Martin Gomberg

The shell of the egg is at best under appreciated. Except for uses contemplated only by the compost conscious, cracked against the side of the pan, emptied, and discarded, it is given little further thought or attention, except on the oft staggered days scheduled for trash removal when it suffers final indignities. An opportunity discarded comes at a cost. Absent the shell, the egg is amorphous, fluid, difficult to describe, measure, or examine. Yet the shell provides more than containment and protection. Left encased, shell unbroken, the egg is in context - it can be picked up, manipulated, examined, packaged, moved, and even sold. In context - we get the full picture, not only of an ovoid package of complex nutrition, but of a fragile and valuable entity, in a hostile and unpredictable environment, unprotected, except by this delicate natural container, and the cooperation of the external forces with which it interacts.

What rules do you live by? How do you define the culture and values you want in your IT department? We each hire the best talent, we all embrace diversity in people, skills and ideas, we all strive for business alignment, but how do we build a framework to assure we are targeting those most important elements that we as CIOs believe brings out our best, and delivers the greatest value to our companies? We each come from different backgrounds and experiences, face different corporate, budget, market, and industry challenges, and have our own ideas of what construes IT excellence. We each in common face the constant challenge of technology change, consumer technology empowerment, new markets and approaches to business, and the ever shortening shelf life of opportunity as pressures with which we must contend, adapt to or embrace, and which continually redefine our approach to IT.