason I bring this up yet again is the kind of mindset and the behavior and the attributes and everything that you need in a leader — it looks like it has to be a deliberate attempt to go that direction versus somebody being so blessed that all of that happens to them and they just happen to become a leader. 

Jim Smith [00:04:43]:

Yeah. When I think about this, I take a step back and I think about what is the definition of leadership? Why would someone want to be a leader? Is it they want to be on point, they want to be visible in a time of crisis, they want to influence events or they have a vision? They want to leave a different world than what they found, or do they want to be a teacher? Do they want to help others in their career? At some point as you evolve towards leadership, you have to sit down and ask yourself, why do I want to do this? What am I bringing to the table? What can I contribute that would help an organization or help me? Once you decide that, you decide the pathway, then you can work towards it. But if you don’t have that goal and that direction, it’s more difficult. Once you set that up, then you say, do I have the right attributes and what can I bring to the table? I think it’s a mix of environment and attributes. As I said, when I started as a COBOL programmer in 1980, I couldn’t envision the possibilities. The world changed, opportunities changed, and I changed and matured with it. My vision and aspirations changed. My wife was telling me a story about a student she is encouraging, a 2nd grader with a sort of difficult home life. She knows he’s going to need some help along the way. She set him up for some recognition and got him a prize. She told him this is really because of your capabilities and you’re a leader. He was so proud. That day on the playground, she could tell he was being a leader. He reached out to other children in a leadership position. That’s a combination of environment and attributes. He had to have the capability, but she had to help set the environment so he could grow into that type of leadership. 

Sanjog Aul [00:06:46]:

So do we have to get lucky? Because one, of course, is to have the attributes, which could be nature or nurture. But to have an environment, do we have to take charge for that environment to be conducive so somebody’s out there motivating me? Because there are a lot of people who otherwise are great or could be greater, but they are like diamonds in the dust. 

Jim Smith [00:07:08]:

Well, I think it’s a combination, but I think you definitely have to reach a little harder. I think you have to be known. If you take the technology world, you have to be known as someone who’s a problem solver or someone that is going to go out and investigate and find things. I was in another organization with a huge project going on, a couple 100 people, and we had a very junior person come in and join the team. After a while, everyone realized this person was volunteering for everything. Something happened and she’d say, well, I don’t know that, but I’ll figure it out. After a while, people got to depend on her and she got a lot of richly deserved promotions and became a leader. She brought that to the table. The environment was there because it was a big, high-visibility project with a lot of senior people involved, but then she brought something to the table that said, I’m going to figure this out. I’m going to help the organization. I’m going to bring my attributes to the table. So it’s a combination. I don’t think you get leadership thrust upon you. I don’t think that works, but you have to bring something to the table and help to move within whatever environment you’re in.

Sanjog Aul [00:08:18]:

So one show we did in particular was how to deal with linchpins, people who get the job done who will always be raising their hands to get things done. But there was a very distinct difference between a linchpin — someone who, as you mentioned, volunteers and tries to take initiatives — and someone who’s truly a leader whom others would follow. You need both, but that one doesn’t mean the other. So what would you say is a differentiator for a leader who could have started as a linchpin or perhaps not?

Jim Smith [00:08:51]:

Well, I think the leader has a lot of those qualities. We always talk in the industry about soft skills, and I think a leader has that. I think it starts with vision. What’s the difference between a person that might execute something that someone else has outlined and someone who has that vision? Someone with that vision, that idea of lifelong learning, research, understanding the industry, understanding where issues are — they bring more to the table than the execution part. You need both. You have to execute, set a plan, find your resources, and be able to go to that end goal. But the difference is that if someone’s a leader, they’re going to understand their strengths and weaknesses. They’re going to surround themselves with people that will help where they need help, where they may not have the background in finance or some other thing. They’re going to have that vision and say this is a journey and this is where we’re going.

Sanjog Aul [00:09:49]:

So in any organization, what you just mentioned, you could have people with those attributes, I’m assuming in your organization or anyone else who may be listening, but not everyone is someone that others would follow. And I’m not saying that a leader is a leader only when somebody’s following them. So how do you uniquely pick someone to be at the peak or at the top of an organization or at a place where you want someone to lead? Leader means they are supposed to lead you in a given direction. What’s the differentiator between that person whom someone follows and, essentially, those who follow?

