5: Alexandra Heckler - The Ecosystem Approach to Digital Leadership

OVERVIEW

Today our guest is Alexandra Heckler, Chief Information Security Officer at Collins Aerospace. In our conversation, she lays out why a digital leader should take an "ecosystem" perspective when viewing and engaging the business. I hope you’ll also be inspired by Alexandra’s journey — a story of embracing your uniqueness and delivering uncommon value.

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TAKEAWAYS

Lessons from modifying a ‘68 Corvette: before moving forward, sometimes you need to deconstruct the system and see how it works.

Think like a diplomat — take a sweeping internal and external view of the environment to gauge where digital capabilities are needed and then go build the relationships that get you there.

We can achieve so much more when individuals acknowledge the limits of their strengths and, in turn, partner with people who bring polar opposite skills to the table.

A solid cybersecurity strategy rests upon entering the environment with bold assumptions about what “might be” and then ruthlessly testing them — discarding those that don’t apply and updating the approach as you learn.

Figure out how to balance macro-culture and micro-culture: sometimes you want to be unified with the greater organization while other times there’s value in pockets of isolation.

The quiet, listening leader can be a more dangerous (effective) leader.

RESOURCES 

Connect w/ Alexandra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandrazofia

Connect w/ Matthew on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewdoan

Follow Matthew on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatthewRDoan

Book mentioned - The 48 Laws of Power (Robert Greene): https://bit.ly/3Aa98IS

Check the show on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZeCjHjtq3g7mIuPwvKRrjw

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