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 »
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.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »February 15, 2003 — CIO —
Age: 64
Birthplace: Tremonton, Utah. A one-stoplight farm town. When John was growing up there, its population was 1,000.
Family: Gail, his wife of 45 years, and three sons: Rick, a sales representative for Brock Cabinets in North Carolina, who is involved with the Society for Information Management’s (SIM) Regional Leadership Forum; Steven, CIO of Agriliance in St. Paul, Minn.; and David, who works for Microsoft and lives in the Seattle area.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in production management and an MBA from Utah State University.
First job: Engineering aide at the Salt Lake City-based defense company Thiokol. After 10 years, John was recruited as a systems analyst in Thiokol’s information systems department.
Next job: A brief stint in information systems at Honeywell in Minneapolis. John decided to leave after hearing someone talk about the "kill capability" of a particular ammunition. "My stomach just turned over, and I thought, I’m in the wrong place."
Working his way up: Next, John went to work at Minneapolis-based General Mills in information systems and eventually held the number-two slot there. He was recruited into the top IT job at Scott Paper in Philadelphia, where he was named CIO in 1983.
His calling: In 1989, the Church of Latter-day Saints asked John, a lifelong Mormon, to lead the IT and communications department. "My wife and I kind of looked at each other and said, Do we believe what we purport to believe in? And we decided that we did. I went there at somewhere around 20 percent of what I had been making."
Another mission: Steve Finnerty, board member and former president of SIM, told a headhunter that John was a good candidate for the FBI slot. John ended up taking the job last July, deciding that before he retired he wanted to take on "the Everest of IT challenges."
Leadership philosophy: "I believe that soft is hard, and hard is easy. The decoding of that is, the technology is the easy part; the human is the hard part."