Building a plan to make you grow and be uncomfortable

When I considered the CIO or CISO role as my personal aspiration, I would imagine myself in this position. Not in terms of the status or salary package that this would bring, but more in terms of how I would operate.

In Chapter 2, I asked you to explore areas where you could make improvements. There should have been at least two to three items on that list that make you uncomfortable. This is all about stretching yourself to get you out of your comfort zone.

If I reflect on how I used this myself, I can offer two examples:

• Strategic thinking: My natural strength is strategic thinking, but there was a three-to-four-year period where I had a specific focus on improving it. What I did was force myself to read 12 books every year on topics that were new or of interest to me. Once I committed to this objective, I made a simple reading log to record the titles of the books.

  I also recorded this personal objective within my...