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Thank you to the 1,400 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 questions!
I hope reading
helps you in your leadership.
Cheers,
Jonno White
7 Questions with William M Genovese
7 Questions with William M Genovese
Name: William M Genovese
Current title: CIO and CTO
Current organisation: eHome Holdings
Bill Genovese is an entrepreneurial information technology executive with passion and integrity for driving business engagement and technology leadership through the development of business-value accelerated solutions with over 25 years of experience in financial services, real estate, healthcare, information technology, and consulting. He has provided business accelerated technology solutions in many areas of the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific consulting and working with the world's leading multinational, national, and regional firms as important clients. He brings collaborative and decisive technical leadership with breadth and depth of expertise in emerging and mature technologies, enterprise and technical architecture, strategic planning, innovation development and management, cloud computing, and analytics, with the right balance of Enterprise Risk Management in mind. Previously, Bill served as a Chief Information Officer for Encrypted Labs (a Blockchain Technology and Consulting company), Chief Technology Officer, and Executive Board Member with Saving Promise, a national Non-Profit in the United States.
He was also an Executive Principal, and Chief Technology Architect, for the WGroup, a leading CIO Advisory and IT Strategy Management Consulting Firm. Bill has worked with more than 20 companies ranging from mid-size regional to global Fortune 50 corporations, offering business-aligned information strategy, technology, and architecture consulting, across various industries including banking, investment banking, and capital markets, insurance, diversified financial services, real estate, high technology, healthcare, non-profit, telecommunications, energy and utilities, and media and publishing.
Bill has driven and delivered enterprise initiatives on a global scale for companies, centered on emerging technology and innovation development, IT optimization and stabilization coupled with profit and revenue growth while simultaneously reducing expenses and risk through cost avoidance. Prior to his leadership and advisory roles at Saving Promise, and WGroup, Bill was an Executive Architect and Client Technical Leader with IBM. Under his leadership and guidance, he delivered and served several client engagements centered on IT Transformation, Strategic Outsourcing, Enterprise, and Reference Architecture development, IT Governance and Design Board and Team Development, Cloud Computing, and Enterprise Operational, Risk, Business and Financial Analytics and Business Intelligence. As a Director level technical leader he led an engagement that transformed a $70MM data center into a profit center through Cloud Computing. His solutions have Increased business continuity by 85%, and accelerated technology deployment by 60%, and the technical strategies and planning he has led resulted in $2B of new contracts.
Bill has been a thought leader for over 10 years and is a technical inventor and holder of multiple patents and disclosures positioning for clients bleeding-edge/leading-edge technologies and innovations. He is an author of many white papers, IBM Redbooks, and has extensive content published to social media, and publications (CIO Review, Banking CIO Outlook, Enterprise Networking) on the topics of intelligent and orchestrated SW defined integration with hardware platforms and network technology, cloud computing, and big data and analytics.
Bill is a recognized leader and has been a member of a number of IBM Technical Advisory and Executive Boards, a mentor and coach for less experienced colleagues, and recipient of multiple awards and honors, and holds 8 certifications. He has more than 40 letters of recommendation and endorsements from past business associates and clients. Bill Genovese earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications from Western Connecticut State University and has had continuing leadership, business, and technical education throughout his career from a number of highly esteemed institutions, including MIT, Oxford, and Harvard. He is currently serving on the boards of Standard Health Corporation and Saving Promise, as a Chief Technology Officer, Executive Board Director. Previously, he served on the boards for the following: Co-Chair, China Greater Bay Committee, FinTech Association of Hong Kong; Advisor: HA:KU Global; NyxVX; Besurance; FinTech4Good Advisory Council/ FinTech4Good Financial Services and Investment Committee Member; Global Panel Member, MIT Technology Review; and a Board Advisor: Prado Capital Group (Technology Investments and Healthcare); Lifeboat Foundation.
1. What have you found most challenging as a leader of a small or medium enterprise?
Lack of maturity in terms of industry and technical standards and architecture. The propensity and desire to go and just build something without proper analysis or due diligence
2. How did you become a leader of an SME? Can you please briefly tell the story?
I've been a technical leader (CIO and CTO) of two startups in my career and an advisory Executive Director and CTO for 5 more. I've obtained these positions through recommendations from my network as well as applying directly for roles on job boards and social media sites such as Indeed and LinkedIn.
3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?
I usually wake up anywhere between 6:30 and 7:30. I work from home, and need to make sure I have my coffee first before I even attempt to open my laptop! Then it's usually reading and responding to emails I did not see before I went to sleep the night before. After I get through emails and address any requests, I will check my calendar again to prepare for any meetings I have scheduled. In between meetings I am: either preparing for my next meetings or working on deliverables and planning based on my responsibilities.
4. What's the most recent significant leadership lesson you've learned?
To continue to strike a balance between enough analysis, preparation and planning vs execution. This balance always is shifting based on each environment and must constantly be adjusted.
5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?
Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy – And How to Make Them Work for You This book was highly featured in a MIT Sloan Executive Education course I completed: Digital Transformation: Platform Strategies. It's been used throughout the last several jobs I have had to shape my business and technical strategies for my companies. It provided me ways to safely expand and scale solution coverage scope.
6. How do you build leadership capacity in an SME?
By building a team of capabilities internally and externally. Know what you and your team knows quickly and what they don't. Carefully evaluate your strategic partners and identify those who are more specialized or tactical in nature.
7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader of an SME so far?
Turning around a very difficult situation at a Top 25 Global Account, which my former employer was in very serious danger of losing a $1B contract renewal for 5-10 years in Asia. As Chief Engineer, Executive Architect and the CIOs right hand advisor, Not only did I save the renewal, but completely restored faith from the client in my employers products, services, technology, strategy and solutions and we were awarded additional business. I restored client faith in my company by a tremendous re-design and execution of enterprise architecture with improved reliability, performance, stability and resiliency across all technology, services and data centers by implementing and deploying next generation and advanced financial services and technology solutions in an 18 month time frame.
