What CIO Mike Anderson has learned from leading companies big and small

If you’re a CIO who wants to figure out how your organization’s sales team can use AI agents, you’ll need to hear from the sales team directly. That’s harder than it sounds when you’re at a company with thousands of employees.

Mike Anderson, chief digital and information officer at cybersecurity and networking company Netskope, supports enterprise technology innovation for the organization’s 3,000 or so global employees. Back in May, he met with the company’s chief marketing officer, chief revenue officer, and head of go-to-market operations to figure out ways for the sales team to effectively use agents beyond just writing emails.

Such a discussion involves understanding everyone’s workflows, “really asking good questions and listening,” Anderson said.

That kind of meeting contrasts slightly from his experiences between 2018 and 2021, when he was SVP, CIO and digital leader, North America, at Schneider Electric, the energy-tech giant with 160,000 employees worldwide and many organizational layers between leadership and those executing projects.

“Oftentimes [at] Schneider Electric, it wasn’t me sitting in the room asking the questions of the people that were closest to the problem,” he told us.

Anderson has been a tech leader at both giant corporations and smaller cybersecurity companies almost a fifth that size; each role has offered commonalities, differences, and lessons learned.

The CIO start. Anderson’s first CIO role was at sales- and marketing-services company Crossmark in 2013, which today has 25,000 employees. A few years later, he moved on to Schneider Electric, before settling into the Netskope CIO role in 2021.

“I knew I wanted to be a C-suite executive in a company,” he said. “The CIO position felt like the natural one, especially after spending lots of time with CIOs when they were on the other side of the table, where I was selling them capabilities.”

Some IT pros opt to stay with a single company their whole career, waiting for their chance at a CIO, CTO, or even CEO slot. Others might bounce around between companies while slowly advancing up the executive ladder.

After stints at giant companies, Anderson chose Netskope for the chance at sharpening new skills. His “personal board of directors” pushed him to add experience with an expanding company.

“They said, ‘If you can show the versatility to work in a very large company, and then also show the ability to then roll your sleeves up and work in a scale up company or an earlier stage company, that versatility is something that’s rare to find,’” he said. “‘That’ll unlock tons of opportunities for you in the future.’”

The key to that versatility means doing the work and not just delegating, according to Anderson: “You’re building your own presentations, not asking someone else to go create it for you. You’re the one having to get into the details of problems.”

The perks of being a startup CIO. At a smaller company, Anderson told us, a CIO can move faster with fewer decisionmakers and can be more in tune with a company’s IT challenges, even the mundane ones like a broken laptop.

A company like Netskope, “born in the cloud in 2012,” has accumulated less technical debt than an older company that might have decades of decisions built into its operations. Where that debt might exist, in his case, is mainly in configurations, integrations, data, and processes. By contrast, he added, “If you had a 100-year old company, you’re living with 100 years of decisions.”

Even at giant companies, Anderson showed his appreciation for small startups. At Schneider Electric, Anderson recalls pulling dedicated team members to develop custom software for electrical panel construction and delivery.

“You effectively created these startup teams inside a bigger company, and that’s how we did things that were truly transformational,” he said.

What doesn’t change. There are commonalities and universally applicable strategies, according to Anderson, whether you’re a CIO at a bigger or smaller company:

• More demand than supply. “There’s always more people asking for things than there are people on your team that can deliver those things.”
• A CIO must be a student of the business. Chief information officers anywhere need to understand the company’s business model and revenue mechanics.
• Empowerment is essential. That’s how leaders grow: moving from being the sole fixer to enabling the team.

Ultimately, it’s critical to bring together the right group of people to build whatever the organization needs, whether a small AI agent for a sales team or a giant solar panel.