Jim Smith [00:10:32]:

Well, I think it goes back to attributes. If you have a group of people, who’s the communicator in that group? Who’s the one that can deal with multiple groups within a group and get them to move forward? It’s sort of like the tie I talked about before, that my wife with a kid on the playground all of a sudden becoming a leader because she said to him, well, you’re a leader. You can influence this group, and that’s what he went and did. We look for attributes: communication. A technical project today requires so many different groups, from networking to applications to project managers to analysts to QA. There’s a lot of different players in getting things done today. So who can communicate? Who has that vision of where you’re going? Who can bring people along with that vision? That’s what you look for. My organization is about 500 people, and obviously there are tremendously different skill sets and technical knowledge and the way people think about processing and how to get things done. Those different things come to the table, but the constant I think — and I think the industry is going there — is about the soft skills. Technology is continuously changing, but the soft skills about communication, being a lifelong learner, understanding how to work in teams — those types of things seem to be constant across whatever technology, whatever end game you’re trying to get to. One of the companies I was at, we did a study. We said, why do some people just rise to the top? They become leaders and move ahead in an organization. We looked at some of our new hires and asked, why is this person all of a sudden in charge of 10 things and somebody else may not be? As we looked at it, we really honed in more and more on those soft skills and said that’s what these people are bringing to the table that might differentiate them: lifelong learning, researching their industry, thinking about new solutions. We came up with a list of 10 soft skills that people who have them seem to do well. One that I thought was interesting was being able to deal with ambiguity. You wouldn’t necessarily think of that as a leadership skill, but leaders have to make decisions without all the information. You might have 80% of what you need to know, and you still have to make a decision. So we more and more honed in on those softer skills, not necessarily technical leadership. You need technical skills and to understand how things work, but those can be learned. Some of those softer skills seem to be attributes that people have.

Sanjog Aul [00:13:25]:

Let’s take a quick break. Listeners, we’ll be right back. And, Jim, what would that child have done if your wife or someone else who could potentially motivate that person to be a leader was not around? Because you could maybe motivate or trigger a certain behavior, but not necessarily change your mindset for life. What does it take for a leader or how do we get a spark at a level which hits your mindset versus a temporary behavior? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:16:12]:

Welcome back. So this is about the child, the story that you mentioned, Jim, about your wife motivating this kid. As a result, the kid really had a great time, and he led everyone on the playground. Now what if there was no one available the next time around when this child went to the playground, and there was no one reminding him that he can be a leader? The reason I bring this up is that’s what happens in real life. Motivation has a shelf life. Not every time you have people around, whether you have become a leader or you are a leader, there is a support system available. What do you do then?

Jim Smith [00:16:54]:

Well, I think that’s a great question. The word you mentioned before the break was “spark,” and I think that’s a tremendous word. In that particular situation, my wife saw a situation. She was able to add that spark in and the child had to have those innate capabilities anyway, and I think that was something she saw in him. She just needed to give him the opportunity. That situation worked out, but you’re exactly right. If she hadn’t given him that opportunity, if the day had gone on like any other day, he wouldn’t have had that chance. There are different types of leaders. Some people need encouragement and nurture and the right mentor, whether it’s a teacher or someone they work with professionally. On the other side, you look at someone like Steve Jobs at Apple and you say he had a vision and he was going to stick with that vision and move ahead even costing him his company and his job for a while, and the board of directors had a different vision. At some point in his life, did he need that type of opportunity or was there something innately in him that said, I know where we need to go and I’m going to continue to go there no matter what? I’m not sure of the answer, but I think maybe it’s both types of leadership.

Sanjog Aul [00:18:14]:

And one of the reasons we are doing this topic is because, for example, in your team, Jim, you may have people who are great and without their contribution you may not be able to bring your initiatives or your department to the level that it is today or maintain it. But they may not have the leadership attributes or the traits, and they have not exactly accepted or compromised, but they have found their sweet spot. And it’s okay. But isn’t it better that not everyone aspires to become that person who is a great orator or has great emotional intelligence and the vision? Because not everybody can have a vision and then assess what they should be doing. That brings me to my next question: what does a leadership self-assessment look like so that if you and I or anyone else in any position does it, it’ll at least reveal if they should approach a leadership track professionally? They can be a leader in their personal lives, of course; someone can always strive to be. But if you’re not, you don’t have to feel that you’re doomed. 

