What got you here is not going to get you there with Sheila Jordan

Introduction

This week I’m joined by Sheila Jordan who is the Chief Information Officer for Symantec and author of the book “You are NOT ruining your kids.” 

During our conversation, we discuss the CIO role and how the outcomes are the same, but the mechanics have changed and are more complex. Sheila talks about cleaning the garage and emphasizes that what got you here isn’t going to get you there. We discuss Sheila’s passion with diversity and how diversity ultimately leads to better business outcomes. Lastly, we talk about Sheila’s book and how to kiss your guilt goodbye.

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Speaker Profiles

Sheila Jordan LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordansheila/

Symantec: https://www.symantec.com

Book – You are NOT ruining your kids: https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Ruining-Your-Kids/dp/1732251029/

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Audio File

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Featured Hashtags

#CIO #Leadership #CX #Diversity #Board #CEO #DigitalTransformation #CIOitk

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Podcast Transcript

Tim Crawford 0:05
Hello, and welcome to the CIO in the Know podcast, where I take a provocative but pragmatic look at the intersection between business and technology. I’m your host, Tim Crawford, a CIO and strategic advisor at Avola. I this week I’m joined by Sheila Jordan, who is the Chief Information Officer for Symantec and author of the book You Are Not Ruining Your Kids. During our conversation, we discussed the CIO role and how the outcomes are the same, but the mechanics have changed and are more complex. Sheila talks about cleaning the garage, and emphasizes that what got you here isn’t going to get you there. We discuss Sheila’s passion with diversity, and how diversity ultimately leads to better business outcomes. Lastly, we talk about Sheila’s book, and how to kiss your guilt goodbye. Sheila, thanks so much for joining the program today.

Sheila Jordan 1:00
Of course, Tim. Great, great to talk to you again.

Tim Crawford 1:02
Always a pleasure to chat with you. I’m always learning something new. You and I have known each other for a number of years. Sheila, you’re the CIO for Symantec, and also a board member of Factset.

Sheila Jordan 1:16
That’s correct.

Tim Crawford 1:17
Great, and one thing I definitely want to make sure we have time to cover is you also are the author of a new book called You Are Not Ruining Your Kids, a positive perspective on the working mom, and so I want to make sure that we touch on that, because I think that’s a really important piece to our conversation today.

Sheila Jordan 1:38
Awesome, thank you so much.

Tim Crawford 1:40
So let’s just kind of dive right into it, you know. We, we often talk about the CIO role today, and how it’s different from where it was. You know, you and I do go back a little ways in terms of seeing this transition happen.

Sheila Jordan 1:55
If

Tim Crawford 1:56
you looked forward in terms of how it’s evolving and where the value comes from, how would you define the CIO and the opportunity today?

Sheila Jordan 2:07
So, actually, it’s kind of a trick question, because in some ways I would say that our job is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago, which is to, you know, I think we sometimes minimize the I in the CIO, and it’s all about the information and the data, so you know we can protect and secure and use and manage the data that really does deliver some significant business outcomes, whether that’s cost savings or increased revenue or growth. And I think we’ve succeeded. Now, how we’ve done that, I mean, five seven years ago it was, you know, monolithic applications, on premise data centers, and so the mechanics of how we do that job today are really radically changed. You know, we’re all moving – I think I’m a 65% SaaS shop – I’ve moved our entire consumer business, which is over $2 billion over to public cloud, so we’re not necessarily running and doing some of the work in house like we used to, but still, regardless of the SaaS applications and infrastructure as a service, we still have the responsibility to protect and secure and use the data that goes and traverses between public cloud SaaS applications, mobile devices, IoT devices, laptops, PCs, everything – everyone’s mobile now. So, the outcome is the same, but the mechanics of how we have to get that done, I think, have become much, much, much more complex, combined with the regulatory, financial, security, privacy, all those regulatory and compliance rules we have to comply with. Also,

Tim Crawford 3:33
yeah, you mentioned about complexity, and I definitely want to dig into that a little further, as well as the security component, because I think that’s one piece that we often don’t think about, but every board that I’m familiar with is sure thinking about cybersecurity these days, or if they’re not, they should be.

