You've done the hard work to succeed in the information technology field, but what comes after that? Find out how to climb the organizational ladder to become a business influencer, decision maker, and even the CEO with this business guide written by a longtime technology and business management consultant. Houssam Kaddoura pinpoints how technology professionals can tweak their behavior, thinking, and decisions to overcome conflicts and stand out from the crowd. Learn how to: put aside a passion for technology to focus on what really matters to the overall organization; forge valuable connections with the organization's top decision makers; and demonstrate that you have what it takes to move out of your comfort zone to assume a more important role. If you're business minded and want to do more to help your organization, then you need to first excel at what you do and show you're willing and able to do more. Find out how to do it step by step with the lessons in CIO Going on CEO.

CIO Survival Guide is a leadership manual for the emerging role of the Chief Information Officer. This book supports and guides CIOs in acquiring or enhancing their technical skills and leadership competencies to be a full and respected member of the Executive Team. It includes exposition and practice of the skills and competencies required to be a successful CIO.

With Managing IT as a Business you'll get practical advice on how to unleash the full potential of this critical function so that companies can derive maximum benefit. It offers a proven plan for bridging the gap between CEOs and CIOs that has, until now, impeded their ability to work together in order to craft objectives, establish budget guidelines, and develop metrics for measuring IT value and success. In short, with this book as a guide, business leaders will learn how to manage IT as they would any other functional business unit.

Be the most effective CIO you can be—by learning from the best in the business Today's Chief Information Officers must be an entirely new breed of technology leader. With ever-changing demands from the business, and in an increasingly technology-centric business environment, CIOs must find game-changing innovations and process improvements that make a real impact on the bottom line. Business executives need their CIOs to be real partners—speaking the language of the business and donning their strategist caps—not just commodity managers. Those IT leaders who fail to break out of the order-taker, utility manager mold will, simply put, be looking for a new job. In Confessions of a Successful CIO: How the Best CIOs Tackle Their Toughest Business Challenges, current and future CIOs will gain invaluable perspectives from the stories of today's best IT leaders. These acclaimed leaders—each profiled in their own chapter—explain the toughest business decision they had to make, and how the outcome influenced and impacted their leadership style. These in-depth anecdotes take the reader inside some of the most challenging business climates imaginable and chronicle how these elite CIOs made the decisions that mattered. Read detailed case studies of how some of the best CIOs have handled their most challenging business problems Learn how the best CIOs anticipate changes to their business and respond—before the business comes knocking Explore how these top-flight CIOs make critical decisions around strategy and IT to not only benefit their companies, but in some cases, to save them from becoming obsolete. Analyze their perspectives on managing people, crises and balancing the risks and rewards of their "bet the farm" strategies Confessions of a Successful CIO is the new playbook for learning how to take risks, respond to crises, and create more value from IT. Each chapter presents a different challenge, giving present-day and future IT leaders the chance to examine, analyze and learn so that they can be just as successful as the CIOs they're reading about.

You have what it takes to be a CIO. Do you have a strategy for getting there? Now you do. "Gregory Smith has written the definitive work on how to achieve leadership success in IT. This well-written and carefully researched book is a must-read for any IT professional with aspirations toward the top IT spot. Years from now, seasoned IT leaders will be crediting Smith's book with playing a role in their success." —Martha Heller, Managing Director, IT Leadership Practice, Z Resource Group, and cofounder, CIO Executive Council "Wow! Put all the tips, advice, and strategies in this book to use now. The road to the top is rarely straight—follow Gregory's advice and the path will reveal itself to you!" —John R. Sullivan, CIO, AARP "While most professions have a distinct road map to the top, there is no standard career path to becoming a CIO. Smith addresses this unique challenge and provides aspiring CIOs with encouragement, advice, and essential skills based on years of his own and other CIOs' cumulative experience -- an important effort for the profession that Smith's fellow members in the CIO Executive Council embrace and applaud." —Mark Hall, General Manager of the CIO Executive Council "Teaching students what a CIO really does has been tough. We've had to choose between anecdotal treatments based on trade press articles and integrated academic frameworks that offer little in the way of lived experiences. Greg's book fixes that. By organizing interviews with leading technology executives, trade press reports, and his own experiences as a CIO, he provides an organized and comprehensive view of the job and its important role in modern organizations." —Fred Collopy, PHD, Professor and Chair of Information Systems and Professor of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University

Essential reading for IT professionals with aspirations toward the top IT spot, and for sitting CIOs looking to refine their mobile, social and cloud strategies and knowledge The definitive work on how to achieve leadership success in IT, Straight to the Top, Second Edition reveals how the role of the CIO is changing due to major trends associated with consumer and enterprise products and technologies driving new mobile solutions in today's organizations; cloud computing and the move away from controlled / internally managed data centers to pay as you use and elastic cloud infrastructure and application services; and the impact social media is having on today's complex organizations. Author Gregory S. Smith expertly coaches existing and aspiring CIOs on building the requisite skills through his observations and experience as a veteran CIO with more than twenty-five years of experience leading IT teams and delivering complex technical solutions in the information technology field. An invaluable guide to help information technology and business professionals recognize the qualities, skills, and expertise necessary to attain the role of a CIO or enhance the skills for sitting CIOs Equips IT managers, CIOs, and CTOs to strategically plan their career moves Packed with encouragement, advice, and essential skills for aspiring and sitting CIOs Features interviews with leading IT professionals, CIOs, and executive recruiting professionals Providing an organized and comprehensive view of the CIO job and its important role in modern organizations, Straight to the Top, Second Edition equips sitting CIOs and CIO candidates with the strategies and knowledge necessary to be successful in the new business normal - a mobile, social and cloud-based world, and how to provide technology leadership as a world-class CIO.