Mike Fulton is a proud Buckeye. Ohio State is “near and dear to his heart,” and he is an alumnus and teacher at the institution. During his time teaching at OSU, Mike has developed a groundbreaking digital transformation curriculum based on years of enterprise IT experience. Mike also leverages his digital transformation expertise to lead cloud services company, Expedient, as the Head of Innovation and Product Strategy.
Mike began his career at P&G, which he calls a “great training ground” for anyone who wants to understand leadership — working every job in the IT department and eventually landing in concurrent Chief Cloud Architect and Shared Services roles.
Episode Highlights:
– Find your fit in your industry. For those starting out or are at mid-career: You have to understand yourself and understand how the various jobs within the IT industry fit with how you think and how your mind works (e.g., big picture thinker). Finding what you’re excited about makes work not feel like work. For Mike, this revelation came while working at P&G in enterprise architecture roles.
– Keep in mind that as you work with people from different countries and different cultures, they come with a different POV and that POV is incredibly valuable. “As you’re entering into a conversation, you have to be open to hearing it and seeing it because it’s easy to walk right past it and miss it if you’re not open to hearing someone’s perspective,” says Mike.
– The two most significant transformations happening right now are… One of the biggest transformations over the past 15 years is the Cloud. Cloud transformation requires the IT manager to go up the stack, be more business-oriented, and think about business outcomes. The Cloud is taking away some of the day-to-day infrastructure management — it requires IT managers to get closer to the business to understand the business’ direction better. The other transformation is digital. Mike’s definition of digital transformation, “Digital is leveraging technology and data to transform the customer experience and/or the business model of an organization.” Digital transformation challenges companies to create a business model canvas and to better understand the customer journey.
Other topics covered in this episode include remote learning and education, social transformation, and how the pandemic has shifted personal transformation. Listen to the full episode now.
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About Mike Fulton: Mike Fulton is an award-winning senior technology executive with global experience within several multi-billion-dollar institutions; offers corporate leadership, innovative mindset, strategic viewpoint, strong network, and deep understanding of every aspect of a digital operating model backed by a proven track record demonstrating technology strategic planning, enterprise architecture, team building proficiencies and the ability to deliver rapid adoption of technology that matters.
Currently accountable for innovation and product strategy at enterprise cloud company.
Past roles include AVP, Technology Strategy & Innovation at $40 billion financial services company, Chief Digital Officer and President, Americas division for global boutique IT strategy and architecture consulting and training company as well as cloud architecture, cost optimization, and enterprise architecture for $65 billion global consumer packaged goods company; accomplishments include building out and running technology innovation team, re-imagining technology strategic planning and activation process, establishing and running corporate-wide technology adoption process, leading emerging technology communications to Board of Directors and executive leadership, design of cloud architecture and operating model, delivery of technology transformation plans forecasting 161 million USD savings, P&L ownership, marketing technology suite implementation, CRM solution implementation, learning management system implementation, O365 migration, platform architecture and program plan for full-scale ServiceNow implementation, delivery of more than 15 process transformation workshops and strategy and architecture engagements and taking care of professional development for over 100 architects globally.
He was recognized as a winner of ComSpark Technology & Innovation award for prototype work, Columbus Tech Power Player for impact on the local IT community, and Open Group Ecosystem Award for contribution to the global IT industry.
