Just being the best technologist isn’t enough. CIOs need to truly understand the business operations, vision, and culture to effectively lead a digital transformation.
Transformation Journey
Judy is a transformational CIO with extensive experience defining strategic direction, executing a vision, and leading global organizations to deliver consistent and superior results. With a background in the global automotive industry, she applied her technical and leadership skills to drive transformation at Kelly Services. The transformation at Kelly Services started in 2010 with a simple business requirement for a standard global collaboration toolset. From there it grew to a multi-phase transition to the cloud: A network purpose-built to leverage cloud-based applications, a move to SaaS applications, leveraging PaaS to build applications in the cloud, moving applications from a company owned and operated data center to cloud providers, and ultimately support for the Kelly Anywhere program that enabled employees to work from anywhere (long before anyone would even dream of the COVID-19 pandemic). All these activities occurred while remaining laser-focused on cyber-security and data privacy. Judy is a strong believer in servant leadership. She focused on building a strong IT team with both technical and leadership skills. She truly believed her job was to serve those that she had the privilege to lead, and worked hard to help them be successful. With a strong, respected IT team in place, Judy was chosen to lead the Digital Innovation Team. This team was a combination of key IT and business operation team members brought together to collaborate on how technology can be a "game-changer" to Kelly Services’ business model and provide a competitive edge in the fast-changing world of work.
Lessons Learned
Don’t just think like a "technologist," think like a businessperson! Identify technology that can truly be game-changing for your business. Ensure you have strong business sponsorship and alignment, work with your CFO to try to self-fund as much as possible, plan work in phases to show success early and often, invest in your team (re-skill as much as possible), and don't forget to have fun!
