1st Edition

Leading the Digital Workforce IT Leadership Peak Performance and Agility

By Jeffrey W. Brown Copyright 2023
    220 Pages 35 B/W Illustrations
    by CRC Press

    220 Pages 35 B/W Illustrations
    by CRC Press

    Future IT leaders won't be technology leaders, they'll be business leaders who understand technology. Leading the Digital Workforce takes a fresh look at technology leadership, exploring how to lead and manage in today’s digital workplace where the pace of change is exponential. This book walks you through building personal resiliency and avoiding stress and burnout to creating a strategy, building a high-performance team, and examining how technology will change the workforce of the future. Technology leadership requires a unique set of skills, which is why traditional leadership approaches don't always work. This book provides actionable advice on how to create a culture of innovation while driving successful change initiatives.

    Leading the Digital Workforce provides strategies for empowering people, optimizing processes, and inspiring innovation. This book offers insights into managing change, leveraging technology, and building strong relationships within your organization, including how to understand and work with company culture. Finally, it shares strategies for using technology and innovation to create a competitive edge to unlock new opportunities.

    Leading the Digital Workforce is essential reading for IT leaders who want to develop their skills, stay ahead of the digital curve, and lead their organizations into the future. No matter if you’re a new IT leader, an aspiring one, or a seasoned leader who’s been at it for years, there’s something in this book that will help you level up your game.

    Preface

    Acknowledgements

    About the Author

    Part 1: Foundations

    Chapter 1 Playing the long game of leadership

    Chapter 2: The average IT leader is…average

    Chapter 3 Master your mindset

    Chapter 4 IT leadership peak performance

    Part 2: Leadership in action

    Chapter 5 Starting a new job: How to thrive

    Chapter 6 A crash course in strategic planning

    Chapter 7 Building a high-performance team

    Chapter 8 Execution and getting things done

    Chapter 9 Leading from anywhere: A guide to the hybrid office

    Chapter 10 Giving back: Industry leadership and the next generation of leaders

    Chapter 11 Leading from the edge: The future of work

    Conclusion

    Appendix

    Biography

    Jeffrey W. Brown, CISSP-ISSMP, CRISC, CISM, PMP is the first Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the State of Connecticut. The Center for Digital Government recently gave national recognition to Connecticut for leadership and collaboration by ranking it third in the nation. Jeff is a recognized information security and IT risk expert with a strong track record of over two decades implementing cost-effective controls for global Fortune 500 financial institutions including Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, GE Capital, BNY Mellon and AIG. He is a two-time winner of CISOs Connect™ Top 100 CISOs (C100).

    Jeff worked briefly in the publishing industry as an editor for HarperCollins before pursuing his passion for technology full time. While at HarperCollins he set up the College division’s first web presence and was involved helping plan distance learning programs, a relatively new concept back in 1995. He never strayed far from these roots and has since gone on to co-author the Web Publisher’s Deign Guide for Windows (Coriolis, 1993) and Mission Critical Internet Security (Syngress, 2000) and is the author of The Security Leader’s Communication Playbook (CRC Press, 2001).

    Jeff is a frequent speaker at events and conferences and is a co-Chair of Evanta’s New York CISO Executive Summit events. He is a board advisor for Cowbell Cyber, iQ4 and the University of New Haven/Connecticut Institute of Technology. In his free time, he enjoys hiking, writing, playing guitar and spending time with his wife and English Springer Spaniel, Gracie. He holds multiple industry certifications, a BA in Journalism and an MS in Publishing from Pace University as well as a certificate in Cybersecurity from Ithaca College, where he serves as an advisor for the program.

    Leading the Digital Workforce, focuses on being and becoming a leader. One of the core principles that many organizations I have worked with struggle with is who should be a leader. Some people truly are not cut out to be a leader. They need to gain the skills outlined in this book. These include mastering your mindset, managing emotions, and other foundational skills to help you become a leader. The author argues that anyone can improve their leadership skills and that great leaders are not necessarily born that way. For me, the concept of mastering your emotions resonated. Over the years of my career, I have found some of the skills listed in this book, including managing your emotions and mastering your mindset, to be useful tools.
     
    The component or one part of the book that, in considering this book, stands out for me beyond the tools given early in the book is the concepts of worthy leaders that are incredibly useful. The first is one that I haven't seen often and that I find incredibly insightful—simply determining whether one can and should be a leader. Leaders and managers are different, but we must ask ourselves if we have the skills for a leadership role. Leaders have to find a voice that this book will help them hone. As the "employee," you must want to follow that leader. The second component that resonated with me is the concept of becoming the leader people to follow. So the first part is to ask yourself, should you be a leader? Am I ready to be a leader? The second part is combining the book and becoming a leader worth following.
     
    Finally, we come to something new for me in this work—the six leadership styles. The six leadership styles based on Daniel Goleman's model are autocratic, visionary, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and coaching. It advises readers to adapt their style to the situation and the needs of their team. The concepts of each leadership style and applying the "right" style at the "right" time are valuable. First, as a team concept, knowing what style the leader is in at that time helps you navigate your day-to-day role. But as a leader, knowing what your style is natively allows you to move into the style your team needs. To borrow from an adage, when you are up to your neck alligators, it is not the time to question your leader.
     
    All in all, I highly recommend the book Leading the Digital Workforce. It has helped me refine my views of leaders and leadership and better understand how I impact as a leader and how the leaders I work for impact me!

     

    - Scott Andersen