On the path to entrepreneurship, there are roadblocks and fears that will try to stop you but you are pressing ahead in spite of that. By you taking the time to address possible roadblocks and fears now, in the beginning, shows how committed you are. You’re off to a great start.
Review
We have discussed the roles of Chief Customer Service Officer (CCO), Chief Operations Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). We’ve thought about some familiar corporate roles and how to use them in our solorpreneur journey.
We’ve talked about stepping into the role of Chief Customer Service Officer when needing to make goals and decisions related to our customers.
We’ve talked about stepping into the role of Chief Operations Officer when needing to make goals and decisions related to productivity.
We’ve also talked about stepping into the role of Chief Marketing Officer when needing to make goals and decisions related to increasing tribe size and brand reputation.
Chief IT Officer
Let’s continue with the business owner who wants to start a service based business around beauty care. Her market is high school girls who wear makeup and attend homecoming and/or prom.
For our breakdown, the CIO is concerned with IT related expenses and downtime due to systems issues or systems inefficiencies. When do you think she would need to step into the role of Chief Information Technology Officer (CIO)?
Let’s say the business owner has decided which times and days she is available for the coming year. She wants to engage the student committees and high school staff who are involved in making homecoming and prom decisions.
Which technology to use
She now wants to set up a newsletter to send to the local high schools and therefore needs to choose an email marketing service provider. She steps into the role of Chief Information Technology Officer to decide which company is the best fit for her business.
As with the Chief Marketing Officer, you will step into the CIO role often. It’s quite normal during your startup period to feel your primary role is that of CIO some days. This is because you are deciding on technologies for your major functional areas and you must consider initial cost, cost to maintain (or renew) as well ease of use.
Core Entrepreneurial Roles
Wow. We’ve discussed 4 of the 6 core entrepreneurial roles: CCO, COO, CMO and now the CIO. As you’ve seen all four have important goals and decisions to make and as I mentioned before, all four care about what the other “chiefs” are doing.
But at the same time each realizes her area of responsibility and focuses on it so she makes decisions that are in the best of her department and reduces the chance of overwhelm.
What types of recent IT related decisions have you made? Please share in the comments.
Leave a Reply