Jonny LeRoy
SVP and Chief Technology Officer
Grainger
Jonny LeRoy grew up in the UK. He was a Co-founder of a startup in London in the late 90s/early 2000s, which was eventually acquired by Google. He moved to San Francisco 20 years ago with the technology consulting company, Thoughtworks, where he helped start-ups "grow up" and enterprises "loosen up." After leading the West Coast and then US technology organizations at Thoughtworks, he moved to Chicago at the beginning of the pandemic to help Grainger accelerate their technology transformation.
A fun fact about Jonny, he has no formal computer science training. Instead, he studied Latin, Greek and Philosophy at Oxford, and then taught himself to program while working in a pub in London!
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Give us a brief overview of the path that led to your current role.
I was consulting with Grainger in the early stages of their technology transformation and fell in love with the opportunity of helping a nearly 100 year-old stalwart begin to act more like a modern technology company. Blending the can-do culture that Grainger derives from its customers with modern collaborative engineering approaches has been fascinating.
What is one of your guiding leadership principles?
My motto for the last few years has been "let my leaders lead!" A key metric is how few decisions can I make? Set the organization up to get decision-making in the right places.
What is the greatest challenge CIOs face today, and how are you addressing it?
Generally, the challenge has been balancing driving advantages for our business and customers, while simultaneously paying down technical debt and modernizing our ecosystem. Nowadays that challenge is magnified by the emergence of AI.
The key is to both embrace curiosity about how new technologies can be impactful, while steering steadily towards a long-term vision of what our ecosystem should look like.
What is the key to success for someone just starting out as a CIO?
Get really clear on what matters for your organization and for you individually. This will help you focus your time on the most important things. Remember: it's not a strategy if it doesn't tell you what NOT to do!
How do you measure success as a leader?
The textbook answer is "business outcomes." But for me the real answer is, when the people on your teams look back at the end of their careers, will they say they did their most impactful work and had the most fun under your leadership? Sadly that is the definition of a lagging indicator…
What is the value of being a member of Gartner C-level Communities?
The biggest part for me is the welcoming community of peers who are going through similar challenges. It can be a great sounding board and, if needed, mutual therapy sessions.
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