What is good IT Leadership

Best Practices in IT Leadership & Stewardship
Hello and Welcome to the first of many thoughts about the leadership role in IT

Over time I'll be discussing my thoughts on the following and more;
- how the IT role should align with the business
- how does architecture fit in the big picture of the entire enterprise
- where and when does outsourcing really make sense
- how should any company approach business continuity (especially from the IT perspective)
- should IT be a leader of enterprise change and innovation
- what makes a strong CIO
- what makes a strong IT team
- what should a CEO look for in a CIO and why is it so important
- Green IT
- Building the right Data Center for your business

A little history on me:
I've been in IT for over 20 years now. I started my career in an old style Unisys mainframe data center working as an operator. I ran schedules, mounted 9 track tapes, loaded paper in big printers and passed out reports. Starting in late 1993 I moved from this legacy environment where I had become a Data Center Supervisor to a completely new job at HP as a PC support technician. Throughout the rest of the 90's I moved up through assorted IT infrastructure management positions at HP and in November of 99 I was leading a large team of 120 with responsibilities for 9000 internal customers (end-users). My years at HP gave me the opportunity to take responsibility for international functions (Singapore, HK, Malaysia, UK & Germany) and I also had staff or partners in several states in the US. My first HP management role was Helpdesk Manager, where my primary objective was to build a helpdesk function to support 3000 end user customers. Over time I also took on client support, technical solutions, web development and data centers. I still look back on my years at HP with a great deal of fondness. I worked with some excellent people and was given the opportunity to contribute in so many ways.

From 2000 through mid 2007 I held positions as Associate Director and then Director of Global Infrastructure for a rapidly growing biotech (200 million in sales to 2 billion in 5 years) and for a technology company in the SAN storage vertical.
In my role as Director of infrastructure I built teams from scratch, and restored teams that were falling apart. I've built Infrastructure including new data centers, global networks, email solutions, application provisioning and much more. I've implemented controls for SOX and compliance for the FDA and build strong change management processes. Of course, I didn't do any of the preceding alone, I had a strong team as my foundation.

The infrastructure I've been a part of creating or implementing and managing is what most people think of when they think of their success, but for me it's the people. I've been a part of some amazing teams whom I've learned a great deal from. Of all the accomplishments that I can claim some credit for, it's my work in developing strong people and teams and then maintaining those relationships through the years that I take the most pride in.