Leadership, Distilled

Computerworld - Leadership is a many-splendored thing. It can motivate a staff to do amazing work. It can steer a project to success when failure looms. It can spring across those invisible borders between business and IT and forge a powerful alliance.
"If you are not going to make a change for the better, why be a leader?" asks Donald Zacherl, chief technology officer at NAHB Research Center Inc. "That is what leaders do: look for, encourage, foster, cajole and even compel organizational change."
Coming from one of our Premier 100 IT Leaders for 2001, Zacherl's words echo the beliefs of many of his colleagues, whom we honor in this issue with a special supplement (starting after page 40) and online at www.computerworld.com/premier100. Now in its second year, our Premier 100 awards program attracted more than 500 nominations nationwide last fall. We asked those nominees to fill out an extensive 62-question survey on everything from their job experience, management styles and IT backgrounds to their views on innovation and risk.
From those surveys, we learned about the business savvy of Marriott International CIO Carl Wilson, who aligned IT strategy with hotel operations in such a way that his fellow executives now think of technology as a valid investment rather than an unavoidable expense. We heard about the inspirational ideas of the co-CIOs at Capital One Financial, where Marge Connelly and Laura Olle created a "board of directors" among the senior IT leaders that reduced decision-making delays.
We found many common traits across this very diverse group of talented folks. All of these people reveal a readiness to take risks, to tackle big projects and to use IT to create new business opportunities.
"There's an equal component of nature and nurture in leadership, but I can't remember ever not wanting to be a leader," notes Andre Mendes, CIO at the Public Broadcasting Service in Alexandria, Va.
Then there was the fun stuff, like finding out how one CIO knows how to water-ski barefoot, or how another once appeared in a music video with Mick Jagger. Their checkered pasts include stints as yo-yo champions, motorcycle racers and even exotic dancers.
On May 20-22 in Rancho Mirage, Calif., we'll bring this year's crop of winners together at Computerworld's Premier 100 IT Leadership Conference. I invite you to join us and hear directly from these IT leaders about how they're dealing with security and privacy concerns, the rollout of wireless technologies, the race to globalization, the changing customer connection and the search for value and technologypayback. Come and be inspired.
Maryfran Johnson is editor in chief of Computerworld. You can contact her at maryfran_johnson@computerworld.com.