Intercode: hvPEXn$Qn1,k2rz2iV2$ozSaOvjhvikZdrso1:VlLZr1t1w1wp1D@QO-bIf!1wt3uueeYIo1oeuu
Type: ENTJ
Professional
CIO Interview Questions
Executive Management
1. What do you look for in new talent?
2. What shortcomings have you experienced with your management style?
3. How do you adapt your management style during an economic downturn?
4. Can you give me an example of a time where you had a significant disagreement with another executive? How did you resolve the situation?
5. What non-monetary incentives do you use to retain key performers?
6. Can you give me an example of a project that you sponsored which failed? What did you learn from the experience?
7. Can you give me an example of a time you influenced corporate strategy? What was the result?
8. How do you deal with staff who are more interested in office politics than the interests of the company?
9. What criteria do you use to terminate staff for cause?
IT Management
10. How do you use metrics to manage IT? What are some common metrics pitfalls?
11. Do you view business as a customer or a partner of IT?
12. How do you deliver IT cost transparency?
13. Can you describe a time when executives made unreasonable requests to IT? How did you manage it?
14. How do you balance tactical business demands with the need to stick to a long term strategy?
15. What project are you most proud of? Can you give me a example of a project you were involved in that failed?
16. Who do you most admire for their management style?
17. When do you require a RFP as part of the procurement process? When is a RFP too much?
18. How do you ensure a fair and competitive procurement process?
19. How do you manage sudden increases and decreases in budget driven by economic conditions and company results?
20. How do you ensure that IT line managers are involved in strategic IT planning?
21. How do you create a IT strategy for a organization with weak finances? How about a company with deep pockets?
22. How will you market IT to your peers on the executive team and to the CEO?
23. Can you give me an example of a long term IT strategy you successfully implemented?
24. How do you stay abreast of what your competitors are doing in the IT space?
25. How do you scale IT projects for faster delivery?
Projects and Delivery
26. What percentage of IT projects meet time/cost/quality targets?
27. Why do IT projects fail?
28. What do you look for in a project manager?
29. What are the benefits of having a PMO?
30. What project management methodologies are you familiar with?
31. Can you describe the software development lifecycle (SDLC)?
32. What information is contained within a requirements document?
33. What types of projects are best delivered by the agile project management methodology?
Technology and Architecture
34. What is Enterprise Architecture?
35. How do you stay current with emerging business and technology trends?
36. How do you align IT with business strategy?
37. What are the top 5 challenges facing IT organizations this year? What are the top 5 opportunities?
38. Are you familiar with the concept of the technology hype cycle?
39. Do you feel that any recent technology trends are all hype?
40. Do you see any trade-off between innovation and standardization? Can you give me an example?
41. How do you approach the buy vs build decision?
42. What area interests you most — applications, data or infrastructure?
43. If you could have a executive dashboard that displayed any 5 IT metrics — what metrics would you choose?
44. How do you ensure that networking, computing and storage resources can be quickly and cheaply scaled to meet business demands?
45. What do you look for in a chief architect?
46. How do you balance time to market with quality?
47. What are the principles of master data management?
48. What makes a good / bad user interface?
49. What are some typical gaps in business processes? How do you fix these gaps?
50. How do you get the business to buy in to a long term IT strategy?
51. What is the importance of open technology standards?
IT Service Management
52. How is high availability measured?
53. What is the difference between incident and problem management?
54. What metrics best measure quality of service?
55. How do you ensure help desk service excellence?
56. What does continual service improvement mean to you?
Security
57. How do you sell security initiatives to the business?
58. What do you think about security convergence?
59. What are the biggest security threats to an organization like ours?
60. How do you strike a balance between information sharing and information security?
61. Does the business need to involved in security? How?
62. What kind of information is contained in a security incident response plan?
63. What is the relationship between information security and change management?
64. What are the key laws governing information security?
65. Can you give me an example of a security incident that occurred in your organization? How did you manage it?
66. What are the most important standards related to information security?
67. How does security governance relate to corporate governance?
68. Are you familiar with the security concept known as defence in depth?
Sourcing
69. What is your approach to interviewing?
70. How do you ensure that procurement is highly competitive and fair?
71. How do you strike a balance between economies of scale and vendor lock-in with outsourcing partnerships?
72. Do you have experience negotiating with outsourcing partners?
73. How do you think IT sourcing will change in the next 10 years?
74. Can you give me an example of a time that one of your vendors did not meet their commitments? How did you resolve the situation?
75. Have you ever initiated legal action against a vendor or partner? Has a partner ever initiated legal action against you?
76. Do you have experience with process outsourcing? What processes did you outsource? How did it go?
77. What are the risks of outsourcing? How do you mitigate these risks?
Leadership
78. Give me an example in which you developed untapped potential in your staff.
79. How do you ensure that business partners with IT — for example: ensuring that business provides diligent requirements?