Jim Smith [00:19:23]:

Yeah. I think it’s sort of a two-part question for me. Part of it is my responsibility to look at my team and my leaders and understand where they really excel and where someone else would excel. Someone might be a great orator, able to get in front of a group and inspire them, and some may not be comfortable in that situation, but they can still be a leader. Some people lead by example. Some lead through building great teams. There are multiple ways to lead, and from my position we have to understand when you’re building a team, are you building a heterogeneous team or not, and what do I need in my team? Who are the people who are going to help me with that team? There’s that old thought process about people who share your vision or people who will confront you — you need both. You need that yin-yang sort of thing. On the self-assessment side, that’s really the first step as you start to think of yourself in your career and leadership. It goes back to that first question: what is the motivation to aspire to leadership? Do you have a vision, do you want to be a teacher, do you want to change the world? It starts with that goal and then a self-assessment against that goal. At one company where I worked, we used a self-assessment tool, a book — I think it was called Know Your Strengths or Recognize Your Strengths. It was a question-and-survey thing. What was interesting was it concentrated on what the person does well. What comes to the forefront in leadership in crisis situations? The idea being you should hone and improve that aspect rather than dwell on secondary things. If you’re not a great financial person, you may know that, but you’re probably never going to be that great a financial person, but you may bring other things to the table. So, if you think about your leadership goals and what strengths you have that can help toward that objective, that’s the idea of self-assessment. You may not call it leadership. You may call it something else, like I want to help us do X, and that in turn becomes leadership. Then you ask, what is it that I can bring to the table that’s going to help us get to that point? That’s the self-assessment piece.

Sanjog Aul [00:21:52]:

So the functional capabilities, like you mentioned — somebody being good in finance or wherever — that is a functional skill. Someone learning a specific skill or discipline is in that zone, and that’s great. But if they connect that to something of a higher purpose, to say, I want to help this organization or this world change for the better in a certain way, they are demonstrating that leadership trait. Even though they may not have the title, they will be a leader in their own right.

Jim Smith [00:22:32]:

Yeah. Can you say that a different way? Ask that question differently? 

Sanjog Aul [00:22:39]:

So the thing is, what you mentioned about someone becoming a finance person — that’s a functional skill. Someone learning a specific skill or discipline has got nothing to do with truly becoming a leader. Are you saying that when we connect it to a bigger purpose — that this is what I’m going to change in the world as a result of my contribution — if their focus becomes that, that’s when they will say they are on their path to become a leader? 

Jim Smith [00:23:12]:

I think that’s exactly right. That’s part of what can I do to make the world or my organization a different place or have a bigger purpose. I’m on the board of directors for Maine Robotics up here, and we had a board directors meeting last night. This started with one gentleman who had a vision 10 years back. He’s touched over 80,000 students now by bringing them to robotics events. His idea was that not enough students are getting exposed to this. How can we get students more exposed? Some people might know about LEGO leagues and robotics. What’s fascinating is they’re not just kids building Legos; it’s really STEM work. It’s teamwork, the technical side, the programming side. It’s fascinating to go into a group of 3rd grade students and hear them talking about if-then logic, recursive loops, and all this kind of stuff. They pick it up. This gentleman, I don’t think, started out to say I want to be a leader. I think he started out to say there’s a need here and I can help these students learn. If I look at state government, my state or any other state — what are the challenges? It’s older technology, older processes, paper-bound manual processes. You need somebody with the vision to look across the spectrum, across the enterprise, and solve this problem, not in a silo but across the enterprise. If you look at leadership, those are the people who have an idea and a vision — what’s the pathway to get there?

Sanjog Aul [00:25:03]:

When you look at CIOs, let’s bring the conversation back to the majority of our audience, which is the C-suite and technology leaders. Many of us, at least I’ve seen over time, have always been saying we are here to serve the business, which is appropriate. But we have also seen them saying the business is not doing it the right way, but we have to support them. Is that the right trait of a leader? Because a good leader would challenge the status quo, even if it means risking their own position. We don’t see that fearlessness developing later. Those people have that DNA, and that’s why perhaps it gets them there. At what point does someone start developing that mindset that you have to do the right things and fight your way through if there is a problem in the environment?

