The Interview
-   DHL
-   toptable
-   ICAP
-   RollUp Media
-   BNY Mellon
-   TC Consulting
-   MarkitSERV
-   Pinesoft
-   IDBS
-   Vertex
-   LateRooms
-   Betfair  

I left school in the days where being a Post Office Engineer was the highest level ‘IT’ job around - this was when Telegrams and Telex were the technology of the day!  I had an interview for an engineer but failed because I was colour blind (not very helpful when part of the role was looking at different coloured wires).   I started to look around at other options and decided to take a City & Guilds Programming and a Computer Science A-Level course.  These courses weren`t available at school so having taken my CSE’s, I enrolled at college.  Surprisingly, I understood the subjects quite quickly, as a lot of it was logic and common sense.

Generally with most jobs that I have had there has been a similar pattern.  I meet with senior business stakeholders, other peers within the business, my direct reports and the various members of my team.  I see myself as a ‘facilitator’ of sorts and it’s a role that I love because I get to be involved in different aspects of the business.  The interesting aspect of being a CIO is that you get to operate at three quite different levels of issues; strategic, tactical and operational.  The strategy element comes into play when working with the board or the senior team and the operational element is when I have to deal with an urgent issue, such as a service outage.

The delivery of something; whether it’s a project, vision, team build or anything that`s got an outcome is incredibly rewarding.  To see something through from beginning to end; to understand the business needs and no matter what the problem (in fact most of the time; the more challenging, the more satisfying) is just very personally rewarding.  Being innovative and finding creative solutions to a problem by taking qualified and quantified risks can only happen when you understand the business and how best to move forward.  That definitely comes from developing the right team (i.e. creating capability) and then being an authentic leader by creating environments where people are able to deliver.

Building bridges between IT and the rest of the business - the gap has always been evident, as even though it’s slowly closing, it’s still very much an issue and something that all IT professionals should be working towards resolving.  I have found that even when IT is the business, there’s still a gap separating IT with the rest of the business.

Changing the culture and influencing the business; especially by your own personal development is critical.  The mistake that a lot of CIO`s make is that they reach the ‘pinnacle’ of their careers and then plateau.  There is a constant learning curve in this job and improving your personal capability via net working, researching etc is a must.

Understanding and nurturing good talent, building the right team and the importance of governance and managing risk (particularly in financial services)  are both critical parts of the role.

First and foremost, don`t get too structured in the way they approach the role. There are various methodologies and structured approaches out there, and these are, of course, helpful to ensuring delivery.  The key thing is that CIO`s have to think much more creatively about how they solve problems and that skill is counter-intuitive for somebody who as an IT background.

Invest in yourself – don`t make the mistake of just focusing on today`s tasks without thinking about how you need to develop as in individual in the future.  I would strongly recommend that up and coming CIO`s invest in a mentor to act as both a confidant and a sounding board.  It`s a role that I currently perform with a number of senior IT execs.

Being a CIO is all about relationships; I believe in investing time in key relationships both inside and outside the business and in particular helping the people around me to become the best that they can be.  The technical aspect of my job probably only takes up about 10% of my day; the rest is all about building and maintaining relationships - which is why my own business, Transformation Partners Ltd, is more like  a ‘paid hobby’ for me as I get to do what I love.

Mostly lucky breaks!  I started life as a programmer and went on to become an analyst when I discovered that I found programming quite easy and didn’t get the challenge that I craved.  For example, I once wrote a program that worked perfectly first time with no bugs.  After that I thought it was time to move on!  After being an analyst, I moved on to being various team and project leaders, then head of department and finally CIO.  I have been an IT executive for about 15 years and have really found my ‘favoured role` - I enjoy being a leader.

Probably the first ever large team I put together.  It’s a big responsibility and along with finding the perfect hard and soft skills, you need to manage the expectations of business stakeholders (some of whom can be very difficult!) as well as develop the skills of the team you’ve put together.  They weren’t small teams either; probably around three to four hundred people; and the largest team I have assembled and worked with was when I was at RBS; 2,500 people spread across the UK, Europe and India.  It’s incredibly gratifying when the team you have put together really delivers and all the individuals combine for the best possible outcome.  When I work with my direct reports, I believe in complete transparency, no secrets and no politics.

Resilience and being able to cope with stress is a big one!  Naturally, the role of a CIO can be very stressful when you’re juggling different teams, projects and business stakeholders, it`s almost an art form.  You need to be creative with the way you solve problems and encourage your team to think differently.

Graduates are probably seeing a lot of jobs being outsourced to India and would probably be suspicious regarding the stability of their career within IT.   As IT Directors, CTO`s and CIO`s start to retire, the next cohort of senior-level professionals should be ready to take over and for that to happen, they need to be in the industry in the first place!  Graduates, and people who didn’t even go to University should be aware that it’s not always of the utmost importance to have a mathematical or computer science degree - there were modules for my City & Guilds awards that contained mathematics and I have seldom ever used them across my career!  Common sense is the most important thing, especially in people who want longevity in this career.