Wednesday 9 July 2008

From EDP to CEO: Lessons from Ralph Norris, CEO at Commbank

Tonight I attended an UNSW Australian School of Business alumni event (I'm an MBT'er), Meet the CEO, with Ralph Norris from Commbank. I wouldn't normally blog about this kind of thing, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear about Ralph's background in information technology (Electronic data processing at Auckland Savings Bank in 1969, to be precise), which eventually saw him move into the role of CEO.

This profile on an unrelated ACS media release pretty well sums up some of the encouraging points he made about the role of IT tonight, particularly "Technology is an enabler". In addition, tonight he emphasised (to use my words) the importance of understanding the people context, having technologists with people skills and the importance of change management that answers the "what's in it for me question".

(All this certainly made up for the late start to the evening due to a firm alarm and the wet weather!)

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