Offering regional and national programs, CIO (and CSO) events bring together some of the most respected names and thought leaders in information technology and security. Presented by CIOs and other senior level executives, these invitation-only programs offer timely topics and strong networking. Learn More »
Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »June 15, 2003 — CIO —
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."