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CIO Executive Council

A Peer-Advisory Service and Professional Association for CIOs

Webcast: In the Google Apps Cloud: How to Achieve Your Business Objectives

Dec 3rd, '09, 1 - 2 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Council member Brent Hoag, Director, Global IT, at JohnsonDiversey, as he discusses the adoption of Google Apps which has helped meet four corporate goals; sustainability, simplification, increased employee productivity and global collaboration.

Webcast: Collaboration Initiatives: Benchmarks & Best Practices

Dec 15th, '09, 4 - 5 pm US/Eastern (GMT-5)

Join Council members Ruth Thorpe, VP & CIO at the U.S. Pharmaceutical Operations of Sanofi-Aventis, and Gary Kuyper, CIO at Bethany Christian Services, as they speak about their collaboration initiatives and experiences in how and why they chose the social networking and collaboration tools they are using and their business goals for collaboration, and facing culture change challenges.

Data Overview: Collaboration Initiatives Field Guide: Benchmarks & Best Practices

This appendix to the Council Field Guide provides an analysis which discusses benchmarks for collaboration IT implementation costs, adoption rates and payoffs. The overview identifies top IT and business goals and satisfaction rates for collaboration initiatives as well as best practices and lessons learned for implementing collaboration IT.

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What It's Like To...Lose Your Job

I'm never going to ride this train again. That's what I was thinking as I rode from Chicago to my home in Cary, Ill., around 3:30 on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2004...

By Ron Orrick

December 15, 2004 — CIO —

I'm never going to ride this train again.

That's what I was thinking as I rode from Chicago to my home in Cary, Ill., around 3:30 on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2004. I'd just lost my job, and I was dizzy. I sat brooding by the window. I barely noticed anyone getting on and off as the train made its stops. No one sat next to me. I wouldn't have sat next to me.

I'd been blindsided. I had had one of my regular meetings with the global CIO of Publicis, Bill Jenks, to whom I reported, scheduled for three that afternoon. [Leo Burnett is a division of Publicis.] We were going to discuss IT strategy. When Bill swung by my office and said, Let's talk with Linda [Wolf, CEO of Leo Burnett], I wasn't suspicious.

But when I walked into Linda's office and saw the corporate attorney, John Spitzig, sitting on Linda's red upholstered couch, I knew I was going to be released. John was always there when people lost their jobs. At that point, all I could focus on was a painting Linda had on her wall: a circus showgirl getting knives thrown at her. I felt as if the daggers that had missed her were hitting me.

On the train, I tried to make sense of things. Bill and Linda had explained hastily that the management team at Publicis was restructuring, and I was the first of several CIOs in the company who would lose their jobs. The plan might have made sense to the executives who conceived it. But all I could think was that I had worked hard to build a high-quality, top performing team, and now I was getting laid off for it.

Resentment gave way to self-pity. As I looked out the train's window, I saw my reflection and wondered who I was. We shouldn't define ourselves by what we do, but we can't help it. I had been CIO of Leo Burnett; now that was gone.

When I got off the train, my thoughts moved to my wife, my 9-year-old and 12-year-old daughters, and my 7-year-old son. I wasn't too worried about their immediate welfare because I got a fair severance package, but I didn't want them to worry. I was suddenly nostalgic for the four years we had spent working for Publicis in Germany, before I was transferred to Leo Burnett. My wife and I had made an