371. George Hunt, former CIO of the Year, on Winning hearts and minds, technology as a strategy, and the little things of leadership [Best of Series]

“The one analogy I use for technology change programs is that we're trying to upgrade an aircraft whilst it's in flight. This allows people to understand the risk profile.”

 

In this Best of Series episode, we replay a chat we had in 2019 with George Hunt, former CIO of the Year, on winning hearts and minds, technology as a strategy, and the little things of leadership.

🎧👉  chiefmaker.com/371 👂

 

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At the time of the recording, George was the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Sydney Water. He is currently the Chief Strategy Officer of Smart Energy Water in the UK, a role he has held since November 2020.

George is a recognised technology leader within the global utility sector, with a successful track record in implementing technology infrastructure to support increasing customer expectations, challenging regulatory outcomes and corporate business goals.

He has also held roles as a Global Consulting Partner at Wipro Digital in the UK and CIO for Wessex Water.

George has a Bachelor of Engineering from Birmingham University and a Master of Information Systems from Kingston University in London, and was awarded CIO Australia’s CIO of the Year in 2018.

In this Best of Series Masterclass we talk about:

✅ How to win the hearts and minds of your people and aligning to achieve a vision

✅ Why Technology has evolved to become a key strategy for most organisations

✅ Some great analogies for leading a business through rapid change, and

✅ The Little Things of Leadership like the power of goodwill.

Stay epic,

Greg

Connecting with George Hunt

You can reach George via LinkedIn.

Books and Resources

• Be Like Amazon - by Jeffrey Eisenberg, Bryan Eisenberg, Roy H Williams

• The Advantage - by Patrick Lencioni

• Who Moved My Cheese - by Dr Spencer Johnson

• Leading on the Edge - by Rachael Robertson

• Be The Business: CIOs in the New Era of IT - by Martha Heller

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• Greg Steele, Global President of Arcadis Mobility, on The importance of broad experience, bringing people with you and dealing with difficult issues

• Angus Stevens, Co-Founder & CEO of StartBeyond, on Taking learning by experience to new frontiers, putting guardrails on innovation, and creating useful technology for tangible real-world problems

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