About Michael Santimaw
Michael Santimaw, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Upbound, has spoken about leadership and technology strategy in past appearances. In a 2022 podcast, he discussed the concept of self-permission, describing a pattern he observed while coaching where individuals sought external validation to pursue goals. He encouraged listeners to consider what permission they might need to give themselves in areas such as relationships, personal identity, or new endeavors.
In a 2020 interview, Santimaw, then SVP and CIO at Rent-A-Center, described his approach to the CIO role as being a "chief integration officer" focused on building relationships across the organization. He stated that the company had simplified its IT architectures by moving to cloud and platform-as-a-service models)Skip, and that its data strategy centered on protecting customer data while providing personalized experiences. Santimaw also noted that the company was experimenting with AI tools for backend automation and self-healing infrastructure, and that its stores functioned with associates acting as customer relationship managers. He emphasized empowering teams and putting security at the core of technologies.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Michael Santimaw's recent appearances.
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Transcript (1 segments)
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Michael Santimaw0:04
Hey, it's MBS here. When I coached people, I don't really coach people anymore, but when I did, there was a pretty familiar pattern to the first 30 days. The person who I was coaching would say, 'I'm really keen, excited, desperate to do X or Y.' And me as the wise coach would say, 'You know what, you should do that.' And they'd be like, 'You're amazing, Michael. How do you coach so brilliantly?' And I'm like all I'm doing here is giving you the permission that you're asking for, to say, 'It's okay, you should think about that. You should go for it.' So I'm wondering as a question to start today off for you, what permission do you need to give yourself? And you can be thinking in a number of different ways around that. It might be permission to do something. You're like yeah, go for it, try it out, test it. You know, put your toe in the water. It might be permission to be a certain type of person in a relationship, amplify it or bring it to an end or change it or renegotiate it in some ways. It might be permission to re-see yourself in a new light, as a new person, to reimagine who you are and what might be possible for you. So wherever you're going to with this question, the question I still got for you is this, what permission are you seeking to give yourself? Take a moment, and hit the subscribe button.
