Navigating Disruption: Balancing Risk and Vision in IT Leadership
Timothy Chester reflects on the four major disruptions faced by his generation of IT leaders, from the dot-com era to the shifting federal landscape in higher education. This episode explores how CIOs can manage risk while maintaining innovation and vision amidst ongoing challenges.
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Chapter 1
Introduction
Timothy Chester
My generation of IT leaders is experiencing our fourth major disruption. We started our careers during the dot-com boom and bust, stepped into leadership just before the Great Recession, weathered the pandemic as executives, and now face a wave of uncertainty as the federal relationship with higher education dramatically shifts. Each disruption brought tighter budgets, shifting priorities, and a lot more caution. Over time, that breeds a mindset. You think about the next storm. Vision narrows. Imagination fades. And yet, my generation of leaders has shepherded the Internet revolution, managed mobile disruption, and now is enabling the widespread use of artificial intelligence. The leadership question is how to manage risk without surrendering vision. I’ve seen all sides, leading ERP transformations, building overseas campuses, investing in faculty innovation, while still holding the line on stewardship. In today’s Dispatch, we want to explore how to balance this tension: how repeated disruption shapes leadership, and how CIOs can resist the slow drift from innovation to inertia.