Becoming CIO
A field guide from senior engineer to the executive floor
Nobody is promoted to CIO for being the best engineer in the building. The job is judgement about money, risk and people, conducted almost entirely in conversation — and none of it is taught on the way up.
Thirty chapters in six parts, each running the same five beats: a scene, the principle behind it, a box of sentences you can use word for word, a story that proves it, and one thing to do this week. What a CIO actually does all day. How to be in a boardroom. Capex, opex and why the cloud argument is a finance argument. The hour of an incident, on which you will be judged. Managing the people who were your peers on Friday. And the first ninety days, which decide the next three years.
It closes with the whole book on one page for the ten minutes before a board meeting, a hundred sentences sorted by the room you are standing in, and a thirty-day plan.