See also: CIO Profile Ibukun Adebayo on budget discipline
The ability to get the best out of people, staff and colleagues is Turning Point IT director Ibukun Adebayo’s hallmark and will presumably help her through the next few careers, too.
She gives 100 per cent effort, expects the same from her staff, and usually gets it.
“I’m privileged to work with similarly committed professionals and if I’m awake at night and text a member of staff about a problem that needs fixing the next day I’ll usually get the response – if they’re awake – that they’ll jump on the case straight away,” she says.
Three years ago, Adebayo took the decision to grow her own IT staff in-house and started an apprenticeship scheme, long before the coalition government started banging on about apprentices.
Today, two of the original intake have remained and have been promoted, and thus their talent has been acquired much more cheaply than going to market.
Plus, she point out, they are highly motivated individuals and it’s hard to overestimate this added value.
As a relative newcomer to the world of IT – landing her first tech job at the age of 34 – Adebayo may feel some kinship with apprentices.
Before Turning Point, she was IT director at the Royal Albert Hall, and prior to that, head of IT at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG).
Astonishingly, it was only 18 months earlier that she has taken a first step into IT, qualifying as a certified Microsoft engineer.
“I’m a technology person by accident”, she says, but adds that her Christian faith has been a major influence on the direction her life has taken.
As a single parent raising three children, she had wondered how she was going to provide for her family.
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