Larry is an energetic and no-nonsense speaker.  With a fast pace, he touched many points.  I will just pick a few here.  He explained that alignment between IT and business is foolish, because IT is part of the business, just like accounting and marketing functions.  He thinks IT leader needs to understand the business vision, be able to manage fiscal responsibilities and engage the board (using language of the board).

He thinks marketing is important, part of everything.  His example is that he was able to market his value proposition to his wife, a beautiful and intelligent woman, 25 years ago, to persuade her to marry him.  He is adamant about honesty and transparency.  He is proud himself as being able to be read like a book.

He thinks leaders should focus on helping others succeed.  His sentence of the night was: “there’s no winner on a losing team.”

He argues that leaders bias towards action.  Break complex plan to bite size actionable chunks, track progress, then celebrate and communicate progress.

A few more interesting thoughts:

• Perception is the reality, and the perception of IT being a utility is bad, because there’re only 2 times a utility is being thought of: when it’s broken and when the bill comes.
• Authenticity: be yourself, but your best self.
• What you do speaks so loud that I can’t hear what you say.