The Executive IT Leader Program
Make the Move from Functional to Enterprise Leadership
Improving Business Outcomes
Technology leaders must now participate in shaping the business strategies that define success and lead the digital strategy. In the Executive IT Leader Training Program, you will explore the executive perspective and enhance your knowledge of enterprise strategy, risk management, and digital transformation, all to improve business outcomes. You will also gain a greater understanding of organizational design and leading change in the digital age.
Program Outline
Leadership is a way of being; leaders today are required to think critically and lead strategically under pressure, all while engaging with softer people skills. Showing up as one’s Best Self as a leader today requires the ‘softer skills’ of self-awareness, empathy, a positive attitude, conscious communication, deep listening, emotional intelligence, vulnerability, an executive presence, and a confident composure (equanimity). In this session, you will be guided in:
- How to shift to a leader mindset and away from a manager mindset
- How to cultivate a more executive presence using body language and active listening
- How to quiet the inner critic and sense of imposter syndrome at the executive level
- How to constructively engage in conflict and feedback
- Ultimately; how to develop equanimity as a leader (keep calm and carry on)
Strategy is often misunderstood as a planning process rather than as a critical analysis of industry rivalry, competitive position, and relative performance. In this session, you will:
- Explore the context of modern strategy formulation
- Assess strategy versus planning and analysis
- Absorb the value of potential strategic frameworks
- Embrace a comprehensive strategy to include enterprise-wide planning, compliance, project planning, budget, and resource allocation processes
Too often, business leaders jump to delivering outcomes without thinking through design choices. Or even asking the “What if?” question at all. Designing for outcomes helps shift and expand our thinking. The art and science of design thinking helps leaders to eliminate biases and consider possibilities, ensuring that leaders effectively guide the design of solutions to maximize both short and long-term gains. In this session, you will:
- Learn to frame and re-frame issues to develop innovative and effective solutions that address the needs of end-users.
- Understand and practice the tools of design thinking.
In this practical session, you will understand and begin to apply best practices for enterprise risk management to meet modern regulatory standards including:
- A comprehensive risk identification method to assess all known risks and their severity to create a balanced Risk Register
- Determining who has ultimate risk authority in an organization;
- Understanding ERM as a derivative of strategy and compliance, because all enterprise risks must be accepted, mitigated or transferred. These are enterprise choices
- Addressing emerging comprehensive risks, such as cybersecurity, as organizational and not technical risks
Digital Transformations are often the strategic goal of today’s organizations, but do we truly understand what that means? What is a transformation and what makes it digital? What are the great Digital Transformations and what can we learn from them? And what is the role of the modern CIO in transformations? In this session, you will:
- Understand the key concepts behind Digital Transformations and what makes them successful
- Understand your current and prospective roles in Digital Transformation and how an emerging Executive IT Leader can optimize their contributions
Whether a corporate board, the political leadership in government, or an administrative board in education, understanding their role and relationship to the rest of the organization is crucial to your executive success. What is the line between oversight and management? In this session, you will:
- Understand the purpose and role of a board and its members
- Explore the connection between board oversight and organizational strategy
- Learn practical approaches to creating productive relationships with board members, and managing uncomfortable situations
In our increasingly digital world, corporate transformation has become a top business imperative across sectors. To succeed with the challenge, it is essential to work on three tightly integrated thrusts: Strategic/business planning & execution; Leadership & change capability building; and Culture change − which is the thrust around which everything else evolves. In this session, you will:
- Understand what it takes to transform an organization with nimbleness in the new normal
- Identify gaps in the ways your organization currently works on transforming itself strategically
- Activate powerful levers for culture change available to senior executives
- Recognize the Top-5 symptoms of sluggish decision-making, and assess which ones are currently at play in your business
- Uncover the best decision-making model to drive agility
- Learn a proven strategy to develop nimble decision-making capabilities throughout the business while making actual decisions
You and your team will deliver your solution to a mock Board of Directors who will adjudicate your presentation. This session provides you with opportunities to integrate, practice, and demonstrate the insights you have gained in the program. This final session will run for 5 hours (3 hours of preparation and 2 hours for all groups to present).
The Executive IT Leader Program.
Make the Move from Functional to Enterprise Leadership
Our Faculty
The Leaders Beyond faculty includes business executives, educators, CIOs, consultants, and strategists from various industries. With decades of leadership training experience, they use a proven curriculum that emphasizes teacher/student mentorship and case study analysis.
Eugene Roman, MBA, CMA, ICD
Dr. Jennifer Card, Psy.D, MSc., PCC
Edmond Mellina
Dr. James L. Norrie, DPM, LL.M
Paul Bellack
Alexandra Federucci, MA, ICD.D
Program FAQ
You will gain the greatest benefits from this program if you are a new executive or on the executive track who:
- Seeks to expand knowledge and understanding of the “business side of the house”
- In a smaller organization, is the CIO or Executive IT Leader
- In a larger organization, is a Director or Division IT Leader
- Is facing a pivotal change in the workplace
- Sponsors technology projects in partnership with senior business leaders
- Holds direct financial responsibility and accountability for delivering technology solutions
Our limited class size creates a distinctive online experience as the faculty and students have opportunities to engage with and learn from each other through our dynamic mentoring model. You will create lasting business relationships that will support and carry you on your leadership journey.
In these highly interactive online sessions and scheduled group work you will:
- Engage directly with successful senior IT and business executives and thought leaders
- Take charge of your own leadership effectiveness with a personal leadership development plan
- Challenge, develop, and practice your analysis, influence, and decision-making skills in a business context
- Master the challenges of multi-level teamwork and changes in real-world simulations.
Our eight online sessions are delivered interactively over a period of four weeks. Each session is approximately three and a half hours long. Participants will complete assignments on their own and in small groups at various points shortly before and during the program.
The program features a major case study, working both individually and in a group setting on the final program day (with extended hours). Graduates receive confidential feedback and a certificate upon completion.