609: In this interview from our recent Metis Strategy Digital Symposium in September, Jim Swanson, Executive Vice President and Enterprise CIO for Johnson & Johnson, and Debra King, Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Transformation Officer for Corteva Agriscience, speak with Metis Strategy’s Vice President and East Coast Lead Alex Kraus about digital acceleration in times of uncertainty. Debra describes how Corteva maintains the characteristics of a startup and how the company leverages its Execute to Win program to bring about new and innovative ideas. Jim shares insight from Johnson & Johnson’s Four Pillars Approach as they relate to advancing the company’s mission of transforming the trajectory of human health. Finally, Debra gives her perspective on how Corteva’s agility has been shaped by uncertainty, and Jim gives his perspective on how Johnson & Johnson has developed resiliency during the pandemic.
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This episode is sponsored by Transmit Security.
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607: In this interview from a recent Metis Strategy Digital Symposium, Tim Dickson, Chief Information Officer for Generac, and Mike Giresi, Chief Digital Officer for Molex, focus on the ways in which technology leaders are engaging both employees and customers as part of their digital transformations. Tim discusses how he and his team at Generac think about the customer experience from a B2B perspective. Similarly, Mike discusses how he brings his background in B2C customer sensibility to the B2B work at Molex and how he achieves that through elevating the employee experience. Tim also talks about the ways in which the hiring of new talent and development of existing talent will change at Generac. Mike and Tim then both give their perspectives on how they bring people onboard and create buy-in with these new ways of working.
605: In this interview, Danielle Brown, SVP and CIO of Whirlpool, focuses on the digital consumer journey and how technology plays a role in the strategic imperatives of the company. Danielle shares the four major strategic imperatives of the company and provides background on how the IT organization partners with the rest of the business in cross-functional teams and uses data and analytics to meet those imperatives. She also describes how Whirlpool redefines products and continues to innovate and engage with consumers on their digital journey from start to finish. Danielle also gives insight into how she is maintaining a modern technology footprint at Whirlpool as well as how cybersecurity plays a role in the company’s overall strategy. Finally, she gives her perspective on the state of women of color in leadership positions in IT organizations, provides advice for aspiring board-level CIOs, and looks ahead at a few trends in technology that her team is looking at.
581: In this interview, Michael Wondrasch, EVP & CIO of Avantor, provides an overview of Avantor’s business and the digital and technological aspects behind its mission of accelerating the speed of science. Mike explains how he sees the barriers between suppliers and customers are fading, why the technology implications that arose during the pandemic are likely to stay, how Avantor implemented and navigated a hybrid work environment during the pandemic, and how the merger with VWR helped consolidate its e-commerce platforms and focus on being more customer-centric. He also describes how the differences between the CTO and CIO titles tend to be company-specific and some of the trends in technology he is looking forward to.
549: Seth Cohen, the global CIO of PepsiCo, leads IT for one of the largest beverage companies in the world. In this interview, we discuss the main difference between digital and analog companies along with PepsiCo’s digital agenda. We discuss how data strategy has evolved over the past 5-10 years, and a bit about PepsiCo’s own data journey. Lastly, we discuss cross-cultural communications lessons Seth has learned from living all over the world, the benefits of an East to West innovation path, PepsiCo’s experience switching to an entirely remote workforce, among a variety of other topics.
544: Jeff Immelt, the former CEO of GE, spent over 15 years running one of the world’s largest companies. In this interview, Jeff discusses his experience growing up professionally at GE, Jeff’s relationship with his predecessor and legendary CEO, Jack Welch, and Jeff’s story ascending to the CEO role. We discuss why Jeff decided to write the book about his time at GE, two things Jeff would have done differently if he had the chance to do them over again, and the digital push Jeff made as CEO. Lastly, we discuss what Jeff misses most about his time at GE, Jeff’s views on the global economy going forward, Jeff’s advice to younger individuals at the beginning of their careers, among a variety of other topics.
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523: Stanley Black & Decker CIO Rhonda Gass discusses
Among a variety of other topics.
507: Honeywell Chief Digital Technology Officer Sheila Jordan discusses
457: Oshkosh CIO Anupam Khare outlines the company’s five strategic pillars, which are being people-first; running digital technology as a business; modernizing and innovating; building advanced capabilities in analytics and process automation, among other areas; and securing the organization in a way that reduces friction and makes experiences better for its employees, customers, and partners. We also discuss how the company has been able to recruit new employees, how the team has mixed retraining with bringing in new people externally, how the Information Technology function has rebranded to “Digital Technology” to change its perception internally and externally, among other topics.
449: In this interview, Julie discusses how the IT team has evolved its approach and positioned itself to mirror the business organization by embedding its people within the business units, Julie’s approach to creating new value streams, and how IT has grown in strategic importance inside the company. We also discuss the OnCommand intelligent vehicle platform and how Navistar uses insights from the platform to change internal processes, trends in telematics and connected vehicles, and a variety of other topics.
