The Transformational CIO: Leadership and Innovation Strategies for IT Executives in a Rapidly Changing World

Bringing the Vision to Life

In this chapter, we look primarily at three successful transformation scenarios to get a better idea of why it's critical to define a vision—clearly and unambiguously—before moving forward. After defining the vision, the next logical step is building the leadership team you'll need to turn the vision into reality.

One of the key takeaways from this chapter is that the transformational vision doesn't have to be overly complex or wildly ambitious—in fact, it helps if the vision is simple, straightforward, and easy to describe in a couple of short sentences.

And the vision doesn't have to emerge full-blown from the mind of the CIO. What counts is that the vision is tethered firmly to a business objective—or to an “end state”—that can be described in terms that everyone understands.

For a decade, Roger Berry served as senior vice president and chief information officer at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, a division of the Walt Disney Company. The division operates nine theme parks, a cruise line business, and more than 30 major resorts and hotels in locations around the world.

Roger played a key leadership role in the division's transformation from a very effective but traditionally focused hospitality business into a truly guest-centric organization. He credits Allen “Al” Weiss, the executive who brought him to Disney, with the original vision that guided the transformation.

The vision of a guest-centric organization was initially expressed in 2000 by Al, ...