
Hardik Bhatt -- The CIO Who Transforms Illinois Every 75 Days (Part II of our conversation)
After his role as CIO for the City of Chicago, Hardik Bhatt thought he had left life in the public sector behind. Little would he know that a phone call was coming from Springfield, asking him to join Governor Bruce Rauner’s staff as Secretary Designate, Department of Innovation & Technology and Illinois State CIO. In this continuation of our Leading With Courage conversation with Bhatt, we discuss how state government brought its own set of challenges in the transition perio

Conversation With A Leader With Courage: Hardik Bhatt, Secretary Designate, Department of Innovatio
While few think of government as agile or quick moving, in less than two years, Hardik Bhatt has transformed Illinois from the bottom 4th of 50 states in digital outcomes to the top 3rd, launched the state’s first ERP system and data analytics practice, moved departments from mainframe to the cloud and announced mobile as the premier platform for the state. Several years prior, Bhatt got his first taste of the public sector through his work with the City of Chicago, which is

Michael Small, a Leader With Courage -- Part II of Our Conversation With Him
Continuing our Leader With Courage conversation with Michael Small, President and CEO of Gogo, the in-flight Internet and entertainment services company, we stumbled upon an age-old question that’s not easy for CEOs to answer: When you are building or re-building a company, which do you attempt to fix first: The strategy or the culture? Value Drivers: Michael, in one of my recent chats with Bryan Schwartz of Levenfeld Pearlstein (another Leading With Courage conversation), we

Conversation with a Leader With Courage: Michael Small, President & CEO of Gogo Inc. (Part I)
For years, doing business while traveling in the air was severely limited. However, Chicago-based Gogo is changing that experience, paving the way for in-flight Internet and entertainment services. Gogo customers can have their laptops, tablets and mobile devices Wi-Fi enabled, allowing them to surf the web, check email, access corporate VPNs and more. At the helm of this rapidly growing company is Michael Small, who has been the President & CEO of Gogo for the last six years

The Trap Leaders With Courage Deftly Avoid -- Part 2 of our Conversation with Rosemary Swierk
In the first part of our Leader With Courage conversation with Rosemary Swierk of Direct Steel and Construction, we learned how success can be formed from a non-traditional career. Of course, even the best leaders can fall into certain traps along the way – one of the biggest being the concept that they have to do everything themselves. Here’s how Rosemary faced that challenge and responded. Value Drivers: Let’s talk about self-sufficiency, which can sound really good on its