There comes a time in the professional life of most CIOs when they — you — need to bring in a consultant.
Not a contractor. That’s someone with a defined set of skills you bring in to help with day-to-day tasks.
We’re talking about someone with broad expertise and experience-based judgment you pay for good advice. Having spent time on both sides of the CIO/consultant relationship I can say, with confidence, that a lot of CIOs don’t know how to best work with us.
Their mistakes fall into three broad buckets: (1) What they ask for; (2) how they select a consulting partner; and (3) what they do with the advice their consultant gives them.