What's the most common mistake people make with regard to loyalty to their teams?

It's not supporting people on a consistent basis, saying one thing to them and another to someone else.

What drives this behaviour?

It's human nature in some ways because people don't like the confrontation. One of the hardest things in business is to confront a problem head-on. Be frank with subordinates on the pluses and minuses of a situation.

What advice do you have for a CIO who wants to be a CEO?

Get some line experience where you have to produce results from a P&L standpoint. Managing everything from the sales to the profits will help qualify you for a CEO role. My success is based on applying four things to all activities at work: intellectual integrity, creating enthusiasm, getting an organization to take action at the appropriate times and understanding your customers.

What advice do you have for aspiring technology leaders who want to become CIOs?

Know your subject and understand where the business needs to go to be successful. Create an organization that's able to carry on after you move onto your next assignment.

The ability to communicate with the other functions and gatekeep as a resource — that's scarce. A CIO has to help the organization prioritize what has to be done when. Everyone wants "tomorrow." Successful CIOs get things done in the proper sequence. Some others just become order-takers.

From a CIO perspective, the most difficult thing is the ability to deal with the operational managers in the company and get consensus on priorities.

You advise leaders to remember their early life lessons. What early life lesson was important to you?

When I was a little kid, someone gave my dad the wrong change. He butted back in line and told them they gave him too much money. Afterward, he said to me, "She would have had to pay for it."

You note the importance of keeping the right team around you. What advice would you have for IT executives, given that at this time, the best IT people are in high demand and often poached by headhunters?

Give the people enough responsibility and job growth, so they feel they're very satisfied. At Gillette I wanted everybody to be recruiting our people. But I wanted them so satisfied that they'd turn down the headhunters.

Don't stack the organization. Give people broad spans of control. That tends to bring high levels of satisfaction because they're involved with more things and more people. Give people as much as they can handle.