What are the secret ingredients for the CIO of the Radical Millennial Century? (Charismatic + Innovative + Optimistic)

CIO's role initially was to construct a pathway to IT in an organisation and shall be the final approver of all IT-related decisions. In other words, CIO is the Chief of IT and the chief of manning the engine room.

However since the CIOs sit at the intersection of business and IT and there is no doubt that the CIO's role is changing, now they have a heavy responsibility that they should be on the bridge working in new ways to help their organizations identify and conquer new market opportunities.

01. Have we misunderstood the CIO role?

The CIO office is unique. It and it alone stands at the intersection of business and technology and consequently, it’s in a prime position to not just help the business craft new, meaningful business propositions but implement them too. Even though many leaders recognize the strategic value of their ICT Department many of them also have the perception that it’s full of stereotypical staff (or ‘costs’ as they often see it) whose sole purpose in life is to manage the systems not help design the next great product or service.

Consequently, many CEOs whose sole purpose is to ensure the prosperity of their organization along with their CFOs all too often separate the technology and R&D budgets curbing the former and investing in the latter. This behaviour reduces the impact of each department by needlessly doubling up on resources and stymieing collaboration that ultimately dulls the very competitive edge that the organization is trying to create.

Innovation and R&D departments always need ICT resources and expertise and once the innovation process is run and new solutions have been designed they’ll rely on the CIO office to implement and integrate them into the organizations systems and technology stack. Meanwhile, these same innovation and R&D teams are also one or two steps removed from many of the analysts and technology vendors whose insights and new technologies such as cloud, cognitive computing, machine learning, big data and Agile application development technologies that could help them augment and improve their own creations.

02. What are the recommended roles to be played by a CIO

To redefine what’s possible for an company, the CIO has to adopt four sub-roles:?

a) Optimistic strategist

b) Catalyst

c) Innovative technologist

d) Charismatic operator

a) Optimistic Strategist.

Innovative CIOs closely partner with all aspects of the business to maximize the value of technology investments, generate revenue, drive new opportunities, and address challenges and risks.

• The solutions required to be an agile organization, to connect to the internet of things, and to sense and react to the environment span many technologies and functional boundaries- human resources, marketing, supply chain, and manufacturing to name a few.
• The person running the HR or marketing programs is likely not aware of the entire technical ecosystem, the challenges that a tweak in one area could cause in another, or being able to coordinate the tools, environment, and security needed by all functions.
• The CIO needs to lead the charge, teaching stakeholders about new technologies and strategizing across functional boundaries about how the business may or may not use technology to improve processes and attain financial benefits.

b) Catalyst

The CIO as a catalyst leverages ingenuity to rationalize disparate business strategies and initiates projects to provide new services to the business.

• Consider the business impact of transformational IT projects, look for low-cost technologies with a big impact, and provide the leadership needed to maximize return on investment.
• As CIOs reduce costs and gain greater utility, they should reinvest in IT projects, both those geared towards improving their security and technical architecture as well as investing in emerging technologies before the business sees a need arise.
• With sustained reinvestment, the CIO will be able to innovate ahead of the game, providing services and tools before the business even realizes its value.
• As an agent of change, the CIO can alter the IT conversations within their organization from being about technical issues and systems to capabilities and possibilities.

c) Innovative Technologist

As the lines between client, supplier, and customer are blurred, people have more access to information than ever before. But how do you secure this ever-shifting, ever-growing technical landscape?

• The technologist CIO has to properly orchestrate cloud-based and traditional applications, interface with the internet of things, and deal with the complexities of sensing technologies, among other disruptive technologies.
• Organizations need to be prepared for the security attacks that they can foresee and have a plan in place to deal with the unknown while providing an environment that can integrate newer technologies.
• Key to all of this is making sure that the environment, and the data flowing in and out of the organization, are secure while the needs of the business are being met.
• Constantly balancing risk, security, and technical architecture with the business need, benefit, and cost is not an easy feat, and certainly not one that can be orchestrated up by the CMO or CSMO.

d) Charismatic Operator.

Finally, in the role of an operator,

• CIO’s responsibilities include hiring talent, overseeing IT, and ensuring critical systems are maintained and running properly. Operational tasks that keep the lights on are not going to go away and are the foundation of the CIO's ability to innovate.
• CIOs are expected to execute well in an operational capacity, developing, implementing, and maintaining a sound and integrated IT architecture; completing new projects and implementations on time and budget, and hiring personnel with the knowledge and skills needed to achieve performance goals.
• Flubbing any one of these items can be disastrous to a CIO’s reputation within the business. Maintaining a stable IT infrastructure and sound project management capabilities should be the number one priority for a CIO – without the CIO as an operator, no innovation is possible.
• To maintain the above business standard a CIO must possess soft skills that encompass an individual's ability to engage with others. They include empathy, optimism, integrity, teamwork and humour. All these attributes contribute to a person's leadership and management abilities, both of which are vital parts of the CIO job.

Conclusion

By adopting these roles, the CIO will become the director and conductor of business innovation, driving value in ways their business-oriented colleagues can understand. Advocating for and enabling business agility, fitting the pieces of the puzzle together, reinvesting and continually improving the technical infrastructure, and protecting that investment is the heart of the innovative CIO's role.

Credits: Matthew Griffin of Foundry and Bill Allison of Deloitte Consulting

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