He credit a number of methods for his success.

Curiosity tops his listing. “I get pleasure from studying new issues, so when one thing new exhibits up, I’m studying about it and asking if it applies,” he says.

The will to construct new abilities can be excessive on that listing of success methods. Koushik says he was deliberate about making profession strikes that gave him alternatives to develop. For instance, he joined Nationwide, the place he served as senior vice chairman, CIO, and CTO, “to construct new muscle,” the place he would lead a a lot bigger group and the place he would “implement and actually reside with the expertise.”

On the similar time, he cautions in opposition to leaping round an excessive amount of, advising rising professionals to discover a comfortable medium between switching jobs each few months and staying in the identical place for many years. For instance, he advises spending sufficient time at a place to study new abilities and apply them, a course of that sometimes takes just a few years.

He additionally recommends professionals plan forward — Koushik sometimes appears to be like out three years — and discover mentors who can provide steerage.

Ghada M. Ijam, CIO, Federal Reserve System

Ghada Ijam admits she stumbled into IT. After incomes a bachelor’s diploma in civil engineering, she landed a job as a enterprise expertise analyst with Fannie Mae and rapidly discovered that IT work suited her.

Federal Reserve System

“I spotted it was all about fixing issues and fixing issues by means of expertise,” she says.

She additionally preferred collaborating with others to create options, and she or he realized she had a pure expertise for bringing folks collectively and main groups. That, in flip, obtained her more and more vital assignments with greater issues to resolve.

Over time, Ijam set her sights on turning into a CIO, seeing the function as one that completely leveraged her mixture of abilities.

“I solely stumbled as soon as into IT, and every little thing else was then deliberate next-steps,” she says.

Consequently, Ijam has held roles of accelerating authority, transferring from her first place at Fannie Mae onto jobs at Intel and Freddie Mac after which Amtrak, the place she ultimately turned CIO. She is now CIO of the Federal Reserve System.

Ijam says she has realized various vital classes alongside the way in which.

First is the significance of being empathetic to others and listening to what stakeholders should say — two issues that assist IT professionals join the dots and devise validated plans, Ijam says.

Second is “studying by doing and by watching how different profitable leaders function, seeing what to do and what to not do, and being able to use what you observe,” she says.

Third, that being adaptable and “being humble sufficient to study from errors” are additionally crucial for advancing into the manager ranks.

So is the willingness to step up when requested. Ijam says if supplied a tough downside to resolve, IT leaders and aspiring IT leaders ought to leap on the probability to take action — even when you don’t but have all the talents wanted for the duty. “Know what you could have and what it is advisable study,” Ijam says.

Ijam additionally stresses the significance of constructing robust, honest relationships with these you are attempting to assist and with those that provide help to get the work finished.

Sheila Jordan, SVP and Chief Digital Know-how Officer, Honeywell

Sheila Jordan concluded early in her profession that expertise is “a development engine” — simply as a lot as advertising and gross sales are. That was again within the Nineties, when she was working at Walt Disney World in gross sales and advertising (first as a VP after which SVP), the place she led the corporate’s first buyer relationship administration (CRM) system implementation.

Honeywell

Jordan, now senior vice chairman and chief digital expertise officer at Honeywell, says the “duty to carry expertise to the enterprise that may ship worth, both by means of productiveness or development,” remained a continuing by means of the years and it’s nonetheless true as we speak.

Jordan says different abilities have additionally helped her construct a profitable profession. She cites the flexibility to speak successfully and to talk to all completely different audiences on their ranges as crucial abilities. She additionally cites the flexibility to prioritize IT investments in opposition to anticipated returns, saying that “you could have to have the ability to take a look at each side: the funding aspect versus the impression.”

Jordan, who early on had aspired to management roles, was considerate about advancing her profession — a method she recommends to others.

“Be planful; know what you wish to do. Resolve on the job you wish to do in three years, then decide what your gaps are and the methods to get closure on these gaps,” she says, whereas additionally stressing the should be open to sudden alternatives.

“There are occasions when somebody will faucet you in your shoulder and say, ‘I need you to go do that.’ It’s these turns that develop you essentially the most,” she says, including that the 4 such alternatives she had encountered — and took — helped propel her development.

Barbara Cooper-Jones, CIO, Ginnie Mae

Barbara Cooper-Jones had majored in accounting within the Seventies however rapidly turned fascinated extra by the pc techniques getting used than the numbers themselves. She began writing “pseudo code to offer to builders, testing and reviewing code” and ultimately moved into challenge administration.

