President & CISO at ClearTone Consulting LLC
Can you please provide a little introduction about yourself
I'm currently into my third year running my own IT consultancy, ClearTone Consulting. Based upon my 37-year technology career, starting as an electrical engineer, moving to software and database development, and finally with the last 21 years at the C-level, I've decided to apply my experience to helping the SMB marketplace. I work out of Frederick Maryland and focus the majority of my work on trade associations and non-profits, although I work with commercial SMBs as well.
What has your journey to your position been like? What path have you taken?
My undergraduate was in electrical engineering and therefore I pursued my first several positions in that field. In actuality, my real interests always lay in software development, so after a few years in engineering I switched professions. I thoroughly enjoyed a long career as a software and database architect. Excelling in supporting teams in several companies, I was offered the path into IT management which ultimately led to a promotion as the CIO of a small business of about 250 employees in 2001. I was the CIO of this company over the next 19 years, growing it from the original 250 employees and approximately 25M in revenue to what became 700 employees and nearly 100M in revenue pre-covid. It was an excellent education of IT leadership as I had responsibility over software product development, customer implementations, call-centers, data center operations, networking, and cybersecurity for a PCI-compliant system that was processing $400M/year of customer transactions.
When covid devastated this firm (as it was in the live event market), I decided to apply my education to helping SMBs and non-profit organizations with their IT challenges. This latest phase of my career has continued to educate me on marketing and sales strategies and has ultimately led me to focusing on cybersecurity services, as the need is so great in the SMB market.
Has it always been your vision to reach the position you’re at? Was your current role part of your vision to become a tech leader?
I would not say that my vision was to reach higher levels of IT, but would rather say that my interests were always in improving how things were managed and choosing what IT strategies should be employed. These two passions led to having the opportunity of leadership positions. My passion has always been the application of technology to solve challenges in an efficient way. This interest lends itself well to leadership. Additionally, for whatever reason, I have always had the unique ability to both "talk tech" with the technology staff as well as "talk business" with the other organizational leaders and board members. This ability to speak both languages and to effectively translate IT challenges and opportunities into business language has supported success at leadership levels.
Have you had a role model or mentor that has helped you on your journey?
I have had many, many mentors along the way, and far too many to mention. As a young coder, there were many strong developers that shared their expertise with me, allowing me to accelerate my own developer career. I developed a passion for not just writing code, but doing so in a reusable and extensible way that created true digital assets, not just functionality.
Upon being promoted into my first CIO role, I would say almost every other leader peer was a mentor. As many questions as I asked, of marketing, sales, finance, and human relations, I was supported with explanations and education. This inquisitive approach to understand the 'worlds' of these other departments built relationships that eventually allowed me to be a trusted advisor to them as well and gave me avenues to influence the entire operations of a company, not just IT.
Lastly, there were several consultants that I had met along the way that opened my eyes to the value of a great consultant. I mirror the approach I experienced from sharing the calming effect of wisdom through experience with my customers. I've been through so many of the fires they are just now walking through and it helps to provide them the insights and confidence needed to navigate the choppy waters of IT.
How do you see the role of the technology leader evolving over the next 5 years?
I believe that both cybersecurity risks and AI opportunities will be the two strongest influences in the next 5 years. All IT leaders need to be continually educating themselves on cybersecurity risk mitigations, as that world is evolving almost as fast as the AI world, and the two are not independent.
ChatGPT has taken the work by storm and will continue to be a significant influence in all areas of business. IT leaders and their teams will need to step up to be experts in this area to better support and consult their businesses.
Lastly, in third place, I believe that low/no-code automation platforms will also play a significant role in shaping the IT landscape. These platforms offer a low-cost democratization of IT automation and will revolutionize what it means to be in IT.
What skills do you think leaders of the future will need in order to thrive?
The need to translate between technology language and business language will not change, regardless how the underlying tech-stacks evolve. As mentioned above, expertise in the three areas of cybersecurity, AI, and low-code automation are all fundamental to being effective currently and in the near future.
How do you keep current with new skills, technologies and personal development?
Read, read, read. Being in IT means you must continually learn or you will be outdated within 5 years. As a consultant, I also have the benefit of working with different teams and learning from them as well. This comes in handy in regard to having knowledge of the product landscape, as there are far too many SaaS offerings to understand them all completely on your own.
What do you see as the next leap in technology that will impact your business or industry in particular?
At the risk of sounding cliche, AI will be leading it all. There doesn't seem to be any area of IT that will not be affected by AI. Cybersecurity is a huge area of application of AI, both in the protections side of it as well as the criminal side. Cybersecurity itself will continue to require a larger portion of both attention and budgets as the risks continue to increase in that area.
"My primary advice to my young IT leader customers is to focus on the ability to communicate effectively."
If you were mentoring a leader of the future, what advice or guidance would you give to help them on their way?
My primary advice to my young IT leader customers is to focus on the ability to communicate effectively. They have to learn how to bring complex decision challenges up to a very high level, how to create visuals that help people understand, and how to avoid going down the rabbit holes of providing too much information that begins to confuse or deflect the primary objective of their discussion. It really doesn't matter what the technical challenges are, what the tech stack is, the foundation of effective IT leadership will always be in one's ability to communicate effectively to build trust and alignment.
It is common to find young IT leaders providing too much information and using too much IT jargon in their communications. I can see the business leaders' eyes roll back in their head when this begins. You have to meet them where they are and explain things in a way that can be absorbed.
Is there anything in particular that you would still like to achieve in your career or what is the next step on your journey?
Yes! I'd love to build my cybersecurity solopreneurship into a small consulting company that focuses both on cybersecurity and on consulting businesses on how to leverage low-code automation to support their objectives.
If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?
I would love to have people be far more tolerant of other's differences. This can be applied globally, nationally, regionally, socially, and within companies. I believe it is one of the hardest things for humans to do, but I fundamental to successfully addressing so many of the world's significant challenges.
A big thank you to Brian Scott from ClearTone Consulting LLC for sharing his journey to date.
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