Chief Enabling Officer
Noun.
/An executive-level servant leader focused on helping businesses succeed by improving organizational leadership, culture, operations, and technology in a way that fosters innovation, organizational transformation, and performance improvement without compulsion and from the inside out.
Synonyms: CEO mini-me, CEO confidant & counselor
See also: Servant leader. Growth strategist. Secret weapon for CEOs.
IF IT HAS TO DO WITH PEOPLE, PROCESS, OR TECHNOLOGY, I CAN HELP.
Some of my favorite specialties include:
- Business turnarounds and improvement initiatives
- Culture, innovation and workforce productivity
- Leadership development, organizational development
- Process engineering and operations maturity/ITSM/ITIL
- Enterprise project management maturity/PMO/PPM/OPM3
- Cloud infrastructures and website hosting/outsourcing
- Social Intranets and remote team collaboration tools
BONUS: MY ENTIRE LIFE STORY!
I'm kidding... but feel free to skip this unless you're here to find out about MY NON-BIZ LIFE...
I grew up in southern Utah, where a lot of the old western movies were filmed. I was the sixth of eight children and learned a lot about life growing up with a bunch of siblings and friends in a small western town. My wife is from Fallbrook, CA, the avocado capital of the world. (I love avocados!) We love to take walks and hikes when we can pry ourselves away from the office and our computers. You would not believe how beautiful the sunsets in Arizona and Utah can be!
My career testing in High School said I should be a therapist or a preacher/teacher. But I chose IT as my career. It all started when I was newly married and my Grandpa Roberts gave me my first computer. Once I learned to take it apart and put it back together, I was able to get a job supporting computers and laptops at a manufacturing company in San Diego. Then I became specialized in Enterprise Document Management solutions (Livelink), eventually leading the operations of one of the largest installations in North America at Sprint Corporation.
A Life-Changing Discovery
As I moved into IT management and leadership positions, I realized that most of my success with technology had more to do with my ability to maneuver human relationships than any specific technology solution. In other words, if I got the "people" part right, projects would succeed regardless of the technology.
Once I realized that each implementation was in reality an organizational change initiative, and that I was exceptionally good at the people side as well as the technology and process improvement sides, I knew I had something special. I was already helping with leadership development and organization-wide culture transformation while implementing enterprise-wide technologies and process improvement initiatives. Why in the world was I not working with CEOs to flip their organizations, or at least help them out in ways that only a peer-executive can?
Bio
Sam Roberts • Chief Enabling Officer
Sam has been an organizational change artist for 25 years, starting with his father's medical clinic that he saved from bankruptcy.
He has eyes to see workforce dynamics, culture, and empowerment. He is an operations improvement specialist, increasing the maturity of service management and delivery processes within one data center more than 900% within 2.5 years.
Sam is highly experienced in the configuration and support of intranet and digital workplace environments, including performance, availability, security, and backups.
Sam is certified in UNIX and ITIL (the IT Infrastructure Library). He also served as Director of a Project Management Office (PMO). He has two degrees:
- BA in Information Systems
- MA in Organizational Administration
He founded 2ndCEO, a management consulting firm that merges his background in leadership, culture, operations and technology into a new servant leadership role called a "Chief Enabling Officer".
His mission is to help CEO's grow and improve their organizations through inside-out transformation.
