I am the CIO at Mutual Bancorp and oversee infrastructure, data, applications and digital. If it has to do with technology, it goes through someone on my team. My journey started in consulting for a number of different organizations and settled into banking for the last 15 years.
My company is based in Hyannis, MA, though I live just outside of Milwaukee WI. With the changes that COVID brought about, we became a mixed organization of hybrid and remote work. This has been a fantastic development for us because we were able to attract and retain talent from across the country that we wouldn't have had the opportunity to work with otherwise.
It started my career in consulting, which I believe was a key aspect to success later in my career. It taught me how to be curious, stay curious, challenge the status quo, think critically and to always look for ways to improve.
Those skills - especially curiosity and continuous improvement - have been critical to the growth of my career. In my 10 years at Wells Fargo, I held seven different positions, each of them different and each of them came because I was continually asking questions and making suggestions.
I was very fortunate to get a wide range of experience across all functions in technology by being open to the opportunities that came up. Once I had that broad base, I felt ready to pursue an executive opportunity and felt confident I could do a good job.
It hasn't consciously been my goal to become CIO, I was driven more by the idea that better decisions could be made by senior leadership. In order to be able to make - or have the most influence over - those decisions, I needed to be in that senior leadership circle.
Of course, when you get there you realize that it's not as simple as it seems from the outside.
Technology leaders will need to continue to grow in their understanding and in-depth knowledge of the business they partner with. Gone are the days when a technology leader could sit behind a closed door and simply make sure the computers and applications are functional.
This change has already started and is rapidly accelerating, technology leaders who don't have an in-depth understanding of their industry and their company will not have a place in leadership circles for long.
What skills do you think leaders of the future will need in order to thrive?
I see the fundamental skills of successful leaders remaining the same. They have to be curious Understand their business, understand their customers, be empathetic and continue to improve themselves and their organization every day.
Processes will change, technologies will change, and customer needs will change, but having these basic skills will help leaders adapt to whatever comes up.
My primary focus going forward Is to leverage the experience I have to share my expertise build something that will last and help grow the next generation of great technology leaders.
Be curious. By seeking to learn and understand a world of possibilities opens up and you become visible to others as someone who cares, is invested and can help the company improve and thrive.
"Be curious."
At this point, they are evolutionary technologies, not revolutionary technologies. There is an extraordinary amount of hype surrounding both, but flavors of AI have been in use for decades so it's really the focus on generative AI that is causing the conversations to take place. AI, machine learning (which is a branch of AI), blockchain, etc. Are all tools in our technology toolbox?
Still need to focus on the business outcomes we need to target and evaluate the available tools to see if they fit. Emerging technologies may or may not be the appropriate tool to deliver business value in an optimal way.
Watching someone on my team grow beyond what they thought they could be. Empowering, encouraging and challenging those I work with and seeing the results is by far my most meaningful accomplishment.
Provide a dedicated time once a week for people to spend learning new technologies. I allocate an extensive training budget every year to ensure team members have the opportunity to expand their skill sets and explore new ways of thinking and doing.
A big thank you to Bradley Enneking from HTLF for sharing his journey to date.
If you would like to gain more perspective from Tech Leaders and CIOs you can read some of our other interviews here.