By Allan Maurer
In the most challenging times, world class companies look for opportunities to gain a competitive advantage. So says Jack Spain, president of Technovative Solutions and senior consultant with Fuentek, the largest NASA contractor in North Carolina, author of the new book, “The IT Leadership Pyramid.”
The advantages a top company finds might be in cost, or innovative service offerings or new product development. “It varies by enterprise, industry, and where they sit from a competitive standpoint,” Spain tells TechJournal South.
Spain published his new book through RTP-based Lulu.com, the company founded and led by Red Hat pioneer Bob Young (who was a keynote speaker at TechJournal South’s Internet Summit last year (http://www.internetsummitevent.com/). It is based, he says, “The insights I’ve gained from working in and with IT organizations for more than 30 years.
Spain serves as Fuentek’s client lead for the NASA Kennedy Space Center, NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center and the University of Illinois. Prior to joining Fuentek as a technology transfer consultant in 2006, he held several key information technology and executive positions, including CEO and executive vice president of research for Experture, chief technologist for Progress Energy and vice president of professional services for SciQuest.
Recently, Spain helped NASA with its project to design and launch a massively multi-player game that encourages students to learn more math and science. (See: NASA, Fuentek evaluating MMO game proposalshttp://tiny.pl/b2mc). RTP-based Virtual Heroes, (www.virtualheroes.com) which specializes in serious games used for learning, training and simulations, is part of that project).
Spain says the idea for the book evolved from a consulting assignment he had in Israel in 2005. “I spent a week talking to chief information officers about the challenges IT execs faced at the time,” he explains. “I developed the outline and initial concepts from there.”
In the book, he looks at ten key elements of the pyramid of challenges IT professionals face. It moves from the bottom tier, which examines the “core block and tackle challenges the IT leader needs to get his hands around,” such as service, compliance, and operational management.
He then moves up the pyramid to look at strategic planning, IT governance and overall IT leadership issues.
Some issues the book deals with are timeless, he says. “They’ve been part of the IT leader’s role and responsibilities for decades.” Others, such as compliance issues, “are much more complex than prior to the dot com crash, Enron, and other things industries have faced since.”
Each section of the book wraps up with in terms of specific actions an IT leader can take. “My goal is to provide actionable content,” he says. “It’s guidance I’ve been providing CIOS since founding my consulting company.”
If he had to point to a single piece of advice, we asked, what would it be?
“Invest a lot more time in listening than in speaking,” Spain says. “Listening to clients, listening to colleagues, to partners, to staff members. The key thing I talk about is to learn about the enterprise itself and to make sure you have a good reality check and are not just hearing what people think you want to hear. Get out there and be engaged at all levels of the enterprise from the lowest level to the senior executives.”
Online: www.spaintechnovative.com
http://stores.lulu.com/spaintechnovative
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