With constant evolution, the technology opportunities are increasing and the leaders should focus on fostering a culture and environment that give employees freedom and prioritizes their professional growth in order to minimize attrition
When asked how he planned his career path to be a successful Head of IT, Saaim Aslam, Head of IT planning & Enterprise architecture at Seera Group, in an exclusive interview with CIO News, said, there are four major areas when you are planning for your career: interest, skills, values, and preferences. And in my opinion, interest is at the top of the list as it defines what you are passionate about. Even if you aren’t paid to do that, you’d still want to spend time learning more about them. And that is how I planned my career path as well by keeping the interest at the core of my career planning. I had to get to know myself first before I decided which direction to choose.
After self-evaluating, I would play the future game on who I would like to be down the lane and what would I need in terms of tangible steps to reach there. The next key step is to take action towards it and keep following through. “Patience is the key in order to be successful”.
When asked about challenges he faced in his career path and how he overcame them, he said, the pace of innovation and the changing tech landscape created a challenge of constantly learning and re-learning. “The key to success is to bridge the skill gap continuously that would help to manage the modern IT world”. Another key aspect that I had to face is to ensure transition and change management are at the core of the business, rather than keeping it as a silo function. This required stepping up and being a leader instead of a manager to ensure team motivation is at a level where they are ready to adapt and evolve.
When asked about a cyber-attack or any security incident faced by his current organisation and how he tackled it, he said, “We constantly invest in innovative security services for our group to improve the trust of our customers”. Our mission is to deliver high-quality information security services and solutions that combine to reduce risk at our organization. Our strategy focus on three major areas has helped us achieve being resilient to security incidents.
- Maintain the current security posture
- Mitigate new threats based on emerging intelligence and evolving threat landscape
- Align with various regulatory requirements for our group
When asked how his organisation geared up in terms of technology in the COVID times, he said, the digital transformation that our organization had gone through for the last seven years really helped us to be resilient in tough times like COVID. Although the pandemic caused many to work from home, making corporations and workers be more dependent on digital technology, our digital strategy and plan that was defined long ago and was implemented diligently, kept us going through tough times.
When asked about technology solutions and innovations he plans to implement in the post COVID era, he said, continuous integration is at the core of our business and technology. We constantly are evolving to adapt to changing business needs. “Our focus is to make use of automation and AI in order to achieve operational efficiencies in areas where human productivity can be enhanced”.
When asked about challenges faced by technology leaders today in a similar industry while implementing digital technologies, he said, getting the right talent is quite difficult to not only attract but also retain.
When asked how technology leaders can overcome the challenges faced, he said, “With constant evolution, the technology opportunities are increasing and the leaders should focus on fostering a culture and environment that give employees freedom and prioritizes their professional growth in order to minimize attrition”.
When asked about best practices/industry trends/advice he would like to suggest to fellow technology leaders for their successful professional journeys, he said, whether you’re in tech or any other sector, being a leader doesn’t mean you need to be the smartest person in the room or the best coder on the team. Sincerity, trust, communication, decisiveness, and an ability to empower others are far more important.
“Make mentoring a key element of your role “, he highlighted.
Also read: CIO News interviews Shri Wangki Lowang, Minister (IT) of Arunachal Pradesh
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CIO News, a proprietary of Mercadeo, produces award-winning content and resources for IT leaders across any industry through print articles and recorded video interviews on topics in the technology sector such as Digital Transformation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Cloud, Robotics, Cyber-security, Data, Analytics, SOC, SASE, among other technology topics
