Photo by Hugo

Have you ever wonder what is the secret behind professional success, and what does it take to climb up the corporate ladder to reach the C-suite? Well, I like to share 9 very good tips from an article from CIO.com that I read. The article talks about qualities of a good CIO, and how following these tips, an IT professional can work towards becoming a potential CIO. Although it was originally targeted at IT professional, I feel that the applications of these tips can be more general and broader than it intends to be; and it can be applied to any functional managers like HR, Finance,Operations etc.

Understand the Business – Know your business beyond your functional area, speak the business lingo, understand it’s intricacies to help the business; Understand the macro and micro forces surrounding your business, know the challenges. Focus on factors that affect your bottom line.

Communicate Appropriately – Techno-talk to IT and business-talk to the customers, a person who can bridge these two worlds and understand their respective issues. Use analogies to help business understand IT challenges.

Be A Learning Machine – Keep learning and learn new skills out of your scope of work. Especially in business areas like finance, marketing and budgeting etc… Be well-rounded so that you can give well-rounded consideration to business issues.

Let Your Work Speak For Itself – Plain talk and no action achieves nothing. Action speaks louder than words. Action bring results. People will see your contribution over time. If you have to tell someone how good you are, you probably aren’t.

Being Humble – You have to acknowledge that there are things that you don’t know, and that you will need to leverage on others’ expertise to get things done. You need to realize that you cannot always be the one to set the pace, and that following others can make things happen as well.

Being Patient – You really need to learn that you cannot always have thing your way. In order for people to buy-in to an initiative, time is required; and you must allow yourself to be influenced to see others’ point-of-view. You need to let things – projects, promotions, opportunities, relationship – develop.

Be Prepared – “Luck is just opportunity and preparation coming together”. Someday , the opportunity will come, it is only a matter of time, and being patient. But first, get yourself prepared. All glorious moments comes from ample preparations. It didn’t just happen like that.

Network – Knowing people, coupled with real value and preparation; it increases opportunities and opens more doors.

Being True To Yourself - To that end there is one last piece of wisdom to consider for professional success. The best advice I ever got was “don’t jeopardize your principles, because that is what makes you.” This advice has a corollary: If you start kissing butt you will always kiss butt. I decided never to kiss butt.

Shakespeare said it best:

“To thine own self be true.”

There is more to life than just professional success. At the end of the day, when we look back at our life, can we say that the journey was worth it? Can we say that we had been true to ourselves?

Do you have any other tips to add to professional success? Please feel free to share in your comments.

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