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CYBERSECURITY CONSIDERATIONS - CONTINUED CYBERSECURITY CONSIDERATIONS - CONTINUED

INTERPERSONAL AND
COMMUNICATION SKILLS:

A vCIO will have to communicate
effectively to a wide range of people about
many complex technology topics. A vCIO
may have to have “difficult” conversations
with various stakeholders. One day a
vCIO may have to speak candidly with a
Leadership about discovered risks. Another
day the vCIO may have to have a direct
conversation with a system administrator
TECHNOLOGY SKILLS: about their performance and a lack of
preparedness in weekly team meetings.
Some people might assume that technology A vCIO will often facilitate conversations
skills would be first on this list. And it’s and strategic planning discussions between
true that technology skills are critical to a leadership, the technology team, and other
vCIO’s success. The reality, however, is stakeholders, all with different perspectives
that technology is such a far-ranging field and levels of understanding about
that no single person can be expected to technology. The degree to which a vCIO
WHAT ARE QUALITIES OF AN have a high level of expertise in ALL the can effectively navigate these conversations
EFFECTIVE VCIO? technological aspects required for today’s will go a long way toward determining their
small business or nonprofit operations. An success.
LEADERSHIP SAVVY: effective vCIO may have specific areas
of expertise, but much more important COACHING AND MENTORING:
A vCIO needs to work with leadership is a BROAD range of competence across
to understand organizational goals and multiple technology disciplines including An effective vCIO must be able to provide
how information technology can help technology infrastructure, cloud services, appropriate feedback that helps team
support those goals. Technology cannot cybersecurity, data governance, data members grow and evolve as individuals
exist for its own sake, a good vCIO must privacy, project management, Agile and as a team. The vCIO should identify
understand how to convey technology risks methodology, and emerging technologies. skills gaps, and direct team members
and opportunities to leadership in a way toward appropriate training opportunities
that is clear and allows leadership to make A GOOD NETWORK: to build the skills of the individuals and
well-informed decisions about resource teams with whom they collaborate.
allocation, risk tolerance and prioritization. An effective vCIO needs access to a
network that includes a wide range of Without all (or at least most) of these
MANAGEMENT SKILLS: technology professionals that the vCIO can qualities, it will be very difficult for a vCIO
bring in when specific expertise is needed to achieve success. Take a hard look at
An effective vCIO must be able to for a specific technology need. Because your internal management structure to see
deliver consistently to help lead a team no one person can reasonably be expert in if a vCIO may be a good fit to improving
to high performance levels. This requires all areas of technology, the effective vCIO your cybersecurity environment and allow
experience and skills in active listening, understands and respects the edges of their your organization to grow.
root cause analysis, understanding team competency and not only advocates for
dynamics and accountability, project bringing in appropriate expertise where
management, change management, needed, but can also recommend specific
25 delegation, and prioritization. resources with the needed expertise. 26