A long time ago in an organization far far away, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) was most likely responsible for data center, network, servers, storage, and application development. They knew technology.

In a recent Gartner survey, the top four business and technology priorities are: 1) Increasing enterprise growth, 2) Deliver operational results, 3) Reducing enterprise costs, 4) Attracting and retaining new customers. Of the four, ensuring uptime and reducing IT costs, yesterday’s mantra of IT success, are only a part of 2 and 3.

Read most any blog, article or treatise on CIO success and items like “strategy,” “influence,” “innovation,” “change agent,” “talent management,” and “social” are the terms that pop up most. The most valued characteristic of a CIO today is business knowledge. The questions he or she needs to answer tend to be: How can the organization increase revenue? How can we increase customer delight? How can the supply chain work better? What digital marketing strategies should we pursue? Where could our back office be more efficient?

The CIO role is now yesterday’s CIO plus a lot more. Successful CIOs negotiated and managed big contracts with technology titans, so they know how to seek and get a good deal. They squeezed pennies by employing virtualization, cloud services, automated monitoring, so they know how to be efficient. They fought to hire and retain talent, so they know how to form and keep a good team. They kept information secure, so they know risk management. They managed big budgets and big projects, keeping them under control, so they know how to get stuff done. They survived mergers, acquisitions, and reorganizations, so they know change management.

So it is not a surprise that the term “CIO Plus” is getting some traction. CIOs are taking on more accountability in finance, operations, even sales or marketing. And why not? Business runs on technology, and a good CIO and their teams are involved from idea to implementation on most if not all of the systems on which a business runs. Which means he or she knows the business process and what makes that process tick and turn out good results.

Who of us has not taken on additional responsibility to get to the next level of our career? The answer to “how would you like to take on ….” should be along the lines of “sounds cool, appreciate you thinking of me.” Or better yet, don’t even wait to be asked. Volunteer or just start doing it. In fast food parlance, look for ways to supersize your role.

My leadership role right now includes technology, finance & process engineering. People will say “wow, how do you do multiple jobs?” I’m not doing multiple jobs. I’m doing one job: contributing to the greatest extent possible to the success of the organization.

Whether you are in year 1 or several decades into your career, static is the new minus if you are looking to progress or more importantly if your organization is to thrive. Plus is the new normal.

Asides:

April is Distracted Driver Awareness Month. People who text while driving are 23 times more likely to crash. Learn more at http://www.distraction.gov/

Huge thanks to NetApp – Regina Kunkle, Pam Nicastro, Jeff Winters and team, who hosted a Career Event at UNH Durham on April 11th. 117 students showed up to learn from and network with women leaders from NetApp, EBSCO, Liberty Mutual, CDW, Keene State College, TurnRight, and UNH.

Rules 26.1 & 33.7/4.5…. proof that keeping it simple is usually better. Translated into business, if it takes a bunch of senior leaders, legal counsel and an auditor to interpret a policy, might be time to revisit the policy. (See also: 2013 Masters – Tiger Woods.)

I really like the idea of seamless.com – a portal to order take-out from local restaurants. Doesn’t appear to be available in my neck of the woods yet, but I await developments. (No pun intended. Well, maybe a little.)

“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” Madeline Albright, during a keynote speech at Celebrating Inspiration luncheon with the WNBA’s All-Decade Team, 2006.

I have no interest in spending eternity in a broiler. It would be too hot and I’m thinking my roommates would not be a lot of fun.

On Thursday April 11, myself and a group of women leaders from various industries are participating in a career event at the University of New Hampshire’s Durham campus, where UNH students are invited to meet us and get advice from women who achieved success in their chosen fields. UNH students can register at www.netappsled.com/UNH/ (and free food and iPad raffles are part of the event). This event is for all students in any UNH degree program.

The women leaders and entrepreneurs at this event are real-life experts on pathways to careers, and are willing to give free advice to students. They are senior people in companies who have internships and hire college graduates.

Good leaders recognize that good people are critical to an organization’s success. Great leaders take it a few leaps further – they recognize that a talent pipeline is crucial to not only their organization’s success, but the economic health of their industry, the country and the global economy. And they genuinely want to help others become part of that pipeline. They make time to mentor, volunteer, teach, and advise women and men.

The women coming to UNH on April 11 are ‘great leaders.’ Women who want to help other women. And avoid a “special place in hell.”

(Did I mention that there is a raffle for iPads and iPad Minis?)

p.s. Guys, you are not off the hook – there’s a special place in hell for everyone who doesn’t help.

My asides are focused on technology and women today:

- I am…. the 9 percent. “Just 9 percent of chief information officers, or CIOs, are women, down from 11 percent last year and 12 percent in 2010, according to a 2012 survey by tech-staffing firm Harvey Nash Group (via Reuters).”

- “A career without a technology background is a fatal one.” Forbes Magazine, 2012. Technology has permeated all facets of life and work; I’m hard pressed to think of a career where some degree technology knowledge is helpful if not required.

- Coding is the new ‘foreign language’ we should all learn. http://www.code.org/

- According to a study reported in The New York Times, “Research indicates that investing in women as tech entrepreneurs is good for the bottom line,” noting that “venture-backed startups run by women use, on average, 40 percent less capital than startups run by men and are increasingly involved in successful initial public offerings of stock.”

CIOs need a bigger table for the table stakes. Pull up another chair and make room for innovation alongside such staples  as operational reliability, fiscal savvy, and on-time projects.

