Truth from the Trenches: A Practical Guide to the Art of IT Management

The IT management profession is not for the faint of heart. Anyone who has worked in this field is familiar with the unique (and borderline impossible) challenges of keeping pace with technological innovation while maintaining legacy systems, reskilling existing staff members and operating on shrinking budgets. Truth from the Trenches passes on the hard-won leadership lessons that six-time CIO Mark Settle gained over years of working in IT management. Settle describes the key constituencies that an IT leader needs to influence, seduce, leverage, and manage to be successful. His practical recommendations will allow readers to improve their organizational impact and accelerate their career advancement.

In a sector where competency stems not from formal certification but on-the-job learning, Truth from the Trenches is a valuable and unique resource that is based on Settle’s deep experience working in a wide variety of industries. By applying Settle’s strategies, IT leaders will be able to avoid common pitfalls, save themselves from wasting time and on hopeless initiatives, and successfully do battle with the people issues, financial challenges, customer problems and technology opportunities they confront on a daily basis.

About the Author

Mark Settle is a six-time CIO with broad experience in the information services, enterprise software, consumer product, high tech distribution, financial services, and oil and gas industries. He has led IT organizations that supported the global operations of Fortune 500 companies; maintained R&D labs for software product development; and hosted delivery systems for commercial products and services. Settle is personally familiar with both the selling and buying sides of the IT industry, having worked for firms that supply IT products and services to large enterprises as well as for enterprises that consume such offerings.

Settle serves on the advisory boards of several Silicon Valley venture capital firms and has persistently championed the early adoption of emerging technologies within the IT organizations he has led. He is a three-time winner of the prestigious CIO 100 award bestowed annually by CIO Magazine and has been recognized for his leadership accomplishments by ComputerWorld, InformationWeek and InfoWorld as well.