The best CIO quotes of 2023 - a year in review
Mark Chillingworth
Digital Leadership Writer and Editor. Writing for Diginomica & leading technology organisations. Founder of the Horizon CIO Network.
One of the joys of 2023 was witnessing the CIO of a major European bank taking tips from the technology leader of a small local government body. Interviewing CIOs and CTOs during 2023 demonstrated how the role encompasses every facet of the modern organisation, no matter the vertical market. CIOs and business technology leaders talked of tigers, being humble, building relationships, understanding local needs, European culture and destiny.?
Below is a selection of the best quotes from the interviews I was fortunate enough to carry out. I’d like to thank my interviewees and publishers for the opportunity. I’ve structured it along the classic lines of a CIO’s priorities: people, process and technology.?
People
Vertical: Housing
“The typical carpenter or plumber has been working in the same way for 20 to 30 years; they are ready to do things differently. So, we are completely rethinking how we envisage work. After all, we have all spent a lot of time rethinking office work, and we owe it to our tradespeople to do the same.”
Vertical: Local government
“We try really hard to make sure that the workforce knows how important it is to get on the side of the residents. You have to be humble and honest.?
“Put the assessment form away and have a conversation with people. It is simple but profound.” https://diginomica.com/wigan-council-and-residents-win-digital-deal
Vertical: FMCG
“Some people think it is a bit of a jolly, but that lifestyle element is really important and there is a really innovative culture in Lisbon.”
Vertical: Charity?
“Let's come into the office when there's some value to be gained.”?
Vertical: Religion?
“We are an investment boutique, we operate the church's pension scheme, it is also a large land owner, and we have a housing association with 3500 units, as well as the work the Church of England does in the House of Lords, through to Christianity. It is a wide stream of people and roles. I have people using Bloomberg terminals through to a collection box. So there are lots of applications and use cases to consider.” https://diginomica.com/church-england-technology-director-securing-its-future-and-legacy
Vertical: Public sector
“When you get good people, you have to retain them, not just through pay, but also the tools that they will work with.” https://diginomica.com/social-security-scotland-delivers-ambitious-tech-programme-just-22-months
Process
Vertical: Oil and energy
Changing an energy system, you won't do that with pencil and paper.
Vertical: Transport
“You should never aim at 100% standardization; you need clear standards, but there are local reasons that mean you may need to opt for different speeds of change, for example.” https://diginomica.com/cio-interview-deutsche-bahn-builds-central-it-platform-change
Vertical: Utilities?
“Households don’t have a choice, but we have to be a company that they would choose if they did have a choice.”
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Vertical: Recruitment & Professional Services
“There is always room for optimisation and automation, especially of low-value processes, so that our people are focused on building relationships with our customers and candidates. I believe this will make us very strong in terms of our global expansion.”
Technology
Vertical: Retail
“We built a platform that has laid the foundation for Majestic to grow sales by more than 25% and triple our profits.”
Vertical: Retail
Now we have Tiger Teams that work alongside their business colleagues in a specific function such as brand or merchandising, to understand and support their needs.
We are now in year three, and we have evolved, and the Tiger Teams are getting much more strongly ingrained in the business. There are three teams focusing on our technology: digital platforms, business system platforms such as our ERP; and infrastructure / cyber security.
Vertical: Transportation:
“I have seen mainframe and SAP projects fail. The replacement of these two heavy-weight systems had dominated IT thinking for years. But when I asked why we should do this, no one had a good answer. It would have taken several years, during which time delivery of business benefits and digital innovation would have stood still. From my perspective, a higher priority was to regain control of our destiny by enabling in-house innovation rather than continued long-term dependence on outsourced IT.”
Vertical: Academia:
“ChatGPT can create real opportunities and make us think about how we award degrees and the ways that we deliver our pedagogy. It will challenge us to think about how we prove a student has mastery of their subject through less traditional methods.”
Vertical: Gaming
“Developing a common platform and meeting localism needs, because you cannot be locally unaware in markets like the USA.”
Vertical: Sustainable energy:
“Data, robotics, AI and food. The meat economy is unsustainable.”
Vertical: Transport:
“If you base your ChatGPT usage on publicly available models, then it is only a matter of time before someone offers the same service,” https://www.cio.com/article/656815/lufthansas-digital-future-takes-flight-with-digital-hangar.html
If you and your organisation have a great story to tell, do drop me a line.?
Associate Partner at Tessiant; helping leaders, teams and individuals do tech better
11 个月Fantastic piece Mark Chillingworth - love the Process: Transport one - "Freedom with parameters" is something I talk about often. Thanks for sharing with us all....
An AI & Strategic Transformation catalyst, a Programme Game Changer and CIO | Delivering Business & IT Excellence to an organisation | Extensive knowledge of AI, M&A, ERP & Cloud Solutions
11 个月Thanks for sharing Mark. Very interesting