The hard truth: What it really takes to be a global CIO

As a global CIO who regularly travels between continents, Joe Locandro relies on strong dedication and an excellent executive assistant to get through each week.

Joe Locandro is Global CIO at Rimini Street, a third-party support provider for enterprise software. He serves as both an internal CIO and a client-facing CIO who travels to meet with other IT leaders worldwide. At his home base in Melbourne, Australia, Joe starts his workday at 4 a.m. and works until 7 p.m. -- a period that allows him to collaborate with teams in Australian, North American and Indian time zones. The CIO life can seem glamorous, but it requires a lot of personal sacrifice, Locandro said.

In the following interview, Locandro discusses the importance of leadership skills, strategic thinking and business acumen -- qualities he has cultivated across his career. His insights offer a rare glimpse into the complex, dynamic and challenging world of CIO leadership in today's global business environment.

Editor's note: The following transcript was edited for length and clarity.

As a CIO, what tasks do you spend most of your time on?

Joe Locandro: About one third of my time is dedicated to activities such as executive policy development, executive strategy formulation, attending executive leadership meetings and reviewing business results. If you're in a senior CIO role reporting to the CEO, you are bringing not only technology experience, but you're in with the group asking, 'What are we doing about sales? What's our product launch?' You're expected to contribute as an executive and occasionally share IT knowledge, if it's relevant.

Another third of my time is spent traveling to meet with other CIOs. I have an unusual role here, where I serve as both an internal CIO and a client-facing CIO. For the client-facing piece, I speak to CIOs of large multinational organizations, and they see me as a peer -- not as a salesman -- because we're talking about common issues.

Then the final third of my time goes to the internal side. I probably spend about half of my internal time on IT strategy and the other half -- or less -- on operations. I have a chief of staff, and he is like my COO. He ensures that the engine is running, and all loose ends are tied up, as I'm always traveling to different time zones.

What time do you start and end your workday?

Locandro: My workday starts at 4 a.m., and then I'll work until about lunchtime in Melbourne, which is the evening in the U.S. Then, my Australia workload kicks in, and they want me to do things locally in Australia. Finally, India comes online around 4 p.m., and I'm doing meetings with them from about 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

When I'm traveling and meeting with other CIOs, my day looks different. Every night, while I'm away, I'm with a vendor or company. The marketing people are in town, so my day starts around 7 a.m. Sometimes I have town halls starting at 7 a.m., so I might get in an hour earlier. My typical day on the road is 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., followed by dinner with a vendor. Then I get home at 10 p.m. I haven't got any time to go to the gym, and my only personal time is before I go to sleep.

I typically work Monday through Saturday. I work on Saturday in Australia, because that's the same day as Friday in the U.S.

What are some of the more challenging aspects of being a CIO?

Locandro: A CIO life is not glamorous, and to get higher up, you need to make sacrifices. I can't tell you how many wedding anniversaries or kids' birthdays I've missed due to work commitments. You've got to have the ability to relocate and sometimes prioritize work over family. I remember moving and relocating my family -- three young kids -- from Australia to Hong Kong. We went from big backyards to living in urban density.

You'll have to make trade-offs -- and the more senior you get, the more intense it is.

You'll have to make trade-offs -- and the more senior you get, the more intense it is. Rimini Street is a midsize organization, which allows it to have flexibility and empathy. However, a large multinational organization is a machine. There's no empathy in a machine of 20,000 employees. It's like 'These are the dates. These are the targets. This is what you've got to do.'

How has being a CIO affected your family?

Locandro: A lot of CIOs have divorces and other family-related challenges. I've been married 40 years, and we have moved to the Middle East, Europe and Asia. My wife has been supportive. However, she told me that she had to reinvent herself every time we moved to a new country. She had to make new friends. When we were in Asia, she learned to play mahjong. She had to learn about all the cultures. When we were in Dubai, in a Muslim country, she had to be fully covered.

So, a CIO can jump in and go to the next company, where they have meetings and people want to take them around. However, it's a lot harder for the spouse, and it requires resilience.

My kids were okay because they were making friends at school. I have three beautiful daughters, and our lifestyle has provided them with life-enriching experiences. They're resilient, culturally adaptable and very empathetic. That's something that kids nowadays would cherish.

What habits or skills do you credit for your effectiveness as a CIO?

Locandro: Hard work and being a goal-focused CIO benefitted me early in my career. From early on, I preferred taking action rather than pontificating. The other thing that helped me was the development of leadership skills -- people skills. You can find some excellent technical people, but they can be bad at managing.

As you move up to a management level, you need to develop people skills or supervisory skills, and some companies don't train their executives in this area. Leadership is all about creating a vision and getting people to follow you. It's not about using your positional power to make people do things. That's how I differentiate a leader from a manager.

How do you manage your time across so many time zones?

Locandro: Schedule discipline and carving out time for yourself is very hard in a global role. It's critical to have a very good executive assistant (EA) who tries to manage the schedule -- and you've got to be brutal. Every time someone puts a diary entry without going through my EA, I write back and reject the meeting, saying, 'No, you must go through my EA.' After a month of rejecting their entries, they learn to go through my EA.

I've had to train people at every job in every country. People try to bypass the EA by getting your mobile phone. When I started living overseas, I never published my mobile phone number on my business cards. I just had my office and EA phone number on it, so it would never get on any Salesforce or contact lists, and no one could bypass my EA.

What skills do new or aspiring CIOs need to develop to be effective leaders?

Locandro: Aspiring CIOs need guidance on how to think more strategically. It's amazing -- I asked all my general managers who aspire to be CIOs for a two-year roadmap, and all they provided was a list of two years' worth of activities and upgrades. It was just an activity sheet, not a strategic plan. What we needed was a focus on outcomes: if we invest this money and complete these initiatives, what value will we gain?

Overly operational thinking is a symptom of advancing through the ranks, as people's roles tend to be operational until they assume leadership roles.

CIOs also need business acumen and commercial sensibilities. I've had to train my management team on topics such as finance and how to understand a profit and loss statement. Networking skills are also important. CIOs must be comfortable enough to make an appointment with someone in the business for lunch or coffee to get that business understanding.

Tim Murphy is site editor for Informa TechTarget's IT Strategy group.