Career planning for CIOs: Define your last job first, then reverse-engineer the path

About this episode

Rusty Atkinson plans his career backward. Start by defining your last job before retirement, then reverse-engineer the path to get there. In 2000, he picked his target, CIO at a public company, and every move after that was aimed at closing a specific gap for that role. He eventually got there, serving as CIO of a public company at Signify Health.

The turning point came earlier, at ST Microelectronics, when he realized he'd never be the head geek in the room, but he could lead the people who were. Rusty calls the director promotion the one that breaks the most IT leaders. Managers can hide their gaps by staying technical, but directors can't, because that's where technical skills stop paying the bills.

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Now Head of Technology at Clearway Health, Rusty tells Matt Peters that boardrooms don't want technology discussions. A leader's value comes from translating what peers fear and need into actions for their team. That means embedding in sales calls and operational meetings, where you hear friction before it gets filtered through one-on-ones.

"It's almost never about the technology, the things that we do on my team."

He also gets into extreme ownership. When an engineer bricks hardware during a firmware upgrade because backups weren't verified, Rusty sees a leadership failure, not just an individual one, because the leadership chain didn't make backup verification feel critical. He shares the example of a leader who offered up his own VP role during layoffs to protect three team members. That kind of integrity, he says, earns measurable engagement, loyalty, and innovation, which is the idea behind his book, The Integrity Edge.

Rusty closes with a warning about AI. In his view, companies adopting AI today are repeating the solution-first mistakes they made in early cloud migrations.

What you'll learn in this episode

• How to plan your career by defining your last job first
• Why the director promotion is the hardest step in IT leadership
• Why leadership ability beats technical depth on the climb to the C-suite
• Why boardrooms don't want to talk about technology
• What sales calls reveal that one-on-ones can't
• Why production failures are leadership failures
• How integrity earns measurable engagement from your team
• Why AI adoption is repeating the mistakes of early cloud migrations

About Rusty Atkinson

Rusty Atkinson is Head of Technology at Clearway Health and author of The Integrity Edge: Unlocking the Hidden Power of Ethical Leadership. He started building PCs and teaching networking classes in 1992, began leading teams in the late 1990s, and set his sights on becoming CIO of a public company in 2000.

His career includes roles at ST Microelectronics, where he made the calculated decision to focus on leadership over technical depth, and Signify Health, where he served as CIO of a public company. He defines the "integrity edge" as the measurable engagement, loyalty, and innovation leaders earn when their teams know they're protected and trusted, a concept he teaches through coaching and his book.

Resources mentioned

• The Integrity Edge: Unlocking the Hidden Power of Ethical Leadership by Rusty Atkinson
• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
• Connect with Rusty Atkinson on LinkedIn

About the host

Matt Peters is the CEO and Co-Founder of Fixify, where he's redefining the IT help desk for the AI era. Before founding Fixify, he was Chief Product Officer at Expel and held senior leadership roles at FireEye and Mandiant, where he helped pioneer some of the earliest managed detection and response services.