Ginnie Mae

Cooper-Jones discovered herself excited by “no matter was new and sizzling,” particularly with respect to information and techniques, and was at all times searching for to find out about rising applied sciences as rapidly as potential and fascinated by put them to make use of.

All that, she says, drove her profession ahead, from an early-career function as a techniques analyst to her present job as CIO of Ginnie Mae.

Cooper-Jones says each step alongside the way in which has been vital, as every one enabled her to develop abilities she may use to advance not simply her profession however her contributions.

“It was about how can I transfer a corporation to the place it must be and the way can I leverage my abilities, expertise, and experience to do this. That was the chance I used to be searching for; I didn’t actually care what they referred to as the place,” she explains.

Cooper-Jones factors to how she was introduced into Ginnie Mae as working example: A former co-worker who was working at Ginnie Mae requested her to hitch the group, saying she knew Cooper-Jones had so much to contribute. “She knew I used to be a powerful expertise individual, a powerful information individual.”

Cooper-Jones joined as a senior expertise chief and have become its CIO about six months later when the place opened up.

Cooper-Jones says she then put all her experiences to work, noting success as a CIO requires understanding the group’s goals, figuring out what the purchasers want (not simply what they are saying they need), making strategic hires, nurturing relationships, and at all times with the ability to execute and ship.

Jim Fowler, EVP and Chief Know-how Officer, Nationwide

Jim Fowler had an early introduction to expertise’s transformative energy: As a highschool scholar, he had helped his father, a small-town pharmacist, implement a pc system that “utterly reworked his enterprise from a paper-run one to a digital enterprise in a single day.”

Nationwide

It’s an perception that he says has served him effectively all through his profession, the beginning of which discovered Fowler targeted on turning into a topic skilled in working techniques and infrastructure structure.

As he superior, Fowler honed different abilities, equivalent to speaking clearly, influencing others, constructing a strategic imaginative and prescient, getting folks to comply with his imaginative and prescient, and understanding how enterprise operates — a path that ready him to steer.

“I discovered that I had the talents to be a CIO,” he says. “I don’t assume I may very well be a very good CIO if I first didn’t do all the opposite completely different features inside the firm.”

Fowler now advises aspiring professionals to comply with an analogous route.

“Be the subject material skilled in one thing the place folks depend on you. It doesn’t matter what; it’s a place to begin you can construct each different functionality off of. Then go huge, not simply from a tech perspective however from a enterprise perspective,” he says.

Fowler, like others, additionally stresses the significance of stepping up when referred to as on.

He factors to 2 moments in his profession when he took a job no person else needed; each have been turning factors as a result of they allowed him to showcase abilities, develop new ones, and show himself as a pacesetter.

Don’t let doubt stand in the way in which of such roles, he says, including that “when you don’t really feel like an imposter in a job, you’re not studying something; you’re not constructing your abilities and talents.”

Chris Bedi, Chief Digital Info Officer, ServiceNow

Chris Bedi entered skilled work aiming to resolve issues and discover methods to make folks’s lives higher.

ServiceNow

“I stored doing extra of that, and the titles and every little thing simply adopted,” says Bedi, who’s now chief digital info officer at ServiceNow.

“As tech turned extra vital to corporations, it coincided with my ambition to do related issues for the businesses I used to be at. I at all times thought, and now it’s a part of the common parlance, that IT must ship enterprise outcomes. So I at all times confirmed up with actually attention-grabbing metrics that mattered to the corporate,” he says.

Bedi additionally credit some profession detours for serving to him advance to the manager ranks.

“At Verisign, I used to be tapped on the shoulder by the CFO to run HR operations. My preliminary response was, ‘What did I do incorrect?’ After which I assumed, if the CFO was asking me to do one thing, the one reply is sure,” he says, including that he realized that the CFO tapped him for the function due to his capability to run efficient operations, encourage folks, and get groups to deal with what actually issues.

That HR work, Bedi says, gave him a possibility to execute a turnaround — a key expertise for any exec so as to add to the resume.

Bedi says he was additionally requested to run a divestiture technique whereas at Verisign — one other transfer that had him “leaping into the deep finish of the pool,” but one which additionally helped him construct and sharpen his abilities round P&L methods and market valuations.

“The chance to take these detours to grow to be a extra well-rounded government and construct a broader base of abilities have been tremendous crucial,” he says. “There are brand-enhancing moments the place you’re given a possibility and also you simply should step up and take them. Even when you solely know one-third of the solutions, wager on your self and also you’ll determine the remainder out.”