DOUG MCCOLLOUGH
CIO OF TOMORROW

Doug McCollough, the CIO for the city of Dublin, Ohio is a homegrown success story. While many people know he took over his current position in Dublin two years ago after working in Virginia, they often don’t realize that he’s been a proud Central Ohioan for years, working in the tech industry here since 1999.

Editor's note: Doug McCollough, CIO of the City of Dublin and the 2018 CIO Tomorrow Committee Chair, was the featured leader at IT Martini Today on April 17th, 2018.

A trained musician, McCollough pivoted from a career in music as he looked toward the future needs of his growing family. When he entered the IT field, he took the “the jobs and assignments no one wanted.”

McCullough has worked with the State of Ohio Department of Medicaid, Modis, the Industrial Commission of Ohio, Ohio Department of Commerce, the Ohio Department of Public Safety and Lucent Technologies.

“I became a project manager and at the time, it wasn’t a popular position - people were more interested in programming,” he said.

Taking the road less popular allowed him to take advantage of many growth opportunities. And while he learned about the tech side, it was his non-tech skills that accelerated his career advancement.

“It was my networking capabilities and ability to work with and team building skills that put me on the pathway to leadership,” McCollough said.

The length and breadth of his experiences here gives him a multilayered and nuanced perspective on how the tech industry has developed in the area and in short, he’s optimistic about the area’s future in the industry.

“I prefer to look at it in terms of growth versus change,” McCollough said. “We are growing consistently in maturity, sophistication and quality. We’ve always had the components...We’ve got a great research and startup community…[in terms of growth] there is much more coordination with the suburbs with the central urban center.”

The growth and connectivity of all of the moving parts in the area, including venture capitalists and organizations that support tech like Columbus 2020, Battelle and Columbus Partnership, is what has made Central Ohio attractive to companies all over the world McCollough said.

“The fact that Amazon is even considering Central Ohio as the location of its second headquarters is a win,” McCollough said. “It indicates to global companies that we have the people, tech and community. We have so many things these companies are looking for, including the housing, the parking, land, expansion capability…”

Diversity Bottleneck

“We’ve made huge advancements in making companies fast - the bottleneck is no longer speed to market or even capital, it’s diversity in the tech community. [Here in Central Ohio] it can make us not as competitive. We’re hearing from the industry they can’t find the people to fill the positions and we are hearing from the community they can’t even get an interview or from those within the companies, they can’t get promoted,” McCollough said.

McCollough stressed there are several issues at play in the diversity bottleneck - a deficit in understanding the importance of diversity and outdated methods of recruitment.

“The data proves that diversity is good for businesses. Diverse teams are more innovative, faster and produce better results,” he said. “Unfortunately, companies are less concerned with building great teams and understanding why it’s important. They focus instead on numbers and how fast they can fill in spots.”

At the upcoming CIO Tomorrow Conference the focus is on widening the talent pool, and McCollough says the conference is a call to action.

“We are asking every speaker, panelist and attendee what they are doing or planning to do to address the problem,” he said. “We need [as an industry] to be intentional. Right now companies have a “I’ll just leave this here method [to recruiting]. They will post a job where they assume everyone can see it and then throw their hands in the air and wonder why they aren’t reaching the people they are looking for.”

McCollough said that companies are not building relationships with organizations that have the talent they are looking for. While companies will spend a significant amount of money to attend, market to and create relationships with colleges, considering one or two prospects a success, they aren’t putting the same efforts into attracting people with diverse experiences or connecting with the organizations that support diverse talent pools.

“What would happen if you have a relationship with a group focused on women in tech or creating a group within your company for women in tech and intentionally and proactively reaching out to them and working to break down barriers that are preventing them from being able to advance?”

“With the pay differential for minorities and women, you’re not hurting non-minorities (and men) by paying extra attention and focus on these areas because the playing field is unequal.”

Diversity in Thought

McCollough acknowledged that diversity is more than gender and underrepresented minorities. The issue of diversity is about diversity of thought and experience.

“Many successful rural companies are having trouble recruiting people from the city and vice versa,” McCollough said. “People recruit from where they feel comfortable, that’s how you end up with an entire team from all one college, or who all look alike and have similar backgrounds. They recommend whom they feel comfortable with...it's time to get out of the comfort zone and build new relationships.”

Lack of diversity will continue to hurt organizations in years to come because successful leaders are no longer going to be the ones who put all their eggs in one basket of superior tech background, McCollough said. It will be those people who can pull together cross functional teams that contain everything from business perspectives to marketing to create products with life cycles of 9 to 10 months because disruption will happen so often and so completely in the industry.

McCollough maintains however that despite the challenges, Central Ohio will continue to harness the opportunities available.

“I’m encouraged by the participation, comments and community through the planning phase of this year’s CIO Tomorrow Conference, the recognition of Amazon and other companies and we are going to win the diversity and talent pool.”