“Can you put together a few slides on that?” The CEO might ask. CIOs, never notorious for having a lot of time on their hands, could panic. The good news, however, is that some of the hard work may already have been done for them.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been showcasing some presentations I thought would be of interest to IT executives that are publicly available on SlideShare. These have dealt with everything from security and mobile computing to dealing with an M&A. See Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Here are a few more ideas. Expect to see this as an ongoing series in CanadianCIO.
Impress your CMO
No one will be able to accuse CIOs of failing to understand the digital challenges facing their counterparts in marketing if they take the time to look at this slide show from Robert Rose, who works with the Content Marketing Institute. “Customers, content and experiences” actually touches on the CIO-CMO relationship while also providing a good background in how to optimize various online and mobile channels to engage customers and ultimately contribute more directly to the business. There’s a lot in here that CMOs will be asking for eventually, if they haven’t already. Why not be proactive about helping them before they even ask?
Prep your hiring and training plan
Though it’s based on U.S. data from consulting firm Foote Partners, this brings together the most likely technology skills that are likely to crop up over the next year and beyond. Some, like business intelligence, are well-worn, but others are more platfor-specific such as MongoDB and HBase. It’s important to note that these are also the skills that lack specific certification, so it may be worth considering how best to judge the quality of skill proficiency of a given candidate — and how many of these skills you can squeeze into what often seem increasingly smaller IT teams.
Motivate a demoralized team
There are times when those in the IT department feel like enterprise pariahs, and part of the CIO’s job is to remind them they are vital to the mission of the organization. Created by a UK vendor, this is a humourous take on the things that make IT managers special. Use the best of this list and insert your own examples of specific projects or problem-solving that team members have accomplished to back up these claims, and help them find newfound purpose in a career that’s as full of rewards as it is challenges.
Show what the future holds
Most people expect CIOs to be on top of the latest enterprise IT, but there’s an assumption they seldom see what’s coming next. A user experience designer put together this short but entertaining deck about wearable computing and how it continues to evolve towards the mainstream. An Apple iWatch and Google Glass may be a little too bleeding edge for most firms, but in your next corporate strategy session wake people up by showing them what the possibilities are and how you can deploy wearables in a way that makes sense for your target customer, internal or otherwise.
Next step: Don’t forget to follow CanadianCIO on SlideShare as we amass our own collection of kick-ass presentations.
