In October 2015, just about 10 months after joining The Carlyle Group as its first CIO, Georgette Kiser laid out a three-year strategic plan that focused on three core items: strengthening the investment firm's IT foundation, building for the future while remaining agile and seizing opportunities to give Carlyle an edge.
"The firm has to leverage technologies to be competitive in the market," she says.
As a case in point, she cites her team's efforts to implement what it calls "the desktop of the future," a system that gives Carlyle's 1,700 global employees secure, anytime/anywhere access to their work applications. That setup enables employees to better meet client needs, and thereby gives The Carlyle Group a competitive advantage.
Kiser, 49, says a strong IT foundation with a robust infrastructure and security systems made the project possible. But equally important was her team's commitment to being responsive as it builds out technical systems, she says, explaining that IT staffers engage people on the business side to determine how to best meet their needs.
But Kiser notes that having a strategic vision is only part of what a successful CIO needs today. She says CIOs must rally their workers around that strategic vision, assign them to roles where they can thrive, and then empower them to innovate. Additionally, she says, IT leaders need to ensure that their IT departments continually deliver business value through their technology initiatives.