Monthly Archives: April 2019

Confidence matters as much as competence

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How real is “the confidence gap”? How do you address it in your own work? This was one of the topical questions I posed on a recent TweetChat that I hosted for Jenn Dennard and #HealthITChicks.Brave woman posing as super hero

What would you tell your 20-year-old self? That was one of the questions posed a few days later to me and my co-panelists at the 3rd annual Women in Business Conference – Lead. Represent. Mentor. – sponsored by the Women in Business Club at Hult International Business School. Our panel was “Leading Change in Technology”.

One of the panelists, Nancy Li, is a young woman with a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering. She is the Manager of Edge Computing Commercialization at Verizon. In response to that question, she quickly answered, “Be fearless”. After everything I learned about Nancy’s career and experiences, I wasn’t at all surprised at her answer. The other panelist, Florence Lu, is a Senior Solution Architect and four-time IBM Master Inventor working at IBM Research and has filed more than 180 patent applications. She commented on the importance of developing public speaking skills if you want to be a leader, pointing out that you must be able to present your ideas to others. Clearly, she has been an idea generator and innovator her entire career.

I’ve spoken and written a lot on issues that women face at work in the past few years and willingly shared my own experiences as a professional woman and leader in IT for over three decades. I was truly impressed with Nancy and Florence’s accomplishments as technology professionals and their eagerness to share their own stories and advice. And their confidence!

I highly recommend reading the article, “The Confidence Gap” by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman published in The Atlantic, May 2014. They did extensive research on the differences between how girls and boys / women and men approach situations. The bottom line is that confidence matters as much as competence and confidence must lead to action. A few excerpts from the article: Continue reading →

Marketing – looking for the secret sauce

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When you launch a new company, you wear many hats. When we launched StarBridge Advisors in 2016, I agreed to be responsible for marketing, social media and the website among other things. Why me? I canstockphoto17892303 (1) marketingwas the most social media savvy of the three principals. But “savvy” is a relative term.

I have learned much these past few years and have much more to learn. Fortunately, there is no lack of resources for learning in this continually evolving space. Our website, blog, social media presence on LinkedIn and Twitter, and collateral continue to evolve as we learn what works and what doesn’t.

I listen to Whitney Cole’s Mission Marketing podcast for interviews with marketing experts. I read articles on how best to leverage social media. I tap into the experience of marketing experts I know. And I get ideas from what I see other firms doing.

This week I had the opportunity to attend a portion of the 6th annual HITMC (Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference). I was asked to be on a panel sharing the customer perspective – drawing on many years as a CIO and buyer of products and services. Of course, being on the other side now selling and marketing our health IT advisory services, I was also excited to learn from others.

From the customer perspective my advice was build relationships with prospective clients, provide content that they are interested in, avoid gimmicks, and avoid being the pushy salesperson no one likes. Know your target market and your prospective clients – think “precision marketing”.

After a day immersed in marketing topics with the healthcare IT marketing community, here are a few of my takeaways: Continue reading →

It’s IT’s fault

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I was surprised to hear this from a front-line airline worker when I checked in at the gate. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised after all my years in IT. As I deplaned on the first leg of my flight, I realized canstockphoto7753679 (1) blameI didn’t have a mobile boarding pass for the second leg. I usually print my boarding passes – just seems easier to keep track of and quickly access than trying to find the specific email on my iPhone with the boarding pass link. But I had checked in for the flight from my hotel room late the previous night so opted for a mobile boarding pass.

The connection was going to be tight anyways. And then my first flight was 35 minutes late departing and I was sitting towards the back of the plane. I was connecting at O’Hare so I hustled from the H gates to the L gates fast as I could. When I got to the gate and said I didn’t have a boarding pass, the airline employee said, “it’s our IT department”. He told me how IT has some explanation about how the mobile boarding passes aren’t intended for connecting flights for security reasons. But I don’t recall any message during the online check-in saying I had to get my second boarding pass at the airport. Then he said it’s because they inherited the IT department from the other airline they had merged with.

As a healthcare customer, I’ve often heard registration clerks and other front-line workers blame “the system” for being slow or not working the way they’d expect it to. Another “it’s IT’s fault” explanation. But given I usually received my care at the provider organization where I was the CIO, what I heard was it’s my team’s fault.

After doing an IT review at a client where we talked with probably 60 leaders and staff, I saw how the “it’s IT’s fault” takes on many flavors. A sobering reminder of just how hard IT’s job really is, yet how much IT needs to listen to their customers and partner with them. Continue reading →

What’s YOUR personal brand?

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We all have a professional network, big or small. It may be people we know well and have worked with at some point. Or people we’ve met briefly at a conference and agreed to keep in touch. Or people who canstockphoto18694235 (1) personal brandhave reached out to us to connect on social media channels after seeing our profiles.

While you may not think you have a “personal brand”, you do have a professional reputation.  The idea of having a personal brand may have invoked thoughts of vanity in the past. But not in this technology enabled social media world we live in.

So, what is your personal brand? Are you consciously creating it? How do people see you publicly online and in person? What are you known for? These are all questions you should be able to answer.

One of the first ways I thought about it was when I re-initiated my Twitter account several years ago and had to write my profile. At the time, my account was private. A colleague who was advising me on social media told me that was my first mistake. Twitter is meant to be public – I shouldn’t have to approve who can follow me. More importantly, he said my profile should capture in just a few phrases who I am and what’s important to me.

I recently saw a blog post by Janet Mesh from one of our partner firms, Healthcare IT Leaders, titled “How To Boost Your Career With An Online, Personal Brand”. I was reading along thinking, yup, yup I do all that. Then I was pleasantly surprised and grateful to see that I was used as an example. Thanks Janet and Healthcare IT Leaders!  And thanks to all those who gave me encouragement and advice to get started in a focused way building my social media presence several years back. Continue reading →