Software development cycles talk about Input > Process > Output. I’ve been pondering Innovation > Process > Operation. There is always perpetual wave of demand for technology services. We need to  add ways (swift ways) to intake innovation – not as an R&D aside, but in a substantive, pro-active way. Make innovation part of the operation.

Be Systematic

The vast portfolios of information technology, including physical infrastructure like local area networks, enterprise systems, and mobile applications (oh my!) require perpetual care and feeding. There are methods to managing the life cycles of existing technology. CIOs need to factor in innovation opportunities – figure out how to identify, select and prioritize innovation to path into operations. Being open to innovation may mean being a tad systematic (but don’t obsess about process). Have crowd-sourcing or brain-storming sessions, perhaps using online surveys or tools like Chatter, to get ideas from the organization.

Start From Where You Stand

Not everyone is on the same rung of the Capability Maturity Model. (Otherwise what would consultants do? Only kidding!) One organization’s operation may be another’s innovation. And that is OK. Often innovation is just using existing tools in new ways. The UNH IT Management Reporting team is using a Business Objects tool called Xcelsius to do some interesting dashboarding. May sound ho-hum, but for the consumers of the dashboard, it’s a tool they haven’t used heretofore.

Be Open

Take time to listen and evaluate ideas, even if they sound, well, crazy. That doesn’t mean you need to spend hours listening to unformed suggestions. It’s not unreasonable to ask someone to put some thought into the idea, such as how the innovation will benefit the customer qualitatively and quantitatively, how the results will be initially measured, along with high level estimates of initial resources required.

Be Brave

Take some risks. Allow time for experiments in sandbox or test environment settings. Talk to the innovators after certain initial milestones to see if the results are as expected. And if the results are not as expected, this is not failure. Sometimes being brave means saying, ‘this was a great idea, but I think the results this time are going to be what we’ve learned, not moving forward with implementation.’

Be Decisive

Remind yourself and those around you frequently that time to market is crucial. The most marvelous innovation in the world won’t make a scrap bit of difference if it gets dragged out in analysis paralysis. Or in more direct parlance, establish a timeframe to ‘fish or cut bait’ and be fierce about making the decision.

Make innovation the new operation.

Asides:

- Students in your area are a great source of innovation. We’re very fortunate at UNH to have students available to UNH IT to contribute to innovation – we provide a ‘living laboratory’ and career experience, they provide amazing talent. Currently UNH IT has about 10 projects going with our College of Engineering and Physical Sciences.

- The City of Boston has a “Citizen’s Connect” initiative that lets citizens report issues in the city, such as potholes or broken signs, via mobile devices. Pretty cool.  http://www.cityofboston.gov/doit/apps/citizensconnect.asp

- I’m proud of the UNH IT Academic Technology team for their work on our suite of mobile applications. It enables students and visitors to campus to have a friendly, effective experience ranging from Maps to Dining. One example is the ability to see where computers are available in our computer clusters. http://www.unh.edu/nem/mobile.html

- If you are a retail or business consumer of the internet, and vast majority of us are of course, worth taking a look at what Susan Crawford (@scrawford) has to say about the telecom industry. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/one-on-one-susan-p-crawford-author-of-captive-audience/

- Enterasys CMO Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) is hiring a senior social media position recruiting solely via Twitter. Now that is brave and innovative.

Design the perfect outfit for your project. We design Risk & Issues lists to mitigate risks; how about accessorizing with an Opportunity list for enhancing success.

Phil Komarny (@PhilKomarny), CIO at Seton Hill in Pennsylvania indicates that successful projects are an “open and collaborative experience.” Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar), CMO at Enterasys in New Hampshire, “project sponsors communicated the ‘why’ and then invited community feedback.”

At the beginning of the project, think about the attributes of amazing projects and deliberately plan to make them happen.

1. Build an Interested, Positive Team. Good attitudes and sincere interest is infectious. If you’ve communicated the ‘why,’ now look for the ‘can do’ quotient when selecting team members to make the ‘how’ happen. I quote NFL Coach Don Coryell: “The country is full of good coaches. What it takes to win is a bunch of interested players.”

2. Incent and Reward Collaboration and Engagement. No I in Team, folks. Between e-mail, phones, video conferencing, social media, and the myriad of collaboration platforms, there are a plethora of methods to talk to each other. Build simple processes and tools to encourage, incent, measure, collaboration. Michael Krigsman (@mkrigsman), CEO of Asuret, tells me that there is a connection between the quality and quantity of collaboration and positive outcomes.

3. Celebrate Progress. When a substantive deliverable has been achieved, buy pizza, make brownies, go take a walk together in the sunshine. This gives the team fuel to go on to the next big thing.

4. Be Inclusive. Make sure team members are empowered to participate and contribute as equally as possible. Not everyone is an extrovert; take time to seek the opinion of the quieter team members. Welcome new team members.

5. Define Success. If you’ve stated what ‘good’ looks like, everyone will know it when it happens.

Go forth and make your project look great – dress it for success.

Asides:

- Most thought-provoking moment of Super Bowl 47: When the lights went out. Checked your disaster recovery and/or business continuity plan lately?

- Chronically negative people puzzle and annoy me. If you aren’t at work to figure out how things CAN be done, why are you here at all? And leaders, why do you put up with the chronically negative person in your organization?

- Things to think about: 1. Not making a decision is making a decision. 2. Finish what you’ve started before adding more.

- If you are in Dover, NH, check out Cara, new pub & eatery near the train tracks downtown. If you are in Durham, NH, look for new Mexican restaurant on Jenkins Court soon, across from Jenkin’s Quality Goods.