Sheila Jordan 3:51
Yes, and I would say that that’s become.. it’s just become such a.. it’s such a big and significant risk to any company, and security really is a risk discussion, and so, how you approach that, and how you understand that, and understand what the current risks you’re taking in a company are, is super important discussion for any board.

Tim Crawford 4:10
So, as we kind of talk about the board and talk about the C suite, where does the role of the CIO kind of fit into that discussion, because you and I have both been involved in a number of discussions, where there’s been a question of, okay, should the CIO really have a seat at the table? Do we have the right CIO? Should they be in front of the board? What’s your perspective on that?

Sheila Jordan 4:31
Yeah, so I would think that, I mean, I think today that if companies, CEOs, and the management team don’t understand that technology and technology spend is as just as important of a decision as, say, how much I’m going to spend in marketing or sales or engineering or R and D. It’s just another lever of what I want to spend. And the thing that I love about technology is that, or it used to be this cost center, and how can I reduce costs and optimize cost savings? And today, in forward-thinking CEOs, really understand that. Really, isn’t a strategic initiative in the company that doesn’t have a technology component anymore, so because of that, I think the CIO should sit at the C suite table, and you know, I don’t really care about reporting as much, because I think it can report to any role in the company, but it should be at the senior management table, and really provide the ability to understand what is they’re doing around of course cost optimization, cost savings, but what can you use in technology spend to one, get closer to your customers and insights about customers, partners, and employees, and two, what technology can you use to advance and accelerate and have a differentiation in your own product and services space, so because of that, I think, and then you layer on again the risk components of security, compliance, GDPR, privacy. I just think it’s super important that the board is also having that level of discussion somewhere at the board that really does understand risk, and I think the CIO with the risk officer are the ones to kind of answer that question.

Tim Crawford 5:59
Is the CIO an entitled seat at the table, or is this really a question of the CIO really needs to kind of bridge that gap too?

Sheila Jordan 6:12
Yeah. No, I think it’s a, I think it’s absolutely both ways. I think nothing is entitled these days. So I think you got to earn everything, and I think you got to prove value, and again, it goes, it goes to the context of, you know, what you did before doesn’t necessarily go to make you successful in the future, or got you there, isn’t going to get you, what gets you here isn’t going to get you there, but I think it’s super important that we’re evolving, I mean, I can’t think of the thing, the reason I love it, there’s so many reasons, but one of the ones is that it is constantly changing, I mean, there’s a second you think you might feel comfortable for that day, or feel like you got it kind of under, under wraps, and you know what’s happening, and you feel good about things. I mean, right, the next day comes, and this is another set of technologies to think about, or I mean, just as constantly changing and constantly evolving, and I actually love that. I think it keeps you on your toes, and I think, as leaders, we have a responsibility to keep learning, and keep learning, and being a CIO for tech, and being a CIO for tech insecurity. There isn’t a day that I don’t learn something, so I think that’s super important for any CIO. You, the second you sit on your laurels, is the second that you’re no longer relevant.

Tim Crawford 7:13
How do you keep on top of everything? Because one of the conversations that I’m often asked about is, frankly, it’s just really overwhelming at this point to keep on top of all of the different technology, all of the different methods that are coming at you. How do you keep on top of things and kind of bring your staff, bring your team into the fold?

Sheila Jordan 7:34
Yeah, so it’s a really, really important question, and I feel like, you know, you’re never perfect at it, but I feel I’ve gotten quite good, and what I do is a couple things. One is, I finally made the realization – this is going to sound silly, but I’ll say it anyway – I finally figured out that the only thing that doesn’t change in our world these days, I mean, the only thing that’s constant is there’s 24 hours a day and there’s seven days a week, that’s about it. So, on Sundays, so the first thing I would say I do is I hire the best possible team I can, and I don’t underestimate that statement. Like when you have a team of athletes that you can move around and do different stuff, not only for the for the purpose of what you’re trying to accomplish as business objectives, but for their personal growth and development. I mean, I think my job is to create four or five or six or eight CIOs. If I do my job right in their development, and their experience, and their, and what they get to expose, then they go off and become a CIO some somewhere else someday. Then I think that’s a big, that’s a big win. So I think you got to hire athletes, and you got to make sure that they have that appetite to adjust to change, because again, that’s the number one thing. So hiring a great team, and then I would say is, you know, literally on Sunday nights I go through the sounds silly, but a prioritization exercise where I go through my calendar for the month, and I look at it. If there’s 15 people, sometimes I think companies can be too inclusive and too collaborative and too consensus driven. So, if there’s 15 people of IT people in a meeting, I don’t need to be there. So, I think you have to I consciously make a decision to say, where am I personally going to add the right amount of value, and where can I let my teams grow, develop, explore, you know, go off into the, in some of the other meetings that they can handle and cover on their own type thing, and I think that is a freeing effect for both me as a leader, where I can go off and do something different, and I think I can add some unique value, but also gives the leadership team and my VPs and directors and senior directors an opportunity to really excel and take on the hard challenges and know that it’s a safe environment to do that. So it really is about prioritization of time and understanding where you think you have the biggest impact combined with your employee growth.

