Computerworld Philippines :: Career Watch

Peer Perspective. IT Leadership. Business Results

Tech Motivator

By Tom S. Noda

Although motivation is simply defined as an inspiration or driving force, it has a deeper meaning for Carlo Cagalingan, an IT professional who claims to have discovered its art of efficiency, especially among IT professionals.

“To be a good leader or manager, you have to know how it is like being your staff,” says Cagalingan, who serves as information technology head of insurance firm AXA Philippines. Cagalingan describes himself as a leader who brings out the best in every person in his team. He values integrity and transparency, and advocates these to everyone under the ranks.

“I make it a point to be close personally to my team – to know their motivations and interests – because to be an effective leader, you must know what motivates your people,” he says, adding that his experience as an ordinary programmer has helped him relate well with his IT staff today. He shares the programmer role was the most significant position he ever held in his 16-year IT career.

“My 16 years of experience were mostly in the area of project/program management, application development and systems implementation,” he says. “The 12 years of that are on a project manager capacity. I have excellent analytical and programming skills in business analysis and technical analysis in application development.”

Today at AXA Philippines, Cagalingan is in charge of application development, production support, IT services delivery, hardware and software management, data center management, communications infrastructure management, IT project/portfolio management, IT governance champion, IT security management, vendor management, and overall department administration.

One of Cagalingan’s strategies for encouraging his team to give out their best is to challenge their thinking.

“Sometimes I play the devil’s advocate. All scenarios that can happen, I bring them in the table. They then can think of other solutions that integrally solve all those scenarios,” he says.

Cagalingan adds that enhancing one’s communication skills is clearly a winner. “No matter how technically good you are, but if you don’t know how to get your messages through, you will never get anywhere,” he says, adding eagerness to learn, flexibility in work, and punctuality are essential traits to having an effective team.

“I believe a good leader should be able to invoke passion in work and set a ‘can do’ attitude in every challenge that his or her team faces. I also believe in setting hard and challenging but specific and achievable goals. I also believe that respect and loyalty is earned. A leader who demands it by virtue of his position will never be a leader,” he explains.

Cagalingan says one of the lessons he learned in work and in life is to never be afraid to commit mistakes and to stand for what one believes is right.

“One must walk the talk. Integrity, honesty and transparency will make you sleep soundly at night. That is key to your well-being and ‘saneness’ in an otherwise stressful and sometimes insane world,” quips Cagalingan.

The executive believes that leadership is not only about deadlines but more on learning to bring the best in people without losing them in the end. “Leadership is without losing in a game you thought you’ve won,” he says.

The positions that Cagalingan held in his career are: senior design engineer, Tsukiden Software Philippines, Inc. (May 1994 – July 1997); project manager, SAP implementation consultant, analyst and programmer at Corporate Information Solutions, Inc. (November 1997 – August 2000); engineering group lead, senior engineer, Latitude Web Philippines, Inc. (August 2000 – February 2001) Singapore; IT consultant, Renaissance Worldwide, Inc. (February 2001 – May 2001) Minnesota, USA; business unit head of e-commerce group at Magnus Management Consultants, Philippines (May 2001 – Apr 2005); then later as project manager, Equation Product Development of MISYS International Banking Systems (April 2005 – April 2006); and now as IT head of AXA Philippines.

Possibly Related Posts: