In 2014, one of the best professors at West was offered a position as Chief Information Officer at the Vancouver campus of Washington State University. Before leaving, we asked him for his best possible advice on how to reach success in the IT world. Hi, my name is Michael Stanford, and since 2009 I've been an adjunct professor here at West Los Angeles College teaching web development. I also have over 15 years of leadership for an IT organization and I want to take a few minutes today to share with you my tips for how to be successful IT leader in the modern world. Really it comes down to three things.
Good communication skills, great technical knowledge and creating efficiency within your department. If you're gonna be an IT leader you need to start with the information technology that's going to be used within your department. Here at West LA College they offer a variety of associate's degrees. You can think about computer networking, system security.
Web support or database management. There's a lot of certificates including Cisco, Microsoft, CompTIA, AppleCare, Oracle databases, or even VMware. Putting in the time and the effort to get your degree or your certification proves to your organization that you are serious about becoming an expert in technology and specifically in the technology needed for your industry.
Once you've got that, I think you need to move on and really focus on communication and that's kind of hard for a lot of technology-focused people, right? But communication is critical for success. If you can get your team able to explain the how, the when, the why, and have standard business communication practices and policies throughout the department, you're well on your way to being a successful IT leader. I want to take a minute, though, and I want to talk about accountability, because that is so important.
If you think about one complaint that IT departments have around the world, it is they don't often do what they say they will do. And in my mind, that is accountability. Do what you say you will do when you say you will do it. The final thing you need to really focus on is efficiency within your department. We live in a great day and age where there are some very powerful libraries and management practices that are available to an IT leader.
You should really think about ITIL, Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITSM, Information Technology Service Management, or even PMP, Project Management Professional Certification. One, two, or three of those certifications on your resume are going to give your career a big boost. But at the same time they're going to instill hopefully within your department a set of standard tools and techniques and business processes that have been tried again and again throughout many organizations around the world. So not only are they technically providing the services that are needed in the organization and communicating well about those and being accountable for the work they're now also being efficient in the jobs that they're doing.
You can combine all of those and you're well on your way to being a good employee. great successful IP leader in the modern world. Good luck!