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Larry Bonfante, CIO of the U.S. Tennis Association, will discuss the skills and approaches that your rising IT leaders must learn to be effective in an executive capacity.

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Turbulent times have increased turnover at the top. Find out what Council CIOs have done to "break in" new CEOs—build relationships, set expectations, educate on the role of IT.

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We'll highlight relationship priorities and best practices identified in a Council study, and we'll interact with a CIO panel on the approaches they've used to improve strategic vendor partnerships.

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CIO Of DaimlerChrysler: Sue Unger's Drive to Diversity

Sue Unger defied the odds to become the CIO of an automotive giant despite her gender and status as a technology outsider. Here's how she did it.

 

June 15, 2003CIO

Sue Unger did not have much respect for IT when she was a finance executive. Reactive, insular, tactical and unmotivated are just some of the more printable adjectives she used to criticize IT in those days.

Yet now the 54-year-old former bean counter presides over one of the world’s largest IT groups at one of the world’s largest companies, $157 billion DaimlerChrysler. She has survived two waves of management purges since Germany’s Daimler-Benz purchased Chrysler in 1998—purges that saw the only other two female senior vice presidents there leave the company. Indeed, Unger has gained power since the merger in a company that has swept away Americans at its uppermost levels and replaced them with Germans. She is the rare American who rules on both sides of the Atlantic. But she speaks no German, has always lived in the suburban Detroit town where she grew up and has worked for exactly one company since graduating college in 1972: Chrysler. Worldly she is not. And her understanding of IT remains rooted in the conceptual rather than the technological.

This is atypical to say the least. The vast majority of CIOs remain techies who learn the business rather than businesspeople who learn technology. CIO’s "State of the CIO 2003" survey found, for example, that just 14 percent of more than 500 IT leaders had any relevant experience in finance before becoming CIO. Other core business functions, like manufacturing and sales, had even lower percentages, while engineering was slightly better, at 20 percent. In the auto industry, the breakdown is no different. The last businessman to be CIO at a Big Three company, Ford’s Jim Yost, who came from finance like Unger, lasted just a year before stepping aside for a techie. It should come as no surprise that Unger is also the first and only woman to be a Big Three CIO.Unger’s startling success makes her a walking case study on leadership and what it takes for a woman and a technology outsider to become the boss of IT in one of the most competitive, macho industries in the world. How has she defied the odds? Several ways: excellent analytical and people skills honed by her years in finance, and a determination to learn every important aspect of the car business by taking assignments in every major area of Chrysler.

"She broke a lot of barriers by moving around a lot and not being afraid to take on assignments in different functional areas of the company," says Unger’s mentor, Gary Valade, Chrysler’s executive vice president of global procurement and supply. "No matter what the assignment was, she was always able to break it down to its essential elements and deal with those, and not get distracted by a lot of peripheral stuff."

 
 
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Investing in Business Analytics Technology

Find the answers to your questions about business anyalytics initiatives.
 

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Learn how to ensure custom content is obtained in a fast manner and doesn't drive your customers away.
 

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Examine the benefits and challenges that IT executives are facing and how they plan to control the changes.
 

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