One way to see a new country is to become a professional truck driver. Werner Enterprises EVP and CIO Daragh Mahon did just that when he immigrated from Ireland to the US. After about nine months, he wanted to find something different and decided to leverage his prior inventory management experience to embark on a new career.
“I went to work for a company called PeachTree Software as an inventory control manager, but literally everything was considered inventory management — unloading trucks, shipping stuff, running returns. Over the first couple of months, I realized that nothing was automated. It was all spreadsheets at the time,” says Mahon. “I started learning how to code, and I started to write some applications, but I got fed up. I thought, ‘This is just pointless. Why should I build this if I can buy it?’ so I negotiated a deal with Manhattan Associates for a shipping and warehouse management system and signed a contract I had no authority to sign.”
While he wasn’t fired for overstepping his role, the CFO, Teri McEvily, reminded him that he’d violated company policy and that the software ‘better work’ or he would be fired for sure. Mahon worked closely with IT and together they helped Manhattan Associates develop one of their first high-volume shipping systems. Over the next couple of years, he continued to help IT in the afternoon or evenings, after working full-time in the warehouse.
When PeachTree was acquired by Sage Group in 1999, the IT department was doing an SAP implementation. McEvily was tasked with running the SAP implementation for North America and subsequently globally. She asked Mahon to help with the implementation since he was a supply chain expert.
“I volunteered for and moved into the data migration area, because it wasn’t working and nobody had any data migration experience, nor did I. [Nevertheless,] Teri told me to make it work because it was a mess,” says Mahon. “So, I gathered a bunch of SQL and data guys, we sat down and figured it out. Suddenly, we were doing things with SAP data services that Deloitte and SAP probably didn’t know you could do. I started gradually doing all sorts of SAP work. Wherever there was a need, I filled it, such as running security on the platform. The more I got stuck with technical problems, the more I enjoyed it. I love chaos.”
Meanwhile, his job scope expanded to managing the relationship between the business teams and the service desk and infrastructure. In fact, Mahon and the Sage team virtualized the SAP environment, which was an industry first. When they told SAP what they were doing, they expressly told him not to do it on the grounds that it wouldn’t work.
“We installed SAP on virtual servers in a data center, and SAP told us not to do it, but we couldn’t figure out why we shouldn’t do it [because] it would save us a ton of money [and] effort. It worked just fine,” says Mahon. “Over the coming years, I started to work with SaaS platforms Salesforce and Zuora, and that’s kind of what brought me to my build versus buy mentality. This was at the beginning of our move to the cloud, which the CIO spearheaded. We were early adopters, and I just felt it was the wave of the future. As we came out of the SAP implementations, I got involved in business analysis and I remember going to Teri one day and saying, ‘You know, I’m kind of pissed off. I’ve become a jack of all trades and a master of none, when others in the organization own a specific piece of the IT world.”
McEvily told Mahon he was looking at it the wrong way. The reason he found himself in this situation was because he was the only guy she and others could trust to fix problems. (In fact, his favorite award of all was the one given after the 10-year SAP implementation. All the approximately 200 people involved in the deployment nominated Mahon for the award, “Who to call when the **it hits the fan.”)
Mahon spent just over 20 years at Sage Group, rising through the ranks to director of IT and finally senior director, IT & business applications. After that, he held several positions at Vonage, from director of business services to ultimately senior vice president – global and IT business applications before joining Werner as EVP and CIO in 2020.
“As I moved on into director, VP, and senior VP, and CIO roles, I realized that all of that being kicked around the place, going from one area to another, one problem to another and one **it storm to another was actually a good thing,” says Mahon. “It meant I had cybersecurity and infrastructure knowledge. I ran development teams and the service desk. I worked with all the different business units as well: marketing, sales, contact center, accounting, finance, HR, you name it. So, when I sit down and have an IT conversation with anyone, I’ve been there and done [what they do] to a certain extent.”
Important Lessons Learned Along the Way
Planning is considered critical in business to keep an organization moving forward in a predictable way, but Mahon doesn’t believe in the traditional annual and long-term planning in which lots of time is invested in creating the perfect plan which is then executed.
“Never get too engaged in planning. You have a plan, but it’s pretty broad and open-ended. The North Star is very fuzzy, and it never gets to be a pinpoint [because] you need to focus on all the stuff that’s going on around you,” says Mahon. “You should know exactly what you’re going to do in the next two to three months. From three to six months out, you have a really good idea what you’re going to do but be prepared to change. And from six to nine months or a year, [I wait until] we get three months away before I focus on it because tech and business needs change rapidly.”
That’s why he considers his CIO role to be one of change management more than tech management.
The businesspeople and IT would sit around the table and agree how [a solution is] going to work. You’ve got to really focus on change management, what your customer wants, and that’s what you’ve got to go implement,” says Mahon. “If you see a problem, own it, fix it, and be accountable for it, even if it’s not your problem, because [after you fix it,] everyone will forget about it.
He also recommends skipping self-help and leadership books because they’re “drivel.”
“The good ideas are mostly common knowledge. To be honest, I don’t think there are any good self-help books. Instead, I have a leadership coach who is also my mental health coach,” says Mahon. “Books try to get you to change who you are, and it doesn’t work. Be yourself. I have a leadership coach who points out my flaws, 90% of which I’m already aware of. His philosophy is don’t try to fix the flaw, address the flaw so, for example, I’m mindful about my tendency to speak too directly.”
He also says it’s critical for CIOs to build trust and credibility because that’s what the job is all about.
“Technology is mistrusted because it doesn’t always work. If you’re a new CIO, pick a bunch of small wins because they’ll make a big difference,” says Mahon. “It’s important to make friends and influence people but you must also let people know you’re not a pushover and you’re going to do what’s right for the organization versus making people happy. You have to have a philosophy on technology and be true to that philosophy because you will get pushback. Also, never underestimate the governance work that must be done around board meetings, earnings calls and audit committee meetings. I wish I’d been prepared for that because there’ a lot of it.”
Finally, learn how to tell a story that sells.
“I can’t just walk into a room and say, ‘We’re going to implement Salesforce Mastermind, because it’s the best technology. You must be able to articulate why, the value of it and why it’s going to make their lives easier,” says Mahon. “You’re telling the why behind the strategy in such a way that people respect it and understand it. You want people to see you have an empathetic way of dealing with them and that you understand what they’re doing. I used to be a hammer guy and tell people we’re just doing it. I don’t want to hear your objections. While I’m guilty of falling back into that old pattern, I correct myself. Instead, I say, “Yep, I hear you. Let’s talk it through and figure it out.”
Leave Impostor Syndrome at the Door
Mahon says he sometimes wonders how he became an EVP and CIO, especially given the fact that he does not hold a college degree. After spending a year studying polymer science and plastic engineering, he got a green card and moved to the US.
“It’s been a wild ride. I’ve done things I never thought I would do, and I have a life I never expected to have. Occasionally, when I walk into a room and meet with the C-suite, executives or really smart people who are listening to me, part of me wonders whether they’re out of their minds. Then I flip it back, recognizing that I’ve earned my right to be in this position and talk. And I owe it all to Teri who took me under her wing and made my career,” says Mahon. “She saw something in me — in fact, she used to call me a ‘diamond in the rough.’ About 10 years into working with her, I was in a meeting, and I ran it like a boss. She said, “Today you are the diamond. You’re not in the rough anymore. It was one of the best moments of my career because she’d told me I was amazing. I had such respect for her I followed every piece of advice she gave me, and I’m glad I did.”
