Leadership spotlight: Chief Information Officer
In this series we will hear from the Senior Leadership Team at Three about the latest activity across the company and a little about the people behind the projects.
Vital stats
- Name: Belinda Finch
- Job title: Chief Information Officer
- Function: Technology & Operations
- Tenure: 8 months
Tell us a bit about your background
I am originally from Cardiff where I was born and bred and went to University too – I was educated in Welsh and the first time I was taught anything in English was when I went to university – imagine doing macro economics for the first time in a different language – it took some getting used to!
My career has been in telecommunications and utilities infrastructure, having previously held a Group CIO and Chief of Staff role at Centrica, and 8 years in digital transformation roles at Vodafone.
In a nutshell, how does the role of Chief Information Officer support our business objectives?
It is my responsibility to bring together all existing IT functions at Three UK under one management team. This includes Digital, IT Delivery, Architecture, Development and Test and IT PMO. Together with my team I will deliver the final stages of our IT transformation programme, working with our product teams to drive system improvements that will result in a better customer experience. We will also deliver all technology for new products and propositions for the commercial teams, customer experience updates, ERP system changes, intranet changes etc, on our existing legacy systems.
In March you took part in Raconteur’s virtual roundtable discussion about digital transformation, which also featured in The Sunday Times. How do you encourage an open culture within your team?
I am very passionate about promoting an authentic open culture. I think it’s really important that my team feel trusted yet supported to do their jobs well.
Leadership for me is all about allowing people to be themselves and do the best possible job whilst giving the maximum accountability and trust that you can, however being there when support is needed. I do this by having a ‘door always open’ policy, my team knows they can message me via Teams whenever they like, and they will get a response. I don’t ‘do’ hierarchy, I think it stifles efficiency and creativity, both things we need to be successful – especially now in times where we have more to do than ever before.
Recently we have kicked off our WLT – this is the wider leadership team – who have been empowered to create their own virtual teams to tackle problems and issues that we encounter every day during our working days – whether this be changing a process that isn’t working, inventing an app to solve a problem someone has identified, etc. This is an important part of nurturing an open working environment where everyone feels empowered to contribute in any way that they can.
