Mentor Early and Often

Getting attention early in his career was a boon for VPI's Kass. "I've had the benefit of really solid managers who took an interest in me," he says.

Kass became VPI's CIO in October 2005 after 10 years at PacifiCare Behavioral Health. There, he worked in a variety of IT jobs under then-CIO Kerry J. Matsumoto. Matsumoto delegated aggressively. He gave Kass opportunities to do planning, budgeting, forecasting and eventually to function in many ways as the CIO. Matsumoto developed this leadership approach after working for a CEO who believed strongly in coaching and mentoring, and who had sent teams including Matsumoto to the Center for Creative Leadership. There, Matsumoto learned to do things like 360-degree performance reviews, where he would interview peers, direct reports and business-side workers as part of the process of preparing his employee reviews.

"I coach all my direct reports," says Matsumoto, now CIO at Caremore Health Plan. "Sometimes you're coaching them to get rid of something they didn't do well. In Jonathan's case it was mentoring — coaching to get him to the next step."

Kass found Matsumoto's 360-degree reviews extremely helpful, and he has adopted them as a way to cultivate leadership among his own workers. He also has followed Matsumoto's practice of heavy delegating. Kass says he pushes whatever he can down as far as it can go within his 40-person staff — administrative tasks, strategy committee roles, decision making, even budget planning, because it gives IT people a sense of how the business makes decisions, and it helps them to become business people themselves.

Delegating is also an effective tool in recruiting, Kass says. He can't tell potential hires that they'll only be working on cutting-edge projects, "But if you say, 'no position is isolated — you'll see how technology helps get jobs done in all aspects of business, and you'll be as involved as you want to be,'" it can help seal the deal.

He confesses that his direct reports sometimes would rather he didn't push things down as far as he does. But, says Kass, "Leadership's job is to groom that next generation. If you're not doing it, you won't get there." "Mentoring is a vital aspect of human capital development. It provides value to both the mentor and the mentee," agrees Koeppel, of the Center for CIO Leadership.