NASA Blog: Web 2.0 and Blogging: Getting 2 Know U

I just returned from a leadership retreat with my team. Our ice breaker activity on the first day was to draw names and write a limerick about our team member. It was hysterical. We had fun, we were creative, and we used the art form of poetry to get to know each other. Certainly poetry is an amazing art form that reaches out and communicates in a special way.

I’ve watched with amusement the discussion of the efficacy and propriety of blogging and other Web 2.0 technologies by government CIOs. When I started, I wasn’t really sure how it would go; how much time it would take; and if there was any value. Then, OMG, something unexpected happened.

I’m really clear about my leadership vision as the CIO of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. We are an amazing culture of creativity and innovation that needs to maintain its competitive edge through an IT strategy that:

• manages technological diversity;
• provides a secure infrastructure;
• promotes collaboration and sharing;
• nurtures and evolves a delightful IT workforce; and
• does all of this via an effective IT governance.

Oh, to be a mainframe IBM VM systems programmer again, where my dump-reading and problem determination skills carried the day. With this gig, my leadership effectiveness is essential.

Warren Blank writes in “The Nine Natural Laws of Leadership”:

” … [Leaders must] build solid work relationships with others. The quality of relationships you have with others is central to leadership. Others are more likely to follow when you step forward to lead if they know you and trust you.”

Getting people to know me is critical for this leadership vision and is more difficult for this extremely introverted CIO than hexadecimal arithmetic. Then along comes Web 2.0: blogging, and facebook, and twitter … oh, my! I am now the transparent CIO … What am I thinking? What am I like? Can you trust me? Certainly these are amazing technologies that will help government leaders communicate in a very special way.

So, here’s one of the limericks that one of my leaders wrote about me.

There once was a fearless CIO

Whose vision was worrisome – Oh!
Her CIO-lettes
Became her best bets
To spread that view of the whole

Poetry and technology, humm. Two more colors on the palette of the change leadership artist.

Linda Y. Cureton