On this weeks episode of The Smart IT Podcast, I welcomed Harsha Bellur, CIO at James Avery, to the show. Harsha is a technology executive with brand and function leadership to inform and influence business strategies, adept at driving a customer-focused culture and inspiring digital innovation. He is effective at the intersection of technology and business with a focus on developing flexible, scalable solutions to solve business challenges and opportunities, while managing costs and risk.

We started the show by hearing from Harsha his origin story to becoming a CIO. Then we explored the CIO's role at the intersection between business and technology, including:

-His approach to teaming, the importance of building a team that gets everyone on the same page, having new teammates that fill gaps in his strengths/weaknesses, and viewing others as his advisors.

-Orchestrate team work with the right people in the right roles, helping everyone understand the big picture of IT's value. Everything that IT does has to support the overall business and customer experience.

-It's important to give individual contributors the space to have their voices and ideas heard. Empower them to do what is good for the organization without undue bureaucracy.

-Viewpoint of business and customer is one of full integration. Early on, used to be about IT + business alignment, now in age of digital economy, its more about technology integration + enablement of the business. It's about technology-enabled growth.

-He talks more about the business and customers than he does about technology. How they can leverage technology to generate value in the business. Have to intimately understand business process. Role of CIO is a business strategists that is highly competent in the technology. Actually applies to all roles in IT. Know how your contribution is effecting the overall business.

-Want to democratize idea of innovation as part of natural state of the technology function. not a separate function. Everyone needs to wear innovators hat.

-Need to be able to decipher hype from what's new. Leadership role to help organization take a position to clarify their point of view on new technology. Need to facilitate that conversation.

Wrapping up, we talked about what aspiring CIOs can learn from his experience. First, you have to be curious, always asking questions before coming up with answers. Asking, what are we trying to solve? Coming up with a solution to a true understanding of a business problem instead of responding to a request. Second, continually expand your horizon of responsibilities into adjacent functions or fields. Broaden your sense of what is available. And thirdly, continually build and develop relationships with individuals and teams. Relationships are key to helping others, learning, negotiations, the prioritization of work, and addressing competing demands. Be a person others want to come to engage.

#cio #career #leadership #innovation #cybersecurity #business #teamwork

Show Notes Resources:

Harsha Bellur on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshabellur/

"The CIO as a Chief “Investment” Officer", written by Harsha Bellur: https://nationalcioreview.com/articles-insights/leadership/the-cio-as-a-chief-investment-officer/

"Customer Experience and the Role of the CIO", written by Harsha Bellur: https://nationalcioreview.com/articles-insights/leadership/customer-experience-and-the-role-of-the-cio/

James Avery: https://www.linkedin.com/company/jamesavery/

William D. Reed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cciewill/

Smart IT info: https://www.williamreed.info

Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thesmartitpodcast

Podcast Homepage: https://the-smart-it-podcast.captivate.fm/