Tim Crawford 9:38
And let’s talk about that impact, because one of the areas that I have always been impressed with, with how you speak and what you speak about, and one of those aspects is about women in technology, and the importance of women in technology. Can you maybe share a little bit on your perspective around how that comes together?

Sheila Jordan 9:58
Yeah, so I would say. Me, so I do have a huge passion for this, and I’m super grateful for the men and women who have mentored me in my life. I mean, I really wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t have some great mentors, men and women. I do think, though, it makes me sad to think that I think in general our industry is still around 26% women, especially in technology and tech. Although I do see a trend increasing, you know. Recently, there’s a subset of our Silicon Valley CIOs that there’s a group of women Silicon Valley CIOs, and I think we’ve now hit the mark of 20. Now, I wish it was 40, but we now have 20 women’s Silicon Valley CIOs, which is exciting, very, very exciting. So, I think we’re making progress wherever we can, but I’m super passionate that it’s not going to happen overnight until women continue to help women, so having forums, having, you know, missions, having agreements, support systems that women can actually reach in and help women, you know, especially when they’re in early in career, and be this mentorship or sponsorship, whichever you want to call it, but having those that effort, I think, really, really helps, and I think when women go out of their way to help someone young in their career and give them some career advice and some coaching and counseling, I think is important. But I also will say that we can’t do it alone. There’s still a lot of men in senior roles inside of, you know, technology companies that we’ve got to make sure and, you know, continue to influence and suggest that, you know, and offer women as candidates for these roles. Gender bias, you know, the gender bias awareness classes is becoming real, and they’re really, really helpful. If you haven’t done one of those classes, it’s super helpful, because we all have these inherent biases that we don’t even know about. And so, having been able to take a resume and take away any kind of language that suggests he or she is helpful to just kind of just go through and look at the right candidate, because you might not think you have some of these biases. The other thing I’ve done here at Symantec is I am the global executive sponsor for our women’s initiative inside the company, so one, we’re making sure that you know pipelines, one thing, and being able to recruit women and more having more a diverse slate, but also we have an obligation, and I really feel an obligation inside the company, and a responsibility to make sure that we’re creating a safe environment for women, and women can flourish and can grow and can develop throughout the company. So I sponsor that whole initiative inside the company. So to me, it’s a passion. To me, it’s something that I don’t take lightly. It’s never going to just happen. We’ve got to spend effort in initiatives and programs and things that continue to foster those things, and I, you know, I just love to work on those, those things.

Tim Crawford 12:30
Yeah, you know, I think it’s a great, great passion to have, and I’ve had the fortune to attend a number of women in technology events as a man,

Sheila Jordan 12:40
yes,

Tim Crawford 12:40
and actually spoken at an event just a couple months ago up at Microsoft, and I have to say it was incredibly informative for me. At first, I never understood the issue that existed because I saw everyone as equals, but it just, so it was a little jarring when it first did come up, but it’s also been even enlightening for me to understand how can I be a change to this whole process and help the process along, so that it’s not just women for women, but rather how do men take a take a position and and helping kind of level the playing field,

