Tech Journal Leadership Roundup: Our Favorite CxO Advice to be a Better Leader in 2023

To start the new year with your best foot forward, we’re revisiting our favorite leadership advice from past interviews to help refine, inspire and coach you through your next leadership dilemma. From nurturing talent and leading through change to difficult decision-making and leading through risk, here’s how others in the C-suite are stepping up.

How can leaders create a positive culture that attracts and retains talent?

“What I believe is important is that organizations create a path for growth for the next generation — whether it’s women or men. Focus on recruiting and retaining the right skill sets for your organization. And support your employees by connecting them with potential mentors.”

Dorien Weijts
Senior Vice President of Strategy and Operations at Blue Yonder
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How do you support your people through change?

“The key is transparency. When my team understands why we’re changing, I find they create innovative ways to make that change happen. I’m transparent about what we’re trying to achieve, how hard it will be and how much I trust my team to figure it out. I think sometimes our teams need to hear that we know that change isn’t going to be perfect. I believe for any change effort, building momentum and early wins can fuel the next phase of the project. Sometimes the way to help someone through changes is to simply listen — there’s something powerful that comes from every conversation that leads to a better path forward.”

Francine Katsoudas
Executive Vice President and Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer at Cisco
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“We often hear that ‘change is constant.’ This is the reality in today’s world. Becoming effective leaders in our rapidly changing environment starts with ourselves. First and foremost, we must be resilient, adaptive and have a passion for change. We must become change agents. As I interact with many different teams at Blue Yonder, it’s important to explain why and how new initiatives support company objectives and add value to the organization. This goes a long way to leading people toward growing with and accepting the change.”

Dorien Weijts
Senior Vice President of Strategy and Operations at Blue Yonder
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How do you show up as a leader?

“Make sure the team is aware of the goals and objectives, has visibility into the results to date, and understands their roles and responsibilities. Document, monitor, be wise and seek good counsel. The team you surround yourself with is important, as there’s no way everything can be accomplished by one person. If there’s a clear vision of the future and the goals that you’re collectively trying to accomplish, your team doesn’t just come along — they also push you to achieve those long-term goals and objectives. Our team is as invested in the success of the business as we are, and they take it upon themselves to make sure we continue to deliver phenomenal experiences day in and day out — both on the manufacturing front as well as customer and brand engagement. We're extremely grateful for our team and how they make us better every day.”

Michael Chisnell
Co-Owner of Ignite Brewing Co.
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What’s been the most profound executive decision you’ve made as a CISO?

“Early in my CISO career, I was on the cusp of enacting a global network and security transformation. I worked hard to build a strong business case and payback to illustrate the value. However, times were tough. The board cut, so my budget was reduced, and I was still asked to lead and complete the transformation.

I embraced what I now call ‘the power of federation.’ I reached out to all the key partners for help and found win-win strategies. I obtained significant discounts for professional services. For software, I consolidated contracts in the U.S., since our budget was euro-based, allowing us to benefit from the exchange rate. Ultimately, we finished the project under budget.

We saved significantly on operating costs, strengthened enterprise security, enhanced network quality of service and consolidated servers. The project inspired multiple case studies and resulted in a Network World All Star award.

Essentially, the most profound executive decision I made was to ask for help and not quit. I learned early on that building strategic, trusted partnerships and strong business relationships can be a great asset to all parties.”

Arun DeSouza
Chief Information Security & Privacy Officer at Nexteer Automotive
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We’ve seen companies do some impressive transformations over the last year or so. What’s the most ambitious work you’ve seen from clients?

“I'd say a company that most impressed me is Leidos. Leidos is a Fortune 500 information technology company. They were delivering services the traditional way where it took months to create a service. But they moved to the cloud and completely reworked how they develop applications using something known as portable DevSecOps. Essentially, it's a way of using continuous integration, or continuous development, where they could deliver services in hours — not days, not weeks, not months, but literally could deploy services within hours and still be fully compliant and secure and doing all the things they needed to. I was very impressed with their story. They essentially completely reworked and transformed their business and Veeam was a part of that casting. And those are the kinds of stories that are very exciting because it's companies that are disrupting themselves and delivering solutions more quickly and more securely than they ever had in the past.”

Danny Allan
Chief Technology Officer at Veeam
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What advice would you give to other business and IT leaders seeking ambitious outcomes?

“I have a single plaque in my office, only one quote: What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail? What is that amazing thing that you could go do? If you're going to go out and come to work, why not go for the gusto? Why not reach for the stars? What do you have to lose? Go for it. That's always been my mindset.”

Tim Crown
Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder of Insight Enterprises

“Whatever you do — whether it’s IT modernization, digital transformation or whatever buzzword you want to use — the bottom line is that it has to make sense for your organization. Don't just implement technology for the sake of technology; put solutions in place that have a purpose to help the organization.”

Dan Groves
VP of IT for Westerra Credit Union
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IT initiatives or innovative ideas can feel ambitious for teams to pull off. How do you overcome risk or potential failure?

“No implementation is ever going to be perfect. Things are going to happen and it's how you respond to it that makes the difference. In the 20-some years I've done this, I've never had one go completely smooth, but how you respond to disruption is more important than your ability to say you can deliver because, at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding.”

Dan Groves
VP of IT for Westerra Credit Union
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“While all decisions that come to me may be important, not all are irreversible — and that’s a really important thing to distinguish. When all decisions are treated as if they can never be changed, you start to stifle an organization’s creativity and willingness to take risks — and really slow things down. I’ve actually found it more freeing for myself and my organization to acknowledge that we’ll make the best decision we can make now with the information available, and we’ll do it while agreeing what will be signs or indicators of success. That way you have an agreed measuring stick to evaluate if it was a good call or not — and if it wasn’t, we can simply change it.”

Carolee Gearheart
Chief Revenue Officer at Gympass
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Carolee Gearheart, Chief Revenue Officer at Gympass
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Be inspired by other ambitious leaders. Browse our full CxO Corner collection.