Ones to Watch Winners Discuss Keys to Meeting Mid-Market Challenges
Tight budgets. Leadership churn. Meeting business demands. Four Ones to Watch winners discuss their approaches to meeting key leadership challenges
CIO
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Gerry McCartney
CIO and Interim VP for IT, Purdue University
Based in West Lafayette, Ind., Purdue is a public, four-year institution of higher education.
Purdue University is in a somewhat unique position when it comes to mid-market challenges. Although we are a mid-market organization, we are also the biggest IT employer in our area. So we can act like a big dog.
The biggest challenge I’ve faced as a mid-market CIO is churn at the leadership levels within IT. It is absolutely true that you are only as good as your people. So hiring the best people you can get is critical to the organization. The best people are smart, can pick up new ideas and concepts quickly, and have energy, focus and motivation.
Once you get the best employees, you need to be able to retain them. That means having very clear staff development models. You need to make it attractive for your best individual contributors to stay in your organization.
One of the ways I’ve overcome this challenge is by giving top-performing senior managers more significant development opportunities, such as major projects and external exposure. This allows them to experience their own career growth, which is essential to succession planning.
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I’m not really aware of any other particular challenges from being a mid-market CIO. I do believe that to succeed as a leader you need to know what drives your industry and therefore your organization. That’s the first step. The second is to focus all the resources you can on those drivers. Along those lines, a close relationship to the business is essential. When IT has a major proposal, you need to test it against your core business drivers. The CIO also needs to make sure all managers and staff understand how what they are doing relates to those core drivers. So at least twice a year you need to strategically review your actual projects to ensure that you’re staying focused on your industry and company drivers.
I think this is what any leader should do regardless of the size of the organization.
Gary Thomson
CIO and SVP, Choice Hotels
A hospitality corporation with a portfolio of hotel brands including Comfort Inn, Clarion and EconoLodge.
Choice Hotels International is a total franchise company. Our franchise revenue figures may put us in the mid-market category, but we are bigger than that from an IT perspective. The information systems department supports a $5 billion enterprise with over 5,300 hotels located in the United States and internationally.
