Chapter 3: CIGO Power—How Much and What Kind?

The third session featured Rick Miller, a leadership expert and consultant to chief executives. Blair felt it was important to bring in speakers from other areas of business “that are adjacent or diagonal to mine, because I find that it would be helpful to understand and analogize to my world, so I wanted to expose our audience to people from outside our world to give them thinking in fresh ways about this.” Miller spoke about what it means to be a “chief” and how to lead without a lot of authority (which may be how many CIGOs will have to function). Attendees completed a worksheet that explored their values as people and as leaders as well as how those values would translate into their roles as CIGOs.

Chapter 4: The CIGO Chair—Where Should It Be Parked?

Session 4 focused on how corporate governance relates to the CIGO role. A lawyer and corporate governance expert took attendees through the traditional model of corporate structure—a CEO and a relatively small group of executives subordinate to him had well-defined legal and fiduciary responsibilities to the corporation—and showed that that model is no longer accurate for many companies, because someone with a senior title may not have that kind of relationship to the company. This assertion led to a discussion about what the title of “chief” actually means today, and what kind of role a CIGO could play in the corporate governance structure. Attendees concluded that the CIGO doesn’t necessarily need to be an executive with a legal relationship to the company, but it does have to be someone who has sufficient authority to make decisions about the company’s information (e.g., what paperwork needs to be retained and what can be destroyed).

Chapter 5: Where Do CIGOs Come From?

The fifth session debated the background a CIGO should have—whether he or she should come from law, business, IT, or other fields. Current IG representatives in their organizations shared their histories, and attendees concluded that CIGOs can have any background as long as they’re comfortable selling themselves and their role. “Probably the most important thing, other than of course a level of knowledge and expertise at a certain level, is personality. This is a role that requires a lot of—we heard this again and again from people—it requires a lot of selling, it requires some coaching, it requires some mediation, it requires a lot of political savvy because you are dealing with groups within a company that have very different designs on information,” says Blair. CIGOs can work with various departments in a company (e.g., marketing and legal) to maximize business opportunities and minimize risks because they can use information to make informed decisions.

Chapter 6: The CIGO Elevator Pitch

Session 6 built on the idea of having to do a lot of selling as a CIGO. A sales coach led attendees in creating an elevator pitch for the role. They performed a series of exercises to answer questions such as what problem having a CIGO solves, how a salesperson can tailor a pitch to the relevant audience, what CIGOs should care about, and how to best tell the story of this role and why it’s important. Blair says most attendees weren’t salespeople, so they had never received this kind of training. Afterward, the group engaged in a mock pitch session, “which was funny and fun and of course a little embarrassing for everyone, but at that stage, we were really together, and it was a really nice spirit of generosity and people working together and excited.”

Chapter 7: The CIGO at Work

Three speakers shared the last session: Kurt Wilhelm (director of IG at NBCUniversal), Duke Alden (VP and global leader of data protection and governance at Aon, PLC), and Richard Kessler (executive director and head of group IG at UBS). Each talked about how they got into their roles, what projects they’re working on, what challenges they’re facing, and whether being the CIGO (or having one at their companies) helps their projects. “It was a great way to end the day in the sense of, we’ve talked about a lot of strategy here, we’ve talked about a lot of fairly high-level stuff, but ultimately, what does this look like in real life?” says Blair.

Gathering Feedback

Blair is satisfied with the takeaways from the CIGO Summit and plans to host another in early 2016. “We’ll probably do this format a couple more times as it is, and then we’ll produce a new edition [of the playbook] out of what we learn from each of those two events, and then we’ll go from there and see what it evolves into.”

The following attendees shared their thoughts on the summit.

Abhishek Agarwal, chief privacy officer at Baxter: “The Summit gave an opportunity to raise one of the strategic dialogue[s] that will gain momentum in coming days and years. Data as business asset, Value of the Data and Ethical Use of the Data needs to be resolved not just from the industry standpoint but also at the societal level.”

Tim Kaufman, IT manager at UTC: “Information is not an I.T. problem, it is a business problem. The CIGO Summit provides the perfect vehicle for developing a corporate cross-functional information strategy (Marketing, E-Discovery, Compliance, IR, Business Practices investigations, etc.) that balances organizational legal and technical challenges while maintaining business critical information in a consistent and defensible manner in order to deliver critical elements to support sustainable growth. I highly recommend it to those that wish to align themselves with thought leaders in the space. Get out in front of the information conundrum (volume rich, knowledge poor) and become an advocate for change.”

Vicki Lee Clewes, VP of global records and information management at McKesson Corp.: “It is so important, as we all march down this new road, that we learn from each other and exchange lessons learned. I love that this forum gave me a chance to meet my peers and be educated!”

Richard Kessler, executive director and head of group IG at UBS: “The single, most important industry event I have yet attended; densely packed with immediately useable approaches, methodologies and best practices; staffed by passionate and supremely experienced SMEs—both within and extraneous to the discipline—providing a 360-degree view of the imminent CIGO revolution; overall a grand slam. A definite repeat for next year!”