Joe Topinka, a career CIO, is a dynamic author, speaker, and coach and a three-time CIO-of-the-year award winner. He has over 35 years of success leading IT organizations and driving meaningful business results in the process. His game-changing IT Business Partner Program bridges the chasm between business stakeholders and IT organizations. Joe is a frequent keynote speaker on this subject where he shares his vision at industry events across the country.  His bestselling book, IT Business Partnerships: A Field Guide was recently named a top-ten read for CIOs.

Joe is Board Chair of the Business Relationship Management Institute, an organization dedicated to advancing the BRM capability worldwide. Joe is the founder of CIO Mentor, LLC, a consultancy focused on helping companies leverage the power of technology to achieve profit-driven business results. As a veteran CIO, Joe has experience across many industries including banking services and packaged software, brokerage, accounting, manufacturing, and retail. He is currently VP-CIO of SnapAV and is responsible for an innovative award-winning IoT-based platform call OvrC (pronounced oversee) that is changing the way home and SMB integrators serve their customers.

Today we talked about

• Adopt the right language (not customers or peers)
• IT leaders are business leaders and need to think like them
• IT Business Partnerships.
• IT as the central nervous system of most companies
• The importance of Field Studies (field trips)
• You have to get the operations running smoothly
• Start your business relationships with Sales Departments because they are closer to the customers
• Team Building
• Converged IT
• 4 Principles of Accountability
  • Commit to something 100%
  • Be resilient
  • Ownership
  • Learn
• Facts before Stories
• Human API (Assume Positive Intent)
• Support it, don’t debate it
• Don’t BMW drive (Bitch, Moan, and Wine)
• No sub-comb to the trap of an open door policy
• Stop judging and start helping

Books Mentioned

Joe Topinka – IT Business Partnerships: A Field Guide

Jocko Willink – Extreme Ownership

Cy Wakeman – No Ego

Connect with Joe

Personal Website

CIO Mentors

Twitter

LinkedIn

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