CIO Summit 2018: Technology meets the Human Spirit

IDC and Conferenz hosted the 2018 CIO Summit at the SKYCITY Auckland Convention Centre on June 13 -14. Hundreds of IT professionals heard about how the increasing pervasiveness of digital tech means we must place more importance on people, culture, diversity and community.

"Technology is the 'thing' but the thing is done through people and behaviours." Hilary Walton, Manager Enterprise Business Systems, Airways.

CIOs must recognise and incorporate three new facets to their role to tackle the impending cultural shifts looming for IT teams. These facets are culture awareness, diversity championing and community mentorship.

Culture Awareness

"I don't think its digital or people that makes a real difference. I think it's the culture that you create in your organisations." Gary Adey, Operations Director, Group Enterprise, Vodafone Plc.

Corporate Anthropologist Michael Henderson told the CIO Summit audience that leaders must increase their awareness of their business' culture. Henderson said many leaders rush into change action. The high performance approach to culture is to spend 80% of efforts building awareness, then 20% of your effort in action. 

Culture is a shifting target. As employees start or finish roles in your teams the culture shifts. A culture requires at least three people, Henderson explains. One person has a personality, two people have a relationship, three or more people form a culture. Once you hit more than 150 people in an organisation it is important to recognise that you will have multiple cultures. 

When it comes time for action, Laura Bell, Director of Safestack talked about giving people agency, incentive and acknowledgement in their roles. Air New Zealand's Avi Golan, winner of the 2018 CIO of the Year Award, said it is important to create a culture where people can take time out of their day to experiment without needing permission. The audience also heard how creating a blameless culture can be hard but rewarding.

Diversity Championing

Ian Taylor of Animation Research Limited and this year's recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Technology and Business in New Zealand award, says the digital tech industry is the perfect place for diversity. Back 'in the day' tech practitioners were 'geeks' and 'nerds', people on the outside of mainstream. Taylor believes digital tech is an industry where people of many different backgrounds can shine. The tech industry should aspire to lead in diversity.

Diversity in teams isn’t only about gender, ethnicity or background. Structured diversity includes