CIO
80. What is the role of the CIO?
81. Who reports to the CIO?
82. What are some of the key challenges for the CIO?
83. As CIO who are your top five stakeholders?
84. Do you think CIOs make good CEOs? Why / why not?
Governance
85. What is the primary focus of IT governance?
86. What is the CIO’s role with respect to corporate governance?
87. Who is typically involved in IT governance activities?
88. Do you have an IT governance program in your current organization?
89. What metrics and measures of IT are of interest to the board of directors and shareholders?
Commitment
90. From what you know about our company — what percentage of our revenue do you estimate can be directly attributed to IT?
91. From what you know about our company — what do you think the budget of our IT department might be?
Creativity
92. Can you think of a mission statement for me now — that embodies what your approach would be in this role?
Vision
93. How does technology empower employees to do their jobs ?
94. Can you give me an example of a time that you applied out-of-the-box thinking to solve a business problem?
95. What technologies will transform the business world in the next 5 to 10 years?
Legal
96. What should a organization such as ours do to protect our intellectual property?
97. How has the legal landscape changed in the past 5 years (from an IT and information security perspective)?
98. How do privacy laws affect a company like ours?
General
99. Are you a risk taker?
100. What is the worst business mistake you have ever made? What did you learn from the experience?
101. What are your long term career goals?
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Agenda for Entrepreneurship & Consulting Panel Discussion at York University
Introduction / Contact Info
Eugen Spivak “To get what you want, you have to
eugen@eugenspivak.com help other people to get what they
want” - Zig Ziglar
Introduction: http://www.yorku.ca/careers/conversations/10-11/entrepreneur.htm
Video Transcript: http://www.yorku.ca/careers/students/video/conversations/entrepreneurship_oct10.htm
Background
Management positions in: Financial Services, Government, Energy, Consulting, Telecom, and Software
Degrees: B. Sc. (Computer Science, York), MBA (Schulich)
Certifications: Project Management (PMP), Audit (CISA), Governance (CGEIT)
Goals
* If you have big enough “why”, you will figure out “how”
* One must realize that all who have accumulated great fortunes first did a certain amount of dreaming, hoping, wishing, desiring and planning before they acquired the money
* Practice the Law of Attraction (see The Secret)
* Progressive Improvement as opposed to Postponed Perfection
Journey
* Simplicity is the evidence of the most advanced teachings
* You can’t tell a wrong thing to a right person
Destination
* The harder you will work, the more luck you will get
* Life is not about answers, it is about finding a way to take to get there
Leadership
* Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it
* The ability to identify and focus on the few necessary things is a hallmark of great leadership
* A true leader takes on the small tasks, not as grunt work, but because he is willing to do it
* He, who knows, doesn’t speak. He, who speaks, doesn’t know.
* Leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: “we did it ourselves”
* Use “we” instead of “I”
* Make small changes, not the big ones
* Leadership = visibility + presence
Choosing Business
* Segment, product or industry doesn’t matter – could be high tech or matches
* “Over the next 10 years, the US economy will create 10 million new millionaires. Two of the strongest emerging industries where the growth will occur are wellness and network marketing” – Paul Zane Pilzer
Assessment Criteria for the Business
1. Little or no upfront investment
2. If things go the worst way possible, are you still comfortable?
3. Inventory management costs
4. Do you need credit to start/run your business?
5. Quality of management team
6. Quality of the product
7. Space to grow
Communication
* Assess the level of spin of the audience, and spin yourself up or down to match
* Choose level of details that you share based on level (e.g. senior management vs. professional)
* Learn and practice NLP
Presentations / Public Speaking / Facilitation
* Do the homework
* Find out what are the strong feelings of people in the audience/group as they would be driven by them, no matter how rational people seem like
* Align direction of the conversation with the strong feelings of an individual/group
Tolerance for Ambiguity
* Get comfortable with making decisions when you have 40%-70% of information that you need to make one
* To reduce ambiguity, apply the applicable framework
* If you have no idea what to do, start doing something, and frequently adjust your course along the way
Interpersonal
* Find out which of your traits of character are dominant, and which ones are not, and therefore need extra effort (Astrology, Myers Briggs – 41q.com, Strengthsfinder.com, etc)
Consulting
* Bring value in the beginning of customer engagement, before the deal is closed
* Once you are in, you are expected to perform from the first day
* Make your recommendations pragmatic, this way they have a better chance of bring implemented
Next Steps
* Average American reads 1 book per year finishing it by 60%, average CEO reads 4 books per month
* Read at least 2-3 subjects in each subject/core competency (presentation, facilitation, leadership, etc) to give you diverse perspectives on the subject
* Do you not only have the goals, but a proven vehicle to achieve them?
* How do you go from success to significance?
