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Since joining Textron in 2008, Vice President and Global CIO Todd Kackley has lead IT strategy, global enterprise system implementations, and digital transformation efforts, including serving as chief information officer (CIO) of Bell, a wholly owned aerospace and defense subsidiary. In that role, he led the creation of a digital road map that was a contributing factor in Bell winning the competitive development contract for the US Army’s Future Long Range Assault Aircraft.
When asked what allowed his team to step up to support the largest win in company history, Kackley responds, “coming together.”
“It was not just about focusing on our IT capabilities but weaving through functional lines and integrating with other parts of the Bell organization including manufacturing, supply chain, and engineering. Aligning to a shared mission is how we created a winning culture,” says Kackley, who was promoted to vice president and global CIO of Textron in June 2023, a feat he calls the pinnacle of his career.
Kackley contributes to that culture by helping fellow leaders articulate “the why” to their respective constituents and employees. That strength comes directly from his background in program management where communication skills are paramount.
“The ability to bring communication, awareness, and listening skills in order to understand unique points of view is vital in my role,” he says. “It’s critical to support our divisional CIOs and to be a strong partner across the executive team to ensure there’s not only alignment but advocacy when it comes to supporting the digital strategy.”
While communication and uniting team members on “the why” are important for alignment, Kackley believes technology—for instance, generative AI—plays an important role. Since stepping into his global CIO role, he and his team have focused on realizing the technology’s potential to create stronger levels of efficiency, process enablement, and information sharing across the organization. Large organizations like Textron create an endless amount of data and figuring out ways to make it easily actionable has always been a challenge for tech leaders.
“That’s why generative AI could be a game changer,” Kackley says.
“We’re seeing the ability to summarize, identify, and even propose additional insights from data we already have,” he says. “A big takeaway is when experienced, skilled workers who have accumulated years of expertise work alongside the next generation, it’s essential to bring these less senior individuals up to speed. That knowledge gap is narrowed quickly by having access to a technology that allows users of all skill levels to ask questions and have a ‘conversation’ with our data.”
Experimenting with AI is part of a broader vision to prepare the company’s tech stack and IT infrastructure for the future. Kackley and his team are thinking differently about how they structure their digital enterprise ecosystem and how they integrate data across the company’s application stack.
“We’re leaning toward more modern cloud architectures and designing future capabilities with automation in mind,” he explains. “We’re also looking at enabling a digital enterprise that not only allows us to collaborate with our customers but with our supply base via more agile and secured infrastructures to allow us to move at the pace our business needs.”
“That knowledge gap is narrowed quickly by having access to a technology that allows users of all skill levels to ask questions and have a ‘conversation’ with our data.”
Todd Kackley
Kackley started his early IT career as a project manager, working as a consultant specializing in the training and implementation of enterprise resource planning solutions. He joined Textron as a program manager and admits that he never imagined a senior IT leadership role was in his future. That was until he was approached by a mentor one day.
“I was asked, ‘Have you ever thought about being a CIO?’” he recalls. Kackley remembers laughing and saying no, as if the idea was far-fetched. However, the question planted a seed, and he made career choices to build the necessary skills toward that goal. After serving as director of IT at Textron’s corporate office and director of IT at Bell—both intentional developmental roles—he joined Textron Systems as executive vice president and CIO. He then held various positions of increasing responsibility that focused on IT strategy, infrastructure, and enterprise system implementation within the US and internationally.
In addition to communicating effectively, Kackley says his success is a result of being a lifelong learner. While he does hold an MBA from the University of Michigan, a bachelor’s degree from Baker College, and completion of Textron’s senior executive leadership programs at Duke and the University of North Carolina, he believes academics aren’t the only way to advance your knowledge. His current role is a testament to that.
“When I took this role, I quickly started consuming everything I could around the gen AI space so I could ask intelligent questions to subject matter experts,” he says. “I encourage those around me to observe shifts in technology continuously because if we don’t stay on top of it, we can make late or incorrect decisions.”
The balance between his own health and his leadership responsibilities has been another staple of his journey. In late 2019, as he transitioned to the CIO role at Bell, Kackley was diagnosed with cancer. After a period of treatment, he was diagnosed again a few years later. He’s now addressing the ailment for a third time. As he works to focus on his health, he’s been proud to have a strong team that continues to drive success in his absence.
“I’m comfortable that we’ve developed an amazing team for moments like this,” he says. “This has built a lot of trust in the organization when you, as a leader, can be vulnerable by acknowledging to your team that you need to step away while knowing they will keep moving the mission forward.”
iBase-t is a technology company partnering with aerospace and defense operations to help manufacture and sustain the world’s most complex products, safeguarding our interests at home and abroad. Since 1986, our experts have been focused on Solumina, the only complete, integrated system that connects manufacturing operations, supplier quality, and sustainment MRO management with full genealogy across the product life cycle. Our customers realize a 45 percent reduction in cycle times and an 80 to 90 percent elimination of manual data collection and analysis activities. Now, with the first cloud-native manufacturing operation system on the market, we’re offering a scalable, reliable, and cost-effective approach to digital transformation.
