The Mindful CIO Manifesto 2.0
Preamble
The digital age is here. Our work is more mentally demanding than ever before, so we must be mentally fit. Forward-thinking organisations and leaders have realised this and are doing something about it.
Corporate mindfulness has been adopted by a range of industries for different reasons. From law firms and banks, to start-ups, government agencies and Fortune 500 companies, the outcomes are broad and deep: improved engagement, retention, wellbeing, safety, resilience, performance, creativity and innovation.
This approach is happening and it’s yielding results.
The Manifesto
We improve the lives of people working in IT by actively promoting:
- Healthy culture;
- Diversity, humanity and sustainability;
- Human skills over technical prowess; and
- Focus and presence with people and tasks.
Embracing these values positively impacts individuals’ wellbeing, ensuring businesses can consistently deliver valuable outcomes at a sustainable pace.
View the Principles underpinning The Mindful CIO Manifesto
The Framework
The Mindful CIO is comprised of three parts:
- The Manifesto;
- The Community; and
- The Advisory Panel.
The Manifesto
The manifesto is a set of 4 values that focus on the human, core or soft skills that enable leaders to operate a sustainable team in an optimal way. The values are deliberately high-level and non-prescriptive to allow leaders to adopt them in ways that are most effective for their unique team and organisational requirements.
The Manifesto has been written with the view that technology teams (and other teams for that matter) operate with 3 distinct pillars:
- Ways of working;
- Tooling;
- People.
The Mindful CIO was formed with the view that the Agile Manifesto is the ways of working pillar; the concepts of DevOps and the DORA research program have become the pillar for tooling and delivery; and the Mindful CIO Manifesto will become the pillar for people.
The Community
The community is a group of like-minded individuals who believe in the purpose, vision, mission and values of The Mindful CIO. No formal registration is required to be a member of the Mindful CIO community; anybody who believes in, follows or promotes the values of the Mindful CIO is a member of the community.
To help the individuals within the community we provide a psychologically safe space to discuss all things related to IT leadership and mindfulness in action; educational and informative resources and tools to help promote mindfulness within the IT industry.
The Advisory Panel
The Advisory Panel was formed after The Mindful Digital Leader CIONET event on 19th May 2021 in which the original version of The Manifesto was presented. Following this event Nathalie Heynderickx, the author of the manifesto, received feedback that The Manifesto could benefit from a refresh. Jeff Murray and Michael Lambert joined Nathalie to revise The Manifesto, before presenting it to an ad-hoc advisory panel on 8th September 2021. The initial Advisory Panel was attended by Zack Scott, Phil Gadzinski, Craig Brown, Michael Lambert and Nathalie Heynderickx with a goal of ensuring that a revised version of the Manifesto would be timeless.
The on-going purpose of the Advisory Panel is to ensure that The Mindful CIO Manifesto and community is supported and promoted for the benefit of the IT industry.