LFCE Spring Event Helps Organizations Maximize Their IT Professionals’ Value to the Business
Left to right: Lou Mazzucchelli, Jody Berns,
and Karenann Terrell take questions during
the panel discussion.
New York and Chicago IT Experts Provide Insights and Strategies
On May 30th, Lake Forest Corporate Education and Technology Executives Club (TEC) presented "Maximize Your IT Professionals’ Value to the Business” to a full-house, invitation-only crowd.
The event featured senior-level IT executives from Cutter Consortium, HSBC, W.W. Grainger, Baxter International, and Peoplenext:
- Lou Mazzucchelli, Fellow, Cutter Consortium
- Karenann Terrell, Corporate Vice President, Chief Information Officer, Baxter International, Inc.
- George C. Rimnac, Jr., Vice President, Chief Information Officer, W.W. Grainger, Inc.
- Jody C. Berns, Managing Director, Business Systems, HSBC Technology & Services (USA) Inc.
- Bernard Layton, Managing Partner, Peoplenext, Inc.
The event was moderated by Greg Kozak, Vice President, Information Technology, Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.
Cutter Consortium’s Mazzucchelli presented lessons learned from his varied and successful professional career in IT and finance. Summarizing some of these lessons very succinctly, Mazzucchelli emphasized that in creating value for the business, “People matter. Design matters. Control is an illusion. Trust your gut.”
Baxter’s Terrell diagrammed a vivid scenario of the IT professional’s career path continuum. There is, noted Terrell, an inflection point along this path where IT professionals can begin the transition from being managers of technology to being managers of business value. Getting to this trajectory is not easy, but it is well worth the journey and the results can be extraordinary. IT departments “need to move from alignment to the business, to integration into the business” explained Terrell.
W.W. Grainger’s Rimnac focused on the benefits that Service Oriented Architecture can bring to the business, particularly with regard to distribution efficiency and customer service. “If you add value for your customer consistently,” he said, “you will advance your career.”
HSBC’s Berns discussed the importance of communication skills, particularly regarding cross-functional projects involving participants from multiple locations. “Creating goals,” noted Berns, “creates a clear line of sight” to successful project completion. She also stressed the importance of leveraging technology that is accessible to the business, e.g. intranets, web conferencing, and virtual team rooms, to create appropriate communication tools for varying levels of accountability.
Peoplenext's Layton, an executive recruiter, discussed what the market is demanding of IT professionals today. In mapping out a “high potential” career path, he shared key insights that IT professionals should keep top of mind in positioning themselves for further career success. He spoke of balancing a passion for what you do with the ability to be recognized and rewarded for it, and suggested that, “As a country, we need to reinvigorate a passion for innovation.”
"This event was a wonderful opportunity for IT and HR professionals to hear keen insights from C-level IT executives who understand the importance of and the need for creating value for the business,” said Kathy Leck, LFCE Executive Vice President. “Today more than ever, IT and the business need to create partnerships and processes to bring the highest value possible to an organization’s bottom line.”
The event was co-sponsored by Technology Executives Club, the premier Thought Leadership Community for IT Management.
For information about LFCE’s customized leadership development programs for IT professionals, go here to contact Carole Wald, LFCE Account Manager.