Jim Smith [00:26:09]:

Yeah. Part of it goes back to self-assessment. Who are you and how far do you take that fight or journey? Where does your vision take you? You have the vision, then you communicate it. But you must also listen, because your vision may not prove to be the right one. Sometimes, as I said, I was a mainframe programmer a million years ago. When PCs started to come into the technical environment, the one group that fought against PCs coming into the environment was the IT group. They didn’t want PCs in the organization on the network. We thought they were a toy; we didn’t realize they amounted to anything. So you have to realize that you have the vision, but you have to be flexible. The vision you come out with today may not be where you end up tomorrow. When I started in the industry, we’d certainly make 5 and 10 year IT plans. Well, those don’t last anymore. Nobody does a 5-year plan anymore because technology changes so fast. You have to be flexible. So you have to create your path, communicate it, and it may not happen overnight, but you have to keep thinking about it. I mentioned Steve Jobs, who had a vision of what Apple could be, and the board of directors had a different version. That’s very radical; he gave up his job and his company for a while. We ultimately went where he wanted to go in the end. For a CIO in a Fortune 500 or government, how far do you take that, or do you keep moving on that pathway? I think about

Sanjog Aul [00:28:03]:

Let’s see. You have to do it though. Your response to this question says to some extent that at some point you have to give up. Is that what you’re saying? Or you fight your way through because otherwise the leader doesn’t remain a leader?

Jim Smith [00:28:20]:

No. I don’t think “give up” is the right word. It’s how radical is your reaction. As you want to move an organization, you may not get there tomorrow, but you have to keep that communication going. At some point, if it’s the right idea you’re going to get people on board. Think about project management: waterfall versus agile. Organizations are moving to agile, but it’s a journey to get there. When people started it X number of years ago, the first group you had to convince was the project managers. Somebody had been doing waterfall for 20 years and you said, wait a minute, there may be a different way to do this; it’s radical and a cultural change. The first thing you had to do was get that group to be your champions. Get people to share your vision and get them to start communicating; then they become the communicators and help convince the organization where you need to go. The journey takes strength of conviction. It’s kind of funny because you have to be flexible to realize this will modify and change along the way, but you also have to have the strength and conviction to get there.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:39]:

You’re saying persistence: if you feel something is right, you stick to the calling or stick to whatever you’re after.

Jim Smith [00:29:46]:

Exactly.

Sanjog Aul [00:29:48]:

Okay. So now, when you say that, and let’s go back to the response related to vision. You said the person needs to have a vision. But that vision would not just come by sitting on the beach and something will pop up. There should be contribution in terms of the number of years of experience that you’ve learned about the industry, or you’ve been, as you said, a lifelong learner so that you can do the blue-sky type of thinking. Where does that get developed? If you are thinking of a vision as a leader in your organization or anyone else, is this by first paying the dues, working in the trenches, getting the understanding? If you say yes to it, there are many others who are doing it, but some people are able to develop a vision and others don’t.

Jim Smith [00:30:39]:

Yeah. I have to speak to my own experience coming up in the trenches versus someone who might be an entrepreneur and think of a different way to do things. How do you think of Google or Facebook — someone coming in and meeting a need we didn’t know we had? That is not the trenches; that’s a blue-sky idea. My experience was coming up through the trenches and learning. You have great mentors; you watch them. That constant learning, that lifelong learning — how do other people succeed? What lessons can I learn? What can I take from the industry? One of the fun things about the technology industry, even in state government where we all work together, is 50 states share a lot of information. Even in private industry, people love to talk and share ideas about workforce, technology, and those things. What can you take from that? How can you develop your own vision out of that? Without a vision, you’re probably not a leader. You’re probably someone who executes, and we need people who can execute. People can be leaders in that they’re running a group doing a certain thing, but they may not be leaders in the broader sense. I can’t break away from the vision part of leadership. You have to have a direction and a pathway and then the ability to execute, either yourself or by surrounding yourself with the right team. From my experience, it was in the trenches seeing other people. Then you ask, how do I want to think about this? How do I solve this problem? How do I move the organization in a different direction? In a world where technology is changing so rapidly, it can’t just be a technology play; it’s picking the direction, building the culture, building the organization for change.

Sanjog Aul [00:33:05]:

Let’s take a quick break. We’ll be right back, and we’ll talk about the difference between a manager and a leader, where a manager does things right, but the leader does the right things. The question that comes up over and over is: isn’t doing the right things just intuitive, or is it about values that we have? If that’s the case, are we saying that our manager or director who is not a leader yet doesn’t have the intuition or the values and therefore is not a leader? Let’s talk more when we come back. Please stay tuned.

Sanjog Aul [00:35:45]:

Welcome back. So, the big question is, Jim: in many cases people say, yeah, we are a leader, but there’s a core definition of a manager doing things right as expected, and leaders do the right things. So in the morphing from a director or a manager, are we saying people who did not have the intuition to do the right things can develop it? Or is it that they do not have the values that mean they will do the right things no matter what? That has to be practiced, and suddenly someone who was otherwise just a manager or director — not in terms of title, but in terms of how they approach things — creates opportunities for themselves to become a leader.

