\\ 07 Seek the Right Stakeholders, at the Right Time For some startups, the CIO, CTO, or Chief Digital Officer It starts with the CIO, and that is usually the first point of may be a good channel in. In the age of noise, leaders “ entry. But the true influencers are usually other leaders drive strategy and focus for their teams. But many of in the organization on whom the CIO relies to guide their these leaders told us they’re not the final decision-maker. technology decisions. When a startup can establish relationships with those leaders, that’s when they will often While they lead the technology organization and give get the most traction.”—Diana McKenzie, CIO of Workday their teams air cover, much of the decision-making People can be risk averse so the best thing you can do (and buying) power is distributed. Decision makers can “ is provide senior management support to help push what include the CIO’s direct reports, the head of application you’re trying to accomplish. If I suggest to a team to look at development, a business unit leader, the head of security, certain companies, then they feel like they have cover from the top and it helps to actually make a change.” a departmental VP, or even an end user or developer who —Stephanie von Friedeburg, COO of International has picked up business software on a credit card. And Finance Corporation those other technologists and leaders are structurally more aggressive in technology adoption than the CIO. As the CIO, I empower my team to make purchasing “ decisions based on our goals. I don’t make those decisions in isolation and I don’t often veto the decisions that the team has made.” —Ted Colbert, CIO of Boeing “ Getting more people involved in new technology is essential, finding the right mix of domains who ultimately will own deploying and using the technology can really help with adoption. For example, when we looked at a new cyber [tech], we had to not only get the right cyber domains involved, we needed to also get members of our operations and infrastructure teams engaged and explore if legal and audit needed a seat at the table. This is because cyber has become such a multidisciplinary domain now… almost any valuable tool will require you to cut across several organizational boundaries within IT and the broader company.” —Rich Adduci, Advisor at Esito LLC, former CIO of National Grid Startups Serving The Enterprise