Digital Trailblazer: Essential Lessons to Jumpstart Transformation and Accelerate Your Technology Leadership

by Isaac Sacolick

Invaluable stories and lessons that will help you tackle one of the most challenging jobs in technology and business - leading transformation

In Digital Trailblazer: Essential Lessons to Jumpstart Transformation and Accelerate Your Technology Leadership, Isaac Sacolick, a technology leadership expert and a former CIO and CTO, delivers a hands-on guide to help technology and business professionals at all stages of their careers acquire the skills necessary to drive transformative change. With an eye-opening collection of stories and more than 50 lessons, Sacolick gives readers a view into what goes on behind-the-scenes in leading digital transformations. From tense IT Ops conference calls to make-or-break executive meetings, Sacolick presents the challenging scenarios faced by product, technology, and data leaders and helps readers learn to lead transformations and become Digital Trailblazers.

In the book you will:

Step out of your comfort zone and develop the management and leadership skills required to influence executives and win over detractors in driving technology changes Learn how to transform experiences, lead data driven organizations, and foster high performance teams Discover how to deliver innovation, empower agile self-organization, and evolve standard digital practices that drive culture changes in your organization
A can't-miss resource for product, technology, and data leaders - from those aspiring to leadership roles through vice presidents, CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs, Digital Trailblazer delivers real-word stories and need-to-know lessons that will accelerate your technology leadership journey.

ebook

Published June 28, 2022

About the author

Isaac Sacolick is a successful CIO who has led digital transformation, product development, innovation, agile management, and data science programs in multiple organizations. He has transformed underperforming businesses by delivering new digital products, investing in strategic technologies, enabling agile practices, outsourcing commodity services and establishing performance metrics. He is the author of the book Driving Digital: The Leader’s Guide to Business Transformation Through Technology published by Amacom.

Isaac is currently President and CIO of StarCIO, a consulting services business that helps businesses execute their digital transformation programs. Previously, he held transformational CIO roles at media, financial services, and construction industry businesses and was a founding CTO at media and social networking startups.

Isaac has been recognized as an industry leading, agile, innovative CIO. He has been listed by The Huffington Post, Forbes, and HP Enterprise as a top social CIO and was recognized as a Top 100 CIO in STEM. Isaac has been writing a blog, Social Agile and Transformation for over ten years with 300+ posts covering topics on CIO leadership, digital transformation, agile execution, big data, innovation, and digital marketing. He speaks on a variety of transformation topics including the digital enterprise, agile transformation,digital product development, citizen development programs, the future of IT, and on becoming a data driven organization.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

We do not do Digital Transformation because it is easy; we do it because it must be done for survival and growth. Digital Trailblazer, by Isaac Sacolick, provides practical guidelines to driving Digital Transformation. It is written in a personal style that is both intimate and memorable, with each lesson illustrated through hard-won personal experience. Having worked in the digital transformation space for over a decade, I find it a pleasure to read a book that resonates - “Yes! Someone understands these struggles and has some great suggestions.” Mr. Sacolick focuses on the approach, mindset, ownership, and understanding “why” we are do what we do, allowing for the flexibility and context of each organization and team. You can get the 9-5 with the “what” and “how”, but the passion for “why” we are doing what we do keeps the mind churning 24/7. He also expresses the need to experiment, test assumptions, and getting into the weeds to drill into the data and understand what is really happening and make effective decisions. If you are a technology leader, whether in or out of the C-Suite, this book will give you insights and ideas to help you transform your organization for the challenges of tomorrow.

[Tim Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Are you in IT leadership or want to get into IT leadership, this is the book for you

“Digital Trailblazer” is the latest book, following his book “Driving digital” in 2017

Written as a novel, Isaac has written a semi-autobiographical book, using his extensive IT experience in start-ups as well as major corporations.

Each chapter is a business scenario, for example, the critical application that is being developed and is behind schedule, the merger with another company, the lack of Agile and DevOps skills on a project. You are there in the Boardroom with Isaac, what are you going to do?

Isaac, then takes you through what he did with outcomes both good and bad.

[Jay Vercellone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun read

I liked the format, it’s very easy to read stories when you know there’s a lesson at the end. However, for someone working in IT, everything’s already digital, so there’s nothing to transform. I really cannot believe that there are businesses out there that operate at such rudimentary level.

[Jojo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wish there was a little more "show, don't tell" especially near the end.

[Shaun Guthrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must for any technology leader or those tackling any transformational challenges. The stories and lessons Isaac shares are gold and very relatable.