Jim Smith [00:36:32]:

Yeah. Maybe it’s a finite definition of leadership. Someone might be a leader in a very technical area and be a great leader in that area, but may not have the vision to lead a whole organization. What is leadership? It’s not only leading in good times and keeping the status quo. For me, leadership is about change, evolving an organization in a different direction. It’s a combination of vision and experience. In our state, we elect a new governor every 4 years. Some states do it every 2 years. If you think about that, sometimes voters want to continue on a current path, and sometimes they want a new direction. If you have an incumbent governor, are they more effective because they know the process? Or is a new governor more effective because they might approach things differently but need time to learn the process? There’s that trade-off. Most citizens don’t want a caretaker; they want someone who can execute on the vision with an eye on the end result. They probably want a leader rather than a manager. A manager is about executing a set path; a leader is about vision and change. I think people can learn to be leaders if they have the right attributes and the right environment. At some point they may have a eureka moment and think, wait a minute, I have another way to think about this, and they’ll start to champion it. Maybe it’s subtle and people don’t even realize when it’s happening, but some people are not satisfied with the status quo and say, I want to think about things a different way, and I’m going to propose and communicate them.

Sanjog Aul [00:38:41]:

So when you look at a leader taking on a big project, they will not just deliver as expected; they will often deliver much more value than expected. How did they develop the people who worked alongside that leader as part of delivering those results and exceeding expectations? How does one develop that edge? Is that something you work harder at?

Jim Smith [00:39:23]:

Part of that goes back to attributes and part of it goes back to someone energetically pursuing ideas. The best conversations I have are when someone from my staff walks into my office and says, I was thinking about something and I might have a different approach. That’s what you want. You want people thinking about these things, going it over in their heads and asking, we’ve always done it this way — is that the right way? Is there another way? That’s a breakthrough idea. Developing that edge requires honing certain skills. We talk about soft skills; we all have to learn to be better listeners. That’s a skill any of us can learn. Are we really listening, or just moving through a conversation to get to an end goal? The ability to listen — to your team, to your customers — is important. Then, obviously, develop your vision. Network and professional groups help you see where the industry is going. If you’re only thinking about your job from 9 to 5, that’s probably not enough to be a leader. You have to be thinking about it more than that and doing things to move an organization and yourself forward. A lot of that is networking, professional groups, and analysis of your environment: what’s working and what isn’t. For example, in a typical state there is too much paper and too many manual processes. How can somebody look at that issue across the enterprise? A manager might look at it in a silo and say, I’ll fix my area. A leader looks across the enterprise and says, in 15 places we’re doing the same thing; if we do one solution, it’ll solve it in 15 places as opposed to one.

Sanjog Aul [00:41:46]:

So the way you explained it is the person has to work harder, but does the person have some common thread across all of their activities so they develop that edge? What you’re finding is this leader shows consistent output, and the people who worked with that individual also grew personally and professionally. This person delivers consistently. I know many people — entrepreneurs or individuals — who are spending time to build a network, go to training, etc., but they’re struggling to get an opportunity or be seen as worthy of an opportunity for big projects. Or if they do, they deliver less-than-stellar results and people are burnt out instead of growing. What’s the difference between those who are equally working hard and someone who delivers the results we discussed as a leader?

Jim Smith [00:43:14]:

I think it’s a balancing act and having the opportunity, but it’s difficult to look at any organization and not see tremendous opportunities for improvement. If you have the right attributes and the right vision, you can help move an organization. We talked about entrepreneurs teaching the world we needed to search the World Wide Web; we didn’t know that until somebody taught us. We didn’t understand we needed things like Facebook until somebody put it out there. My organization is different — it’s organizational and structural breakthroughs that may not be visible to the world at large but can have big impact. A couple of things you’ve hit upon are teamwork and the entrepreneur putting in 100s of hours every week and having that vision. Think of Thomas Edison in the lab: he built big teams, put them on projects, and they methodically went after things with a systematic approach. It’s more than a Eureka moment; they had an approach you can replicate: building strong teams. No one does this alone. They have to build teams, communicate, and get teams enthusiastic about the direction. Whether in a large organization or an entrepreneurial one, there’s a lot of hard work involved. There are repeatable skill sets: communication, how do you roll out something like Office 365 to thousands of users, how do you communicate it, and how do you build excitement to change someone’s workflow and get them to a different place?

