According to research conducted by Harvey Nash, an IT Recruitment firm, everything. Information World Review reports on this research in an article titled “CIOs should do more bragging” where they write:
The survey of 1,000 senior IT professionals found that the idea of the ” personal brand” of a chief information officer (CIO) was viewed as being as important as project delivery or operational effectiveness. In light of this, Harvey Nash has advised IT professionals to be strong leaders who are vocal about their achievements.
Almost two thirds of respondents said they could see a direct correlation between the IT department achieving its objectives, and its leader having a strong image and profile within the firm. Ninety per cent of senior IT executives said that any time spent on so-called brand building was essential to the success of their career.
Emphasis mine.
Looks like its time for CIO’s to learn to sell themselves and their organizations. Time to build that personal brand (and the IT organization’s brand).
How to get started building your Brand
In a nutshell, Personal Branding should be who you are and who the world believes you to be. Sometimes these don’t align (i.e., when people misrepresent themselves, etc), but it’s a good enough place to start for the purposes of this post (to learn more about personal branding, jump over to the Personal Branding Blog).
To build your brand, jump into the world of social media and get yourself out there. Be authentic and real in these arenas…don’t overdo it. Speak at conferences and join industry groups. Sell yourself and your team’s capabilities and constantly talk about your teams achievements.
I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas on personal branding for CIO’s and technical professionals. Would also love to hear any success (or failure) stories about CIO’s and/or technical folks building their personal brand.
Hat tip to PMThink! and Bas de Baar for links to the IWR article.
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5 responses to “CIO’s – Start working on your Personal Brand”
I agree completely, but would extend that to all senior leadership in strategic roles. I think community and industry involvement is critical. Share what you have learned, and learn from other companies expensive mistakes.
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You are correct…this is definitely something that all senior leaders should undertake. The focus on CIO's is key for me because many CIO's I've worked with haven't been that keen on 'blowing their own horn' and weren't that great at selling their own IT organization's capabilities.
Blog Post: CIO’s – Start working on your Personal Brand – http://bit.ly/5xV3
Time for CIOs to build that personal brand (and the IT organization’s brand) by @ericdbrown http://bit.ly/5xV3
This was a strategy implemented effectively by one of the companies we worked with.
The GM IT (CIO) and some of his senior managers "got their names out there" to project a high level of IT competence for the organization.
This was done through aggressive partnerships with various publications (e.g. volunteering for case studies and interviews) and non profit special interest groups (e.g. volunteering to hold high profile organizing positions).
This was a strategic decision, as the company had a long-term vision of being able to sell their in-house developed system as an industry template, and they did not have the marketing or business development budget of your stock standard consultancies.
To-date, the template had been sold and implemented in at least four other organizations within their industry, one of which is offshore.
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