Sheila Jordan 13:20
right? And I love that you said that, because I do think you know those listening have children and daughters and wives and stuff, and so how we end up taking that whole sponsorship to the next level is super important. And what I found, too, I love how the fact you said there’s some shocking things, like what I find when I actually go talk to different geos and different geographies and different people at different companies is when I think like I can’t1. thing I don’t like is when women feel or put themselves in as, oh my gosh, I’m the victim. I don’t think we should be ever be victims. It is what it is. We’ve chosen certain careers, we’ve chosen certain paths, and we’ve got to, you know, make the best of it. And so I don’t necessarily like getting into those discussions, but I will say that, you know, what I didn’t realize is that while I may not have encountered some issues, there are some women in some pockets of an organization that have, so I think you got to also look at, like, a culture in one function might be a different culture than another function, and just because one function doesn’t seem to have some issues, that you know, you got to look deeper to see, you know, what, why things are happening, and I think it really does, you know, takes an effort to have those conversations and those questions to really dissect what’s happening in your organization.

Tim Crawford 14:26
Yeah, I love it. I love it, and I love kind of getting into the conversation around diversity and thought. It’s not just diversity and gender, it’s diversity,

Sheila Jordan 14:34
absolutely.

Tim Crawford 14:35
And how do you bring it together?

Sheila Jordan 14:37
And it’s proven, like every.. there’s so many articles now in data driven that when you have diversity in thought, which is another thing about the boards, you just have better business outcomes. So, this isn’t about just a certain passion, it’s real proven in a whole bunch of data analysis that diversity in thought delivers better business outcomes. So, it’s just really, it’s good for a whole host of reasons.

Tim Crawford 14:56
So, with technology kind of shifting gears just slightly. When you think about technology, and you think about how that diversity and thought affects your business today, how do you start to kind of spread yourself across the organization and ensure that you are bringing those different voices together, so that technology can really change the way your business not just operates, but how it engages with your customers.

Sheila Jordan 15:21
Yeah, so I think this is the thing that I get so excited and so passionate about, is you know, again, I think we have to always think about, you know, putting yourself – you can say customer first, but you can say you’re also putting yourselves in the shoes of the customer. I mean, we’re always getting that insight and that view, whatever your customer is. That’s a lot of us think of customers as external, but sometimes customers can be internal, and I think it’s just so important that you understand, you know, what their pain points are, what their friction is, and I think I love, I love what apps and the iPhone and all that have done. I mean, the fact that you can book, you can book an international trip for a family of four, you know, I’m a big user of United Airlines, so I’ll say United Airlines in, you know, five minutes or less, because they have all this previous information about me, and I, the profiles are all there, the names are all there. It’s really kind of fun, and I just think that as we continue, and that’s just one example. I mean, when I look at my kids, who are now 25 and 23 everything about that generation is a services generation, they can get a car, they can get food, they can get a massage, they can get whatever they want. They’re gas filled by a service, and I think that’s the way things are going to evolve, that everything is going to become more of a service. And so us as companies, we got to figure out what services are we delivering, how we do that in a frictionless way, that I know you, I know the customer, I know your data. I’m not asking you to repeat the same information over and over. And, oh, by the way, How do I do it so that it’s secure and I’m protecting your privacy? Because I do think privacy is going to be more and more and more of a concern. I think we went way right on not caring about privacy, or some generations didn’t necessarily care, and I think we’re going to correct that quite substantially, so we’re going to want these services being delivered, but we don’t want the whole world to know what food I’m eating, per se, but we’re going to create these services in a way that’s much more focused on security and privacy as well. So I think the technology and experience and what we do as companies delivering that service to our constituencies and our customers is going to be, you know, what we all focus on the next few years,

Tim Crawford 17:22
and I think that kind of to take a step further beyond what you’re talking about. When you think about that services-based culture and privacy specifically, I get the impression that we want to give data, at least in terms of the conversations I have, we want to give data to people, we want that to benefit us, but we want it to be used in an appropriate way. Would you agree with that, or would you..