Sanjog Aul [00:45:32]:

Let’s take a quick break, listeners, and we’ll be right back. In this final segment, we want to talk about the price one has to pay or should pay to get to the top professionally. When we’re talking leadership in the context of being a CIO or any other top-level executive, they definitely end up doing something beyond the ordinary, as Jim mentioned, going beyond the 9 to 5. There is some price being paid. How do we make sure that as we go through this journey, we don’t get too success-crazy while still enjoying the perks of being a leader? Please stay tuned, listeners. We’ll be right back.

Sanjog Aul [00:48:21]:

Welcome back. So let’s talk about the personal price one should be ready to pay to be at the top professionally. Jim, I’m sure you had your journey and many of the listeners are having or have had theirs. Do you think to become a leader you will always have to make some sacrifice on the personal front?

Jim Smith [00:48:44]:

That’s a great question. If you think about companies today, there’s a lot of conversation about work-life balance. But as I sit here and think about it, our position is actually getting worse. For me personally, there’s never a time when I’m not connected. As a leader and manager of people, if I think of something and send an email at 11 PM, I’m probably subconsciously or not consciously setting an expectation with my employees that I need a response. Am I saying to employees I expect you to be online all the time? I’m not, but by doing those types of actions I’m probably setting that expectation. I might think of something at 11:00 at night that I want an answer to the next day, but sending it at night sets that expectation. People are paying a price and will continue to pay that price if they want to be in a leadership position. They will pay that have-to-be-connected cost. One thing companies are doing — we try to do and other companies try to do — is really encourage people to take their vacation. Don’t expect people to be on all the time. People need time to decompress, and when they’re on vacation we need to find ways to get them to disconnect. The price you pay includes a lot of hours. To be a leader in a big organization, there’s a big time commitment. 

Sanjog Aul [00:51:17]:

So in a way, we are sending a message that if someone — as the title of this show is “Leadership for You” — this is one consideration you should have going in: you know what you’re getting into. So there is no way out, is that what you’re saying?

Jim Smith [00:51:37]:

I don’t know if there’s no way out. I would struggle to envision anyone I know in my industry — the CIOs I know — who would say, “No, I’m not engaged; I’m not connected all the time.” All industries have crises. In state government it could be a problem in Health and Human Services, corrections, or the police department. There’s just so many different things that could happen. You have to be available. I don’t necessarily say a leader is always available, but as you move up the ladder, that is part of the equation. 

Sanjog Aul [00:52:18]:

Now do you think there’s a point when a leader who may have had a great ride and delivered successes and developed great leaders should say, okay, now is this the time to step down because I’m not able to work at my top, with the best mindset and top capability, and make way for others? I see sometimes people drag themselves on way too long. 

Jim Smith [00:52:48]:

I think there’s a lot of truth to that. I think about that as a state CIO: the average tenure is a little under 2 years because governors change and people move on. I think that’s too short because how do you have a strategy that might take X number of years if you have limited time to execute it? But I do think there is a time where people need to step aside — step aside sounds pejorative; maybe it’s nurturing and building the next level of leaders. Maybe that’s more appropriate than step aside. As you build and nurture and find hidden gems in the organization, you find people ready to step up and move to the next level. There’s a lot to be said for that. Even just technology changing — we’ve revamped our intern program in the last couple of years and had great success. Young people come in with different ideas, different levels of energy, and different understanding of technology. You can see changes in thinking and culture as people come in and ask, why are you doing that? Nobody’s doing that anymore. We’re doing this; why aren’t we doing this? It’s not necessarily about pushing someone out, but you have to be open to change. You have to seed your organization with different ways of thinking, nurture those people in their careers, and help them grow. That’s part of the fun — helping people with their careers, finding those stars, and saying, this is going to be the next leader.

Sanjog Aul [00:54:35]:

On behalf of the show and our listeners, I’d really like to thank you, Jim, for sharing your thoughts and insights on how people can discover their leadership potential, perhaps work on certain areas where they need to, and identify with clarity whether they should go on this track. And if they do go on the leadership track, what do they need to do to excel? So thank you so much again, Jim.

Jim Smith [00:55:02]:

Oh, thank you. It was my pleasure. It’s always an interesting conversation. Thank you.

Sanjog Aul [00:55:06]:

Thanks again. And listeners, please like us on Facebook, search for CTN, that’s CIO Talk Network, and be sure to follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn community. Thank you again for listening to this segment on CTN. This is Sanjog Aul, your talk show host. Till next week, take care, and God bless.