Your Personal Brand

1. Your Personal Brand Scott Gibson CIO & SVP, Distribution and Strategic Services

2. An obligatory show of humility

3. About Best Western

4. We are primarily a marketing and technology business

5. The 2013 US online hotel market is estimated at $41 billion

6. Why worry about your personal brand?

7. Large IT projects routinely fail… • Projects estimated at $15 million or more: • Run over budget by 45% • Run over schedule by 7% • Deliver 56% less value than planned • Put another way: About half the time, achieving the expected benefits of the original $15m project costs $59m McKinsey Quarterly / Oxford University, “Delivering Large-Scale IT Projects On Time, On Budget, and On Value”, Oct 2012

8. …and it’s not just the large ones. • US companies spend $250 billion each year on IT application development, but: • 31% of projects are never completed; • 53% will cost twice their original estimates; • Less than 30% meet their stakeholders’ expectations. Pearl Zhu, Enterprise CIO Forum, “IT Project Failure: Symptoms and Reasons”, Feb 2011

9. The business application environment is becoming increasingly more complex…

10. …leading to more failure and higher costs to recover. Aberdeen Group, “Data Center Downtime: How Much Does It Really Cost?” ,2012

11. The cost of downtime varies dramatically by industry… …but is sufficient to erode confidence in IT leadership. Compuware, “Application Performance Management Best Practices”,2013

12. IT budgets have not recovered, and are declining in 2013. Gartner, “Hunting and Harvesting in a Digital World” ,2013

13. It’s never been more dangerous to be a CIO. • Ever-greater demand for IT products and services • Consumerization / commoditization of IT • Proliferation of devices & apps • Growth of ‘shadow IT’ • Adoption of social media tools for business communications • The promise of ‘simpler’ SaaS, infrastructure service models

14. Only 17% of CIOs have a position on the executive leadership team. Ernst & Young, “The DNA of the CIO”, 2012

15. 1 in 4 departing CIOs has been fired… …while at larger companies, it’s 1 in 3. CIO.com, “One In Four CIOs Fired for Performance”, Kim S. Nash, 3/11/2009

16. CIOs have not become the strategic partners we need to be… Ernst & Young, “The DNA of the CIO”, 2012

17. …and our peers don’t see our value the same way we do. Ernst & Young, “The DNA of the CIO”, 2012

18. 64% of CIOs are content to be CIOs… …and their peers think they’re not going anywhere. Ernst & Young, “The DNA of the CIO”, 2012

19. IT people are uniquely positioned to understand the business.

20. But IT people somehow don’t capitalize on that advantage • Just 4% of CEOs previously served as CIO • 29% previously served as CFO • 21% previously served as COO • At the same time, some 31% of CIOs have never held a technical role before Computer Associates, “The Future Role of the CIO Becoming the Boss”, Oct 2011

21. What image do IT people project? Ernst & Young, “The DNA of the CIO”, 2012

22. To rise to the CIO level and beyond, IT leaders must change how they’re perceived by their business peers.

23. Elements of a successful personal brand • Operational excellence • An effective management team • An understanding of the core business • A track record for business process transformation • The ability to communicate with business leaders, clearly and in their language • A scope of control or influence which extends beyond the IT organization • The bandwidth and desire to take on more

24. Attributes to avoid or shed • Being the senior technician • The use of IT jargon • A focus on technology for its own sake • The ‘service provider’ mentality • The defender of the status quo • The trend-chaser

25. How do you think about yourself?

26. Thank you!