How do you define IT Leadership?   Does it consist of aligning IT with the business?  Driving business efforts forward?  Increasing Quality of IT Services?  What Skills Does it Take to be an Effective IT Leader?

What You Will Learn

Content that will be presented includes:

• How to Enable CEO's to Lead IT Effectively: The Earth, the Sea, and the Mountain

• How to Transform Your IT Organization from Tactical to ‘Strategic to the Business’

·     How to Identify and Focus on Your Core IT Competencies

• Extreme Results:  Business Secrets of Successful IT Initiatives

• Strategies for Successfully Leading the IT Organization During Changing Times

• Next IT Wave: What Might It Be and How Can You Prepare for It?

• How to Recruit the Right Type of Future IT Leaders
• IT Leadership: How to be an Effective IT Leader

Conference Program

8:00am - 9:00am - Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00am - 10:00am

How to Enable CEO's to Lead IT Effectively: The Earth, the Sea, and the Mountain
Ken Pedersen, COO, Luna; Former CIO/IT Consultant

The CEO and the CIO are bound together in partnership by their common field of vision across the enterprise. The CIO serves as the execution architect and prime mover of information. The CEO acts as ultimate interpreter of business significance of that information. In its finest form, the two together build a virtuous loop that relates observation to possibility, and possibility to profitable outcomes.      

Yet, most CEOs don't fully recognize the symbiotic potential of this relationship. And many CIOs don't nurture the relationship to its highest potential. In 'Enabling CEO Leadership: The Earth, the Sea, and the Mountain,' we show session participants how to re-envision their own role in equipping CEOs to lead IT effectively. We present three vital elements for delivering on that vision:

1. 'The Earth' -- How to communicate about the everyday physics of systems work in a way that makes CEOs better IT leaders.
2. 'The Sea' -- Leadership 'how-to's" for bridging the waters among often isolated department and divisional 'islands.'
3. 'The Mountain' -- How to activate 'Executive Imagination' by lifting the vision of CEOs to a higher place that maximizes CIO contribution.

The CIO is part beacon of possibility, part focus-bringing lenscrafter. When paired with skilled CEO leadership, CIOs confirm their rightful place at the table as full-bodied participants in the management team. 

10:00am - 10:30am - Refreshment Break

10:30am - 11:30am 

How to Transform Your IT Organization from Tactical to ‘Strategic to the Business’
(panel discussion)

Moderator:

Mark Hattas, Founder & CEO, Geneca
Panelists:
Shouvik Dutta, VP of IT, Hart Schaffner Marx
Gary Gorson, CIO, Shell Vacations, LLC

David Gillhouse, CIO, Bimba Manufacturing Company
John W. Von Stein, EVP & CIO, The Options Clearing Corp.

Perception is reality.  Do you know what the perception of IT is within your organization’s extended enterprise?  Is your organization viewed as a cost center or a business enabler?

In this session, IT leaders will learn strategies and tactics for:

• Understanding the ‘true perception’ of IT
• How to change the perception of IT if need be
• How to understand the cultural differences between business and IT and move towards alignment
• How to measure and report outcomes of your efforts to enable the perception of a service center/value add organization
• How to use 100% chargeback for some services while leveraging your most of your funds for services that have a direct impact on your core business
   

11:30am - 12:30pm

How to Identify and Focus on Your Core IT Competencies
Jay Gleischman, CEO and Managing Partner, 4Gen Consulting LP

Delivering significant IT value to the enterprise requires a granular, streamlined approach.  Decisions need to be made on what IT can do extremely well internally and when outside providers should come in to help support the operation.    This is not an easy task.

In this session attendees will learn a framework to help support these decisions.

Topics that will be discussed include:

• How to determine which internal IT services deliver the most value to the enterprise

• How to implement a strategic process that evaluates every possible source for IT services that are required by the organization

• How to evaluate third party providers based on competencies, risks, and the short-term and long-term goals of the enterprise

• How to manage external providers as subcontractors of the IT organization

• How to measure the value and report the outcomes of your focus on core competencies as well as third party supporting providers

12:30pm - 1:30pm - Luncheon

1:30pm - 2:30pm 

Extreme Results:  Business Secrets of Successful IT Initiatives
Robert Balon, Principal & Managing Partner, Clerestory Consulting LLC

Managing the risk of critical IT initiatives can achieve powerful byproducts:  speed, profound business results, and unique IT leadership opportunities.  Learn how IT can deliver extraordinary business results by considering four subtle, yet pervasive factors that greatly influence the success of major IT initiatives. 

Topics in this interactive session include:

•  Achieving your own “iPod moment”

• Engaging business stakeholders in a strategic dialogue

• How to deliver more effective results and increase speed by minimizing surprises

• High stakes IT poker – winning by not gambling

• Reducing development costs without trying

2:30pm - 3:00pm - Refreshment Break

3:00pm - 4:00pm 

Strategies for Successfully Leading the IT Organization During Changing Times
Moderator:

John Costanza, IT Services Product Leader, Acxiom
Panelists:

Mike Parisi, Director IT, Illinois Tool Works
Peter Logothetis, SVP & CIO, QBE Americas,
Lac Van Tran, SVP & CIO Information Services, Rush University Hospital
Bernadette McMahon, CIO, Columbia College Chicago

The success of the IT organization is dependent upon multiple parts working together to achieve the goals of the enterprise.  The key to IT’s success lies in determining which individuals and which roles are vital to make IT more effective and better aligned with the enterprise. In this session, you will learn from a panel of senior IT executives how they have successfully identified, recruited and retained the right individuals for their respective IT organizations.  Areas to be covered include: 

• Understanding the real reasons IT employees select a new job and why they stay

• Innovative low cost strategies to make your IT organization an employer of choice

• How to evaluate specific characteristics of your top performers and position them in the right roles

• How to determine which individuals are the best suited for interfacing with the business

4:00pm - 5:00pm

Next IT Wave: What Might It Be and How Can You Prepare for It? (panel discussion featuring enterprise IT CIOs)

Moderator:

Hubert Yoshida, CTO, Hitachi Data Systems

Panelists:

Kim W. Tracy, Exec. Dir.  University Computing Services, Northeastern Illinois University
John Phillips, Vice President & CIO, Allscripts
Anuraag Bhargava, CIO, Electro-Motive Diesels

Steven Carlberg, Network Architect, University HealthSystem Consortium

In this session, attendees will learn from and interact with a group of visionary and seasoned CIOs as to what they forecast to be the Next IT Wave and how they IT organization can adapt and prepare for it.  Topics that will be covered include both the current applications as well as predictions of the currently unforeseen.

Current:

• What Forrester deems as ‘Technology Populism’

• Applications that are based on personal interactions to help generate business opportunities

• Ways to leverage Web 2.0 technologies

Future:

• Predictions that will be made and the potential impact on IT

Conference Price: $199.00 per person