I found the talk that John D. Halamka gave on April 8th to be very interesting and informative. The talk focused around the life of a CIO and Dr. Halamka addressed the duties and demands of the job. He stated that the one constant of the profession is change. There is always change in the technological, organizational, and budgetary fields and turnover is very high as well. Additionally during his talk Dr. Halamka made the point that demand is always going to exceed to supply and in order to be effective in the business you need to learn how to deal with this pressure and stress.
Dr. Halamka then began to talk about his personal experience and explained that when he became the CIO he decided to transform the organization to be very web-centric. However he said despite these changes there are some things that have stayed the same during his time in the profession. He claimed that over the ten years vendors have always been of poor quality, budgets are always tight, and customers are always difficult to please. Additionally he explained that one of the hardest parts about the profession is the environment and the fact that capital is always limited at all levels and for all projects. Therefore this causes project priorities to be based on return on investment and causes them to be benchmark driven. Due to this environment Dr. Halamka claimed that governance is crucial to help CIO’s manage demands and handle priorities.
Dr. Halamka also discussed the fact that since there is limited capital after the governance certain projects and people have to be turned down. Dr. Halamka reviewed with us a good and effective way of having to do this. He claimed that in order to say no you need to select what you need to change and what you do not need to change. Then you have to identify the people who will lose in this decision and acknowledge their loss. Also he said that it is very important to over communicate. If everyone understands what is going on and has all the information people usually react better to negative news. Furthermore it is extremely important to be honest and consistent with all the parties involved. He also claimed that it is important to realize that consensus is not essential, that you must embrace conflict and focus on your detractors. Dr. Halamka also stressed the point that for any professional the last two minutes of the meeting are the most important. It is during this time that you can review everything that was discussed and the decisions that were made and ensure that everyone who is present at the meeting is on the same page. Finally his last piece of advice, and probably one of the most important, was that you cannot please everyone. You need to effectively do your job to the best of your ability and understand that not everyone is going to appreciate your hard work but you need to keep trying regardless. Overall I found the presentation to be extremely interesting. The talk was not exactly what I had been expecting however it presented me with a great deal of new information. The advice that was given was very helpful, the stories that were shared were both informative and interesting and the entire presentation gave a good insight into professional demands within the industry.
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I personally believe that there should be more capital set aside for IT projects. John made it perfectly clear the "constant of the profession is change". One would think that in a constantly changing field, there would be a greater necessity for new projects, and ultimately more money devoted to those projects.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, I found his advice to helpful, particularly when he said that you cannot make everyone happy. I find that I try to do this very often, but in the end, you really cannot make everyone happy all the time. It is more important to do whatever it is you set out to do to the best of your ability, rather than trying to do multiple things with less than 100% effort.