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Interview - How to Succeed in Business at All Levels

By Abbie Lundberg

October 15, 2006 — CIO — CIOs today have more opportunities than ever to move out of IT and into other C-suite positions, including that of CEO. Yet many IT executives worry that they lack the knowledge and leadership skills to achieve success in a new setting.

Not so for Kevin Turner. His career could serve as a how-to for CIOs who are aiming for the corporate ladder’s highest rungs. Turner became CIO at Wal-Mart, one of the world’s largest companies and most successful users of IT, at 34. At 37, he was promoted to run Sam’s Clubs as its president and CEO, with more than 46 million members and $37.1 billion in annual sales. Last year, at the age of 40, he left the company where he’d spent his career to become COO at Microsoft. There he leads a global organization of more than 32,000 employees, including field sales and marketing professionals who delivered more than $40 billion in revenue during fiscal 2005. As COO, he is responsible for product and customer support services, branding, advertising, public relations, market research and relationship marketing. He also oversees corporate operations and internal information technology that supports the work of 71,000 employees worldwide. Turner serves on the senior leadership team that sets Microsoft’s strategy and direction.

He spoke with CIO Editor in Chief Abbie Lundberg during a recent visit to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

CIO: When you were Wal-Mart’s CIO, what were the three most important things you did to prepare yourself for a broader role in the business?
Kevin Turner: When you’re in a company that believes in the value of IT and where there are high expectations on the delivery of that value to the business, the ability to work with people and teams [is critical. You need to be able to] pull together a focused agenda with clear definitions of success. So building self-managed, high-performing teams in IT was a necessity that proved very useful on the business side.

Next would be building relationships with peers in the business group. When you work closely with people to deliver results, audit the payback, review what’s been implemented and come up with a mechanism to drive improvement, it gives you a good understanding at a high level of how the company or the operation works. That became something I relied heavily upon in my next role [as CEO of Sam’s Clubs]. Finally, an understanding of what’s possible with technology and the ability to map it to business problems and solutions to drive results [is critical]. Applying that knowledge in the business role was instrumental for me.

 

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