Unlock Your Potential: 8 Game-Changing IT Leadership Secrets for First-Time CIOs

The first few years atop the IT org chart can make or break your leadership career. Set yourself up for success with hard-earned advice from those who’ve been there.

Shelley Seewald has been CIO at Tungsten Automation for less than a year, but she doesn’t worry about making mistakes or spinning out. Seewald’s superpower is what she calls her "little mini board of directors," folks outside of the company who have become trusted colleagues over the years.

The board consists of five people who meet remotely around once a month. One person is also a CIO, another is a former boss of Seewald’s, and most are in IT.

"It’s always good to have a sounding board when you run into issues and have people you can speak with and run ideas by,’’ Seewald says. "I don’t know what I would do without [the board]."

Generally speaking, the first three years can make or break your IT leadership career, given that digital leaders globally tend to stay at one company for just over that length of time on average, according to the 2025 Nash Squared Digital Leadership Report.

CIOs looking to sidestep that statistic are taking intentional measures, ensuring they get early wins, and perhaps most importantly, not coming into their role with preconceived ideas about how to lead or assuming what worked in a past job can be replicated.

Here is a look at how newly appointed CIOs are ensuring their transition to the top of the tech ranks is successful without stalling out.

Get a few early wins

When Zach Lewis was appointed CIO of University of Health Sciences & Pharmacy in St. Louis five years ago, it was his first time in the role. Not long afterward, with budgets being tight, Lewis was also given the title of CISO. Even though it’s a lot of work, Lewis says having dual titles makes things more streamlined.

"It’s one throat to choke; anything that goes wrong — you could probably find the guy responsible,’’ Lewis says. "When you control the budget for all of IT and allocate where things have to go, you don’t have to go back and forth with another team; you take care of the highest priority, and it’s done."

Lewis has also taken the time to educate the leadership team on what those priorities are "without being overly demanding. I want them, anytime they’re doing a project, to think of security’s involvement, and essentially, think of me and include me in those conversations."

That way, whenever IT is involved on a project, they are doing it right and it goes as smoothly as possible.

It also helps that when Lewis was named CIO, "I was already working on a handful of projects, and … knocking out a few early wins makes sense."

It’s a good idea to identify three or four projects that are readily achievable to help build your reputation and rapport with other leaders, he says. It shows you’re "someone who gets things done but is also there to help."

John Rosenbaum agrees. The CTO of staffing and recruiting firm Kelly says that "building momentum, finding ways to get quick wins from the low hanging fruit" will help build credibility with the leadership team. Then, you can parlay those into bigger wins and avoid spinning out, he says.

Focus on what matters now

When Beth McCormick, CIO at CAVA, started her job two years ago, she felt it was important to assess what needed to be addressed immediately versus what could wait.

"At first, it felt overwhelming as there was so much to take on, but I took a step back to pause, refocus, and identify what truly mattered in that moment,’’ McCormick says. "From there, I prioritized establishing the right organizational design and ensuring the right people were in the right roles to execute effectively."

While making connections and establishing relationships is critical, Lewis stresses the importance of not rushing to change things right away when you’re new to the job. "Let it set for a while," he says. "Just because you like one email system over another, or one EDR … don’t come in and just rip everything out and change it."

For one, teams often like the tools they’re familiar with. Also, CIOs should understand what’s going on, and what is working and what isn’t, Lewis says. "Then you can think about doing some changes, maybe six, nine, or 12 months down the road. … Don’t shake everything up as soon as you walk in the door."

Ask for feedback

Tungsten has a lot of senior leaders and one of the first things Seewald did when she arrived was to reach out to the CTO and head of sales to sit down with them and do some fact finding about "the sins of the past" and what they wanted to see from her. Both were very open, and while you may think you’re doing great, "feedback is a gift,’’ Seewald says.

"When you become a CIO, it should be less about you and more about the people you’re supporting, and that’s a transition you need to make,’’ she says. It is the CIO’s responsibility to find those people.

Seewald adds that in her short time at Tungsten, she has forged relationships with senior leaders and those at the next level down, which has been valuable for helping her understand "how I can be better and improve as a leader and improve my team. When your team improves, that’s a great reflection on you as a leader."

Now they meet on a regular basis and she asks for feedback. That’s better than posing questions that require a yes or no answer, Seewald notes. "Very rarely will someone come back and say no — that was helpful,’’ she says. "It’s a constant state of action."

Forget about the past

The largest trap a CIO can fall prey to is the belief that they have been hired for what they did in the past instead of what they need to become in the future.

That’s something Michael DiBenedetto learned after becoming the first CIO of real estate developer Northland in 2018. "Despite having conversations early on about expectations, I still found myself trying to bring specific work or experience from my past to the present,’’ he recalls.

Instead, he advises CIOs to "bring what you learned from your prior experience. Each activity, project, or initiative will be unique, but carrying forward specific characteristics and capabilities learned along the way, whether to communicate strategy or develop team culture, will be universally beneficial."

Seewald echoes that, saying, "You really do need to adjust your style for the company you’re working for."

