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Mykolas Rambus
Moving Up
After four years as CIO at W.P. Carey & Co., a real estate management and investment firm based in New York, Mykolas Rambus had carved out a comfortable position: good relationships in place and major projects under his belt. Why move on? Like Maillette, he performed a self-analysis every year. It centered on a single question: Was he still learning enough to continue moving toward his goal of becoming chief executive of a midsized company?
Rambus started the job in 2002 in his early 20s, fresh from a two-year stint as the founding chief executive of Lobby7, a speech application software company that has since been acquired by Nuance Communications Inc. of Burlington, Mass.
At Carey, one of the first things Rambus did was write down what he wanted to accomplish as CIO. During the next three years, he would speed up the capture of new deal information, establish new processes for managing projects and vendors, and improve the internal help desk's customer service approval ratings.
This year, at the age of 28, he reviewed his list and concluded he was no longer progressing on the steep learning curve toward his professional goals, and he realized that he missed his entrepreneurial days.
"I was running out of big mountains to climb," he says.
Rambus and his employer considered a few options, including different roles. Yet in the end, Rambus decided that he should return to a more entrepreneurial setting. He resigned to start a consulting firm, Kahle Partners in Washington, D.C., which aims to help CIOs and their direct reports tackle difficult projects.
Rambus recommends that CIOs be straightforward with their bosses if they find themselves craving more than what is on their plate. "I was fortunately in a position where I had done good things," he says, so he could tell his boss, "Here's what I'm looking to try to accomplish. Here are the types of roles that I'd like to find. I'm not sure these roles exist at W.P. Carey, and according to my research, maybe they don't. But tell me what you're thinking."
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