Sheila Jordan 17:47
Oh, I totally agree. I think that the only time I give out data is when I know it’s adding a value or service to me, it’s adding, enhancing that service. I think the whole notion of using that data for other reasons, and third party and advertising, and all that, I just think that’s going to minimize over time, or at least you’re going to opt into it in a much more explicit way, but I think the whole value is I’m only going to give you additional pieces of data if it really adds an extreme value to me. Other than that, it’s too big brother-ish, and I don’t think you need it, type thing. And I also think, like, if we’re going to talk about Facebook for a minute, which I’m a big fan, but I think Facebook is gone. We’re at all, you know, you want you have your x number of friends seeing everything. Well, now I think what’s happening is Facebook – we’re now hearing is going to be more focused on privacy, because you don’t want to have that same conversation with all your friends on Facebook. It’s going to be a certain conversation with your deepest friends, maybe your mom, something different, and then your other friends, and you might want to use that platform, but the differences of conversation you’re going to have are all going to be a different subset of your friends type thing, so I think that’s going to also start to segment differently than it is today, all around privacy,

Tim Crawford 18:52
and I think it’s interesting because when you talk about emerging technologies like AI and cloud and edge and IoT, we can no longer just think of them as tools, but we have to think about culturally how things are shifting and how we use these tools too.

Sheila Jordan 19:09
Yeah, and that’s what I go back to earlier, too. You know, it really is the how of the CIO, and I’ll say the CIO organization has changed. We’re still doing what we needed to do, providing our services and applications and usages and technology to the business in the broad sense, everyone from legal to finance to engineering and all the way to HR. I mean, every function of the company, but the mechanics and what we’re doing to deliver that, you know, has advanced and has advanced quite substantially. So, you know, I know cloud’s a big thing, and I had a huge successful implementation of cloud using Azure, and we moved our entire consumer business, or most of our consumer business, to the Azure platform, and it’s been relatively painless and extremely successful. So, those are examples. I’m beginning to scratch the surface in AI. We use AI in our products, in our semantic products, all the time, but I’m beginning to use AI. And how do I, how do I get better at predicting some things in it, for example, the help desk. I mean, we have years and years and years of data about the help desk. Why can’t I start predicting? We don’t break it apart to say, okay, if the number one reason people call the help desk, I’ll make this up, but it’s around password, changing your password. Why can’t I automate that?

Tim Crawford 20:21
Yeah,

Sheila Jordan 20:22
you know, bots is another one. I’m super excited about the use of automation and bots, which I think is different than AI, but it’s around there’s a repeatable process that I want to go and do that’s repeatable. I don’t have time to go change the entire process, so why can’t I just, you know, to make it automated? So if that’s an ordering, it’s the ability to accelerate orders. It’s the ability to fill out forms or templates. Why can’t we just kind of implement that through the use of bots? So, I would just say that all those things are all leading to lending to and adding to a frictionless experience for customers, partners, and employees, and wherever you can do that through the use of technology, I think we all win.

Tim Crawford 21:01
Yeah, I completely agree. I think it’s really important, though, that we think about how we’re using that technology in a way that becomes really important for our stakeholders, whether that’s employees, whether that’s customers, whether that’s our own organization, but it’s really important to think about how that changes too over time.

Sheila Jordan 21:21
Well, and I actually think that’s the hardest part of the CIO job, because I always say there’s more demand than supply in the CIO world. In our purview, there’s always more things that want to get done than you have funding for. I haven’t had a job that’s ever the case, and I think the hardest part is to be able to really prioritize that work, and we could say we’re going to do it based upon value or risk or future value, but it’s still really hard to get the business collectively to help prioritize that work. You can do it by function, but across the business to really decide you’re working on the most impactful things, I still think is a challenge.

Tim Crawford 21:57
Yeah, I had one opportunity where it was a little different. We actually had more money than we could spend, and so we had the opposite problem, and you’d think that, but actually the problem was worse. The problem was much worse, because you started making really stupid decisions.

Sheila Jordan 22:15
Yeah,

Tim Crawford 22:16
because you had money. It’s just go off and spend the money, just go do it, don’t think about it, stop thinking, just do

Sheila Jordan 22:21
it. Yeah, that would cause some problems. Exactly. And

Tim Crawford 22:25
so it, it kind of stops you from thinking, which is kind of ironic in a couple other ways, but kind of moving on, you know? If you were to kind of put a bow on this and say, okay, so I’m looking at the CIO role, I’m thinking about where we are today, and and what’s looking forward, and you’ve touched on a few of these things, but if you were to kind of sum it up, what excites you most about the CIO role, or you could even say the organization of the CIO, and where does technology kind of fit into that perspective for you?