Similarly, Lewis learned that you need to bounce back after a crisis. The University of Health Sciences & Pharmacy had no security program until Lewis came on board, and shortly after he started building one, the school was hit with ransomware. Rather than panic, he pushed through.

"I’m a relatively low-stress person, but there were times when you feel a bit worn down," he admits. However, Lewis persevered. "I like having things to do and am driven by that."

Know the company’s maturity level

Kelly’s Rosenbaum came from the consulting world, and when he transitioned to CTO, he knew the importance of managing his time and focus when faced with myriad project priorities.

"The first thing that hit me was there’s a thousand priorities and I’m now responsible for what the team and I focus on,’’ he says of joining Kelly in 2024. "I figured out that was really hard and required moving around the organization and understanding what was important to the organization."

This is especially true of midsize and larger midsize organizations "where the clarity of strategy and clarity of what’s important … isn’t always well documented and well thought out," Rosenbaum says.

Knowing the maturity of your organization is really important, he says. "Some CIO roles are just about keeping the lights on, making sure security is good at a lower level. As the company starts to mature, they start thinking about technology as an enabler, and to that end, they start having maybe a more unified technology strategy."

Kelly is a digital, tech-led company, Rosenbaum says, and a CIO or CTO coming into a new role needs to figure out quickly where the company is in that journey "because it requires different types of leadership, and different types of projects," depending on where it is in its journey.

Rosenbaum spent a lot of time developing relationships with individual business leaders and showing them how their priorities can be connected with a technology strategy that the whole organization can benefit from as opposed to their individual silos.

Recognize the emotional response to change

Kelly is in the process of modernizing a lot of systems, and Rosenbaum’s challenge is getting employees to accept the changes and find champions who can help.

"What’s really helping me not spin out in this role is the fact that I understand that change comes with emotional responses," he says. Sometimes there is pushback or frustration because employees don’t understand why IT is doing something a certain way.

"If I take that personally or I don’t look at the other person and get that person to benefit from it, they can … make it hard to bring change and hard to connect with other people," he says.

CIOs and CTOs should not push forward just to get deadlines done and goals accomplished, he says. That will only serve to stress people out. "There’s minds that have to come along with the projects and initiatives" as the technology is delivered. Realizing that, and having patience "for the emotional, softer side of the big technology project is what’s helping with success right now,’’ Rosenbaum says.

The wrong way to make a change is to have a perfect plan with the perfect technology and a get-on-board-or-get-out-of-my-way attitude, he adds. "That will lead to spin out; that will lead to project failure."

CIOs and CTOs must "focus on change in the hearts and minds of the people that are receiving awesome technology initiatives," Rosenbaum says, adding that he believes this is more important than the nuts and bolts of the technology itself — and it requires a mind shift if you’re a tech executive rising up from an engineering role.

Go deep in the weeds

DiBenedetto faced unique challenges as Northland’s first CIO. "The strategy was to hire for this role before making changes in the department and to allow the incoming person to evaluate for themselves what would be needed with regards to people, process, and technology,’’ he says. "While this created some opportunities, it was difficult to start without a foundation that another CIO would have put in place and to handle all the change management necessary early in my tenure."

So, the pressure was on, and DiBenedetto was required "to operate as a highly effective senior leader while also changing the mindset of how others view the position of technology inside the company. Given this, I spent much of my time early on deep in the weeds of daily execution while trying to simultaneously elevate the capabilities of the team and communicate the value of IT to the business."

That approach helped ensure there were people who voiced belief in the technology vision and who expressed the need for patience and persistence so that DiBenedetto could reach expectations in the long term.

Fortunately, he was also given clear direction and transparency around the state of technology at Northland. "At the time I arrived, we had major projects ongoing in multiple areas, from the onboarding of a new MSP to a data center relocation to a major upgrade of our CRM and ERP systems,’’ DiBenedetto recalls. "My recipe for success was to balance over communication with a relentless focus on positive outcomes."

Every time his team experienced a win "we would communicate it, and each time we stumbled we communicated that also," he says.

Being out in front allowed IT to build trust and change the perception of the department, he says. "Each of those projects proved, to our team as much as it did to the company, that technology is a key component to the overall health of our business."

Be mindful

The role of an IT leader is not linear. To stay sane and be successful, Kelly’s Rosenbaum practices a mantra displayed on a poster behind his desk: "Let whatever you do today be enough."

Early on in his career, Rosenbaum took a training course and one of the first steps was to make five choices about what is important in your life. For Rosenbaum, the first three were personal: be a good husband and father, his physical health, and being spiritual.

"Then I want to be a good servant to the people I work for and with. And I want to grow in my career." That gave Rosenbaum the clarity to see that "I can’t work 12-hour days, six days a week, and be able to accomplish everything and make progress on all those priorities." It meant understanding how his career fits in with the other guiding principles he laid out.

"That gives you permission to [decide] this isn’t going to get 100% of my attention. It’s going to get 80% of my attention … which is going to be good enough for this specific thing I’m delivering," he says. "If you have to give 100% to everything that comes to you or if you don’t have priorities and you think that everything that comes across your desk is urgent, you’re going to burn out."