Top Links
* Very short overview of almost every management framework – http://valuebasedmanagement.net
* Overview of business school essentials –
http://quickmba.com
* Non Profit Board of Directors
http://www.boardmatch.org/BoardMatch/Content/Home.aspx
* Business Networking (“Hi, I’m a student at XYZ. I am interested in your industry, can we get together for coffee at the time of your convenience, and I would ask you a few questions?”)
http://www.linkedin.com
Recommended Reading
1. The Trusted Advisor (ISBN: 0743212347)
Book Summary: http://www.searlstreet.com.au/content/The%20Trusted%20Advisor.pdf
2. Management of the Absurd (ISBN: 0684830442)
3. You are in Charge, Now What? (ISBN: 1400048664)
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John P. Kotter – Leading Change
In this context, John P. Kotter lists the most general lessons to be learned from both (I) the more successful cases and (II) the critical mistakes as follows:
I. Lessons from the more successful cases:
1. Establishing a sense of urgency
* Examining market and competitive realities
* Identifying and discursing crises, potential crises, or major opportunities
2. Forming a powerful guiding coalition
* Assembling a group with enough power to lead the change effort
* Encouraging the group to work together as a team
3. Creating a vision
* Creating a vision to help direct the change effort
* Developing strategies for achieving that vision
4. Communicating vision
* Using every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and strategies
* Teaching new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition
5. Empowering others to act on the vision
* Getting rid of obstancles to change
* Changing systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision
* Encouraging risk taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions
6. Planning for and creating short-term wins
* Planning for visible performance improvements
* Creating those improvements
* Recognizing and rewarding employees involved in the improvements
7. Consolidating improvements and producing still more change
* Using increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that don’t fit the vision
* Hiring, promoting, and developing employees who can implement the vision
* Reinvigorating the process with new projects, themes, and change agents
8.Institutionalizing new approaches
* Articulating the connections between the new behaviors and corporate success
* Developing the means to ensure leadership development and succession
II. Lessons from the critical mistakes:
1. Not establishing enough sense of urgency – A transformation program requires the aggressive cooperation of many individuals. Without motivation, people won’t help and the effort goes nowhere.
2. Not creating a powerful guiding coalition – Companies that fail in this phase usually underestimate the difficulties of producing change and thus the importance of a powerful quiding coalition.
3. Lacking a vision – Without a sensible vision, a transformation effort can easily dissolve into a list of confusing and incompatible projects that can take the organization in the wrong direction or nowhere at all.
4. Undercommunicating the vision – Transformation is impossible unless hundreds or thousands of people are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices.
5. Not removing obstacles to the new vision – Sometimes the obstacle is the organizational structure: narrow job categories can seriously undermine efforts to increase productivity or make it very difficult even to think about customers. Sometimes compensation or performance-appraisal systems make people choose between the new vision and their own self-interest. Perhaps worst of all are bosses who refuse to change and who make demands that are inconsistent with the overall effort.
6. Not systematically planning and creating short-term wins – Creating short-term wins is different from hoping for short-term wins. The latter is passive, the former active. In a successful transformation, managers actively look for ways to obtain clear performance improvements, establish goals in the yearly planning system, achieve the objectives, and reward the people involved with recognition, promotions, and even money.
7. Declaring victory too soon – Instead of declaring victory, leaders of successful efforts use the credibility afforded by short-term wins to tackle even bigger problems.
8. Not anchoring changes in the corporation’s culture – Change sticks when it becomes “the way we do things around here,” when it seeps into the bloodstream of the corporate body. Until new behaviors are rooted in social norms and shared values, they are subject to degradation as soon as the pressure for change is removed.
Finally, John P. Kotter writes, “There are still more mistakes that people make, but these eight are the big ones. In reality, even successful change efforts are messy and full of surprises. But just as a relatively simple vision is needed to guide people through a major change, so a vision of the change process can reduce the error rate. And fewer errors can spell the difference between success and failure.”
To get this amazing book: http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Change-John-P-Kotter/dp/0875847471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1282058444&sr=8-1
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FXO vs FXS Telephone Equipment
A difference between two technologies is described here:
An FXS interface provides power (battery) to FXO equipment and generates ring signals
(e.g. The phone jack on the wall)
An FXO interface receives power (battery) and receives ring signals
(e.g. The phone line port on a telephone set)
Always check the sense of the device whether it is labeled FXS or FXO, as some vendors get it backwards and your device will provide battery when you expect it to behave as a station and receive battery. Be careful!
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Some more books to read – Advice of Change Management Guru
John Carter “Leading Change”
William Bridges “Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change”
Henry Mintzberg – various books
Peter Block “Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used”
Also consider grandfathering provision for CMC certification
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Few good links
A great travel fare search site
Top 10 Most Recycled Mobile Phones in 2008 – rest in peace Motorolas and LGs
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