Sheila Jordan 22:57
That’s a hard question, because there’s so many things that excite me, so let me, I think I have to give you a little bit of context of what we’ve been able to accomplish at Symantec. I’ve now, a couple weeks ago, celebrated five years, so that’s great. You know, we’ve done nine acquisitions, two major divestitures, all trying to become the world’s largest cyber security company in the world, which we are. So, effectively, we’ve downsized the company, increased it by adding some new technology, and really are delivering delivering this notion of like integrated cyber defense platforms. So, think of what Salesforce did to CRM, and or what ERP did to the financials. We’re our goal is to become the security platform that can secure your environments from, you know, endpoint all the way to infrastructure. So, it’s been a ton of heavy lifting on the on the IT organization, in the sense that we consolidated 70 ERPs into one. We’ve done these nine acquisitions, we’ve done public cloud movement on the consumer side. So, what I would say is, I feel so good about how, like, I really use – I’m a heavy user service now, it’s the hub that I run it and operate it, and I can tell you, five years later, I know a real.. I have a really good blueprint of what’s in my landscape and understanding servers connected applications connected to data. We know that we change, we haven’t changed process before anything gets changed. So I’m in a really, really good position that we deleted 400 applications, 3700 servers, so I’ve cleaned the garage, so I’m in a really good place to kind of know the entire environment, which is really exciting to be in, given you know some of the larger, larger companies. It’s so hard to get your arms around that. So now, knowing that, I really think it’s all about the data. It’s all about how do we use this incredible asset in the company, whether that’s customer data, partner data, employee data, that we can really make actionable. So, how do I take it to improve the engagement score in the company? How do I use it for our employees? How do I use it that our customers feel even more value when they work with Symantec? How do I use it that I’m optim. The partner landscape and the challenge, and we understand what’s really beneficial for them, and how they can make money, but also that we make money, and the customers are happy. So, to me, it’s we’re running really well, and we’re meeting our business objectives, but I think there’s so much opportunity to think about the data inside your company, and how you can really add incredible insights to optimize your experience with your employees, customers, and partners. So, to me, I’m super excited about that,

Tim Crawford 25:29
and one of the things I, I always get from our conversations, the conversations that you and I have had, you know, over the last five years, is you effortlessly move between leading an IT organization and being a member of the Symantec family, you effortlessly move between those two in such a way that they are one and the same, and I think that’s a really interesting observation that you don’t always see in the CIO.

Sheila Jordan 25:59
Well, I really appreciate you saying that, I do, but I do think that’s our job. I mean, the thing I love about the other thing I love about it is we are one of the few positions in the company that see horizontally. I mean, we naturally see horizontally, we see upstream, we see downstream, we see redundancies, we see gaps. So our value add is to go take action on that, like the business functions, marketing, sales, HR, they’re all designed to optimize vertically.

Tim Crawford 26:24
Yeah,

Sheila Jordan 26:25
so what better role for us to do is to say, and I’ll give you an example. We had, I think, 12 instances of Slack, because the organization went and used Slack differently by every function, and it wasn’t until we actually noticed, like, oh my gosh, we have these 12 different instances. Why we do enterprise, we save money, and we give a better service. So that’s just one example where we can optimize so many different ways on the technology and or the value that we deliver to the business. So I think the fact that we see horizontally is such a benefit of the company, because not only the technology but the customer’s experience when they’re doing a customer journey, our customers don’t care where the website is organized, if it’s in marketing or not, or where their app is being built by, and what function. I mean, when you interact with the applications on our phones, where it’s indifferent of how the function, how the company is organized, and I think if all of us could think more about the horizontal customer journey, that’s another value add that the CIOs can contribute to.

Tim Crawford 27:24
I love that. Absolutely love that. So, in addition to being a member of the Symantec executive team, serving as CIO, leading an organization, you also wear another hat. You’re also a mother.

