In the third episode of Tech Leaders’ Intel we’re joined by Eoin Fleming, CIO of Carne Group. Eoin has around 25 years of experience in both general IT and security, predominantly in regulated industries. He’s here today to share his knowledge on an extremely important topic: ensuring your IT team is in tune with your company culture.

Working in the financial sector, Eoin acknowledges that there is one thing non-IT firms are often missing – an innate knowledge of the purpose of IT. This means a particular challenge that IT teams have is getting senior management to understand what IT can do in terms of digital transformation. Eoin likes to use a plumbing analogy: when things are working well, no one notices the plumbing and thinks any installation costs must have been unnecessary. But when the plumbing breaks, IT gets the blame, and senior management wonders what the money was spent on. This is why, Eoin says, the IT team must act as salesmen for their services at all times.

Eoin adds, however, that good communication works both ways – company culture must be communicated from above to the IT team: if development is misaligned with company culture it will fail. This is the running theme through all aspects of working in IT and Eoin talks us through negotiating mergers and acquisitions and making big changes to IT systems while avoiding costly failures. This brings us to his final point: making mistakes is part and parcel of a career in IT. The important part? Tell the truth when things go wrong, particularly to your manager. And as a manager, impart lessons learnt with your employees. As Eoin says: "Don’t turn your employees into you; turn them into a better version of you".

If you like the insights you heard from Eoin, you can connect with him on LinkedIn.