There is a version of retirement that involves a beach chair and a deliberate distance from anything resembling an inbox. Glen Cottick, with more than three decades of IT leadership behind him, chose a different path.

Today, Glen serves as a business technology advisor with ourCIO, an IT leadership firm that delivers senior technology guidance to organizations that need it — on the terms that make sense for them. It is a role that fits him naturally, not because it is easier than what came before, but because it draws on everything he has spent a career learning.

Technology Is Not the Point

Ask Glen what shaped him as a technology leader, and he will tell you something that sounds almost counterintuitive coming from someone who has spent his career in IT.

"Technology exists to support the business. That is the only reason for technology within a business."

He has said it enough times that the people around him could finish the sentence. This conviction — that technology is a means, never an end — became the lens through which Glen approached every initiative, every investment, and every conversation with a leadership team. The goal was never to implement the most sophisticated solution. It was to understand the business deeply enough to know what kind of solution it actually needed: affordable, right-sized, and usable.

Equally formative was a lesson that took longer to articulate but proved just as durable: technology, for all its complexity, is relatively straightforward compared to the human side of organizational change. People are the most valuable resource in almost any business, and they require genuine support — intellectual and emotional — when change is underway. Processes, too, must be thoughtfully aligned to desired outcomes, yet they are too easily overlooked in the rush to focus on systems and tools.

This three-part framework — people, process, and technology — became the foundation of how Glen leads.

The Project That Proved the Point

Glen points to one initiative in particular as the experience that crystallized his thinking.

The project centred on a significant technology modernization effort: replacing the underlying infrastructure of a large organization to improve reliability, accelerate deployment timelines, and reduce costs. The technology itself was leading-edge for the sector — enough to give stakeholders pause. But what made the project genuinely difficult had little to do with servers or software.

The change required a fundamental restructuring of responsibilities, staffing, and funding across multiple departments, shifting from a distributed model to an organization-wide approach to technology infrastructure. That kind of organizational disruption is hard under any circumstances. Getting it approved, keeping stakeholders engaged through the transition, and sustaining the outcomes required something that no technology plan could provide on its own.

"The organizational change management was much more challenging — and had to be effectively addressed for the project to be approved, stakeholders engaged throughout the change, and the desired outcomes sustained."

The project succeeded. Annual savings were significant and lasting. The organizational and technological foundation it established positioned the institution well for years ahead. And the validation that stayed with Glen longest came from a peer whose department had been among the most heavily affected — a colleague who told him, after everything was done, that they had not believed this type of change was possible in the organization, and could not be happier to have been wrong.

Why ourCIO, and Why Now

When Glen began thinking about what came next after his executive career, the advisory model was not simply an attractive option. It was a natural continuation of the work he had always found most meaningful.

The fractional model at ourCIO allows him to engage directly with organizations, deliver immediate value, and see the difference that guidance can make.

"Seeing the positive difference you can make within our client organizations is extremely fulfilling."

There is also the variety. Glen spent years inside a large organization with more than a dozen distinct lines of business, and the breadth of that exposure kept the work alive for him. ourCIO offers something similar: a wide variety of clients across industries, each with its own goals, constraints, and opportunities. For someone who thrives on context-switching and on understanding what makes a business tick, it is a natural fit.

And then there is the straightforward matter of not letting hard-won experience go to waste. Three decades of leadership builds something very special. Glen is clear-eyed about what that something is worth — and equally clear that it does more good in the hands of organizations that need it than sitting unused.

The Mistake Most Leaders Make

In Glen's experience, the single biggest mistake business leaders make with technology investment is failing to establish and maintain a clear, understandable connection between technology spending and the business objectives it is meant to serve.

"If you do not know how a given technology effort is supporting the business — or if you have not clearly explained this to the required stakeholders so they truly understand — that technology effort is disconnected from its purpose."

It sounds simple. In practice, it requires discipline — and a willingness to say no to technology that cannot be tied back to something the business actually cares about.

When Glen works with a client on aligning a technology roadmap to business strategy, the process is deliberate. It begins with a thorough understanding of business goals as they currently stand, along with the factors that might cause those goals to shift. That understanding has to be established across all relevant stakeholders, because a technology roadmap built on a fractured or inconsistent view of business strategy will not hold. From there, every element of the technology plan is mapped to specific business goals. If the line of sight is not clear, documentable, and explainable, that element must be scrutinized. When goals change, the roadmap changes with them so everything remains in lock step.

The Trend No One Can Afford to Ignore

Glen's answer on the technology trend he is watching most closely is not a surprise, but the urgency behind it is worth taking seriously.

"The impact of AI will be greater than any past technology in many markets — and those who do not effectively engage will be left behind by their competitors, very quickly, at speeds never before seen broadly across multiple industries at once."

His advice to business leaders is specific: ensure your leadership team has a genuine, working understanding of what AI can do today and where it is heading — and keep that understanding current. Build AI approaches that connect back to business goals. Establish and communicate clear organizational policies on AI, both to enable smart adoption and to address the very real concerns employees have about what it means for them.

"There are few items today that can instill more fear in individuals and teams than uncertainty on an organization's plans for use of AI."

It is a people challenge as much as a technology one — and by now, that framing should come as no surprise from Glen Cottick.

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