Sheila Jordan 27:38
Yes,

Tim Crawford 27:39
that has. that’s a job in its own right. You wrote a book called You’re Not Ruining Your Kids: A Positive Perspective on the Working Mom, and I love the kind of tagline that goes with “Kiss Your Guilt Goodbye” or I’ve heard that mentioned several times. Can you talk a little bit about what prompted you to write the book, and where has that taken you?

Sheila Jordan 28:04
Yeah, so, so I’ve been wanting to write this for quite some time. I think that the catalyst was when my kids went to college, their first year in college, both of them, they did some things, which is in the book, and I can give you some examples, but some things happened, and all of a sudden they’re now removed from me on a daily basis, but you can see that they took some actions and did some their behaviors demonstrated, wow, I didn’t really teach them that, they just absorbed that skill by watching me for many years, you know, multitasking and doing the things that mothers do, and so I said, gosh, I really didn’t ruin my kids, and hence the title of the book, so that plus the combination of when the kids were small and you try and read all that you can, because you think you’re failing at everything, and you do when the kids are small. You, when you’re at work, you should be at home. When you’re at home, you feel you should be at work. And I do think some of that guilt is self-inflicted, and you’re just trying to be supermom or superwoman to everything, and you can. So, I just felt that there’s not.. and there’s nothing really written at the time, my kids are now 25 and 23 that there, there’s a positive perspective of working. Everything that was written just further enhanced, you should be guilty, you know. Why are you doing this? Why are you making these choices? You know, you, you’re not, you’re failing at both. I mean, there’s all these things about trying to, like, manage, but it wasn’t about, look, you’re, you know, just the fact that you’re chosen to be a working mom is not a bad thing, so I really wanted to make this a positive perspective. I’m not saying I’m the perfect mother in the world. The book is intended to be fairly humorous and just good examples on tips and tricks that we applied, and we did as we worked through all those years, the young years, the teenage years, which were really hard, especially if you have girls, and then as they mature, so and then what was really cool for me was the last chapter is the kids, of course, weighed in on this whole decision, and we got their perspectives. We talked about a lot, but then we asked their perspectives, and the big aha for me was the things that I just agonized over, just agonized over, and just felt so bad about. They, it didn’t even hit their radar when they were in their early 20s. One example of that is, for whatever reason, October is a really busy month for CIOs. We’re always at conferences, it’s just loaded up, and I never seem to be home for a picture week during, you know, when the kids are in grade school, they have their pictures, school pictures. So I have this wall that goes into my bedroom that has all their pictures from kindergarten to 12th grade, and is a section that Jacqueline, my daughter, wore the same shirt three years in a row, a different color, but the same shirt. In one of those years, she was gothic, so she’s long, long, long, long blonde, platinum blonde hair, and she decided her eyes were all black and gothic makeup.

So I look at those pictures, and feel, oh my god, I’m such a terrible mother, and yet, and yet, and I literally feel guilty, even to the stay walking by that wall every day and every night, but she literally, her comment wasn’t, she was getting through it, and she sees that picture, actually, when I say it was the same shirt three years ago, it was the same shirt, but a different color each year, so, so, whatever, it was a different color, wasn’t the exact same shirt, but she says she’ll look at that picture, and she’ll say, “Huh, I must have liked that shirt, like that’s all that she’s thought about it. So, there’s so many things that we do that we add this additional guilt, and oh my god, and we feel so bad about certain things. So, the intention of the book is just to give some young moms and moms and dads some examples of how to get through while you’re still trying to maintain your professional career.

Tim Crawford 31:25
Love it. Absolutely love

Sheila Jordan 31:27
it.

Tim Crawford 31:28
We’ll have to wrap it right there, Sheila. I always love the opportunity to get some time with you, and every conversation is a learning experience for me.

Sheila Jordan 31:38
Well, likewise, I have deep respect for you as well, and I’m so happy you’ve taken on this podcast work. It’s fantastic, and it’s a great service.

Tim Crawford 31:46
Thanks, Sheila. Again, and we’ll just wrap it right here.

Sheila Jordan 31:51
We’ll see you soon.

Tim Crawford 31:52
Okay. Thank you. For more information on the CIO in the No podcast series, visit us online at CIO itk.com or you can find us on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, and SoundCloud. Don’t forget to subscribe, and thank you for listening.

Unknown Speaker 32:09
Bye.