Should you occur to be one in every of CIO Ken Grady’s 3,280 followers on LinkedIn, his New 12 months’s message could have already struck a chord in your coronary heart — because it did in mine.
“Crucial intention I’ve for the brand new 12 months is a really agency decision to be extra light with folks, together with myself,” he wrote. “My ‘pushed’ instincts don’t at all times translate to ‘useful.’ Being sort doesn’t imply being unwilling to do the onerous work. Being light doesn’t imply being unable to step up.”
Grady is the know-how chief of Maine-based IDEXX Laboratories, a pet healthcare diagnostics firm serving veterinarians and clients in 175 international locations. His IT profession trajectory has taken him by way of management roles from small start-ups to Fortune 500 world firms throughout life sciences, R&D organizations and provide chain operations.
As I learn his considerate, uplifting message to fellow CIOs about dealing with yet-another pandemic 12 months of continued uncertainty, what resonated for me was his recommendation to take a look at 2022 as “a clean web page, ready for us to put in writing our personal intentions.”
“You should have extra to supply others, in the event you just remember to assist your personal area to make errors, study, and thrive,” he suggested. “Be good to yourselves. 2022 wants us.”
Grady is the one CIO I do know who creates his personal transient TikTok movies – each week for the reason that pandemic started — to replace his globally dispersed workforce about firm information and to share his ideas. I caught up with him not too long ago to listen to extra about how he’s placing his 2022 intentions into follow.
Maryfran Johnson: CIOs discuss empathy as an important management talent rather more brazenly at this time than ever earlier than, however you’ve added a kindness dimension to that. Why does that matter?
Ken Grady: I truly need to be a form chief and creating empathy means placing your self in different’s sneakers and being sort. I do know it sounds very aspirational, however with every thing we’re all going through with Covid, the world wants extra kindness. The CIO job could be very folks intensive. Our job is to ship and create change – by altering the best way folks work, or have interaction with clients, or decide how workers work. Should you’re not people-centric, it’s onerous to create change.
Speaking about it might sound smooth and squishy, however I’ve particular units of objectives across the worker expertise, to make it business-centric. Speaking about it out loud can be necessary, in any other case they received’t know. You must mannequin it out loud.
What made you consider creating TikTok movies? It’s vastly widespread with Millennials and GenZ, however for a GenXer CIO like your self, it’s a bit surprising.
That first week of lockdown, all of us went house and simply saved working. It was such a white-knuckle time for everybody, and I assumed ‘I gotta say one thing to the workforce!’ So I pointed the telephone at my face, and did a type of ‘We’ll get by way of this’ video.’ Each Friday morning since then, I do a wrap-up video for my workforce. I’ve at all times had a really world workforce, with folks in China, Brazil, in every single place, they usually didn’t hear from me fairly often. Now they hear from me each week.
Was it simple to grow to be such a TikTok-friendly CIO?
No, it was tremendous awkward at first! However after 40-50 instances, much less so. I’m often on TikTok on daily basis and creating my strolling movies that means is tremendous efficient. The interior movies are about 10 minutes lengthy, however my exterior ones are a lot shorter.
An enormous a part of the explanation I’m creating content material to submit out on the earth is that we will’t get out on the earth a lot anymore. How will proficient IT folks know they need to work for IDEXX? I would like them to google us and discover stuff that appears fascinating. Anybody can work anyplace nowadays, so it’s key to create a tradition that makes anybody need to keep – or to affix us. It’s been a really deliberate technique.
Along with your decade of CIO expertise now, between IDEXX and New England Biolabs, what has modified in your personal profession technique?
What no one realizes about being a CIO (or these aspiring to be CIO) is that it’s the one job in IT the place you’re *not* being employed by somebody in IT. You must be a enterprise chief and an skilled who understands tech. The largest change for me was realizing I wanted to grow to be a business CIO. I was a type of CIOs who prevented gross sales and advertising and marketing. I didn’t need to work with these guys, but your entire firm will depend on them. So I pivoted into working and collaborating with advertising and marketing and gross sales. It was a career-changer. And I inform the tech people who I mentor at this time that no one else owns your growth plan. There’s no roadmap to turning into a CIO, no containers to tick. After all, there are instruments and assets that will help you, but it surely’s greatest completed in the event you’re intentional.
