Ace Your New CIO Role in the First 12 Months!

The New Year is often seen as a fresh start with many of people kicking off the new year with a new role or maybe a promotion. If you are kicking off 2023 with a new role as a CIO you already know that your first year needs to be great in order to set your department up for success, here are our top tips on how you can make your first 12 months the best one yet…

Listen To Your Team

Listening is one of the most important qualities a great CIO can have. When stepping into a new role, embark on a listening tour to find out more about the organisation and the issues that may lie beneath it. Give employees an opportunity to speak openly and frankly about any issues that they may have and give them an opportunity to highlight anything that they think is a priority. Only from doing this exercise will you be able to plan effectively.

Build Relationships

Often IT is viewed as a function rather than a utility, but the most successful CIOs recognise the importance of engaging and building relationships with different teams to show how each area within the business can receive help from IT to improve the overall business function.

Build Trust

By following the above steps, you are building essential foundations of trust. By acknowledging the challenges of your team and other departments and working hard to fix them you will be helping to create a sustainable and effective working relationship.

Is There a Skills Gap?

Having the right team in the right goals is vital to success, by listening to your team early on to show skills gaps within your team you can decide what measures are needed to implement plans and set your teams’ training agenda early on.

Make Your First 100 Days – Impressive!

When starting in a new role its essential to create a plan for what you want to achieve within the first 100 days in employment. Once you have met with your team and the wider team you will need to devise a plan of achievable goals to action within the first 100 days.

There is no ‘I’ in Team

Naming someone who can deputise you and conduct day-to-day obstacles can be important, CIO’s who have an assistant can then dedicate their time to more strategic goals. Remember there is no ‘I’ in Team. This role doesn’t have to be a formalised role, but it does need to be someone who is pragmatic and can make decisions quickly and effectively as well as someone who has a ‘can do’ attitude.