What’s the best career advice you ever received?
The following is an excerpt from an interview with IDG Connect. IDG conducts interviews with industry executives on business trends, technology trends, and career advice for the next generation of executives. Read the full interview at IDG Connect or at msts.com
What’s the best career advice you ever received?
Very early in my career I was an end user support technician working on a corporate leadership trainer’s PC. He was a former CEO and a very experienced leader who had moved into executive coaching and leadership training. While I was sitting at his desk, troubleshooting an issue for him, I noticed a piece of paper taped to the side of his monitor:
This is taken from the book “Make it a Winning Life” by Wolfe Rinke. Every phrase comparison I read made me more motivated and inspired. When he came back in the room, I asked him if I could copy it. He of course said yes and told me that “anybody who can live on the left side of that chart will be very successful.” I’ve tried to do that every day since.
What business or technology initiatives will be most significant in driving IT investments in your organization in the coming year?
Everything today is about automation, speed and data. Our core product is “Credit as a Service” for B2B companies. We are applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to the product to automate underwriting and make better credit decisions. We are also applying machine learning to help our customers forecast and identify sales opportunities. For the last three years, we have been working to “servicize” our platform and move those services to the cloud (AWS leveraging Kubernetes). We are also continuing to invest in internal operations automation and business intelligence, which includes our data warehouse and analytics tools.
What are the CEO’s top priorities for you in the coming year? How do you plan to support the business with IT?
At MSTS, we view business priorities and technology priorities as one and the same. Our CEO’s priorities are:
• focusing efforts across the organization on our core competencies and standardizing our product offering
• increasing automation
• leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence
These priorities are not only supported by IT, but driven by IT. The company strategy is synonymous with the product and technology strategy.
Does the conventional CIO role include responsibilities it should not hold? Should the role have additional responsibilities it does not currently include?
I see more and more CIO/CTO roles evolving to include product and service leadership. As product and service offerings become increasingly dependent on technology, the CIO/CTO becomes more critical to the company strategy. In a lot of cases, it makes sense to align these areas under the CIO’s leadership.
Read the full interview at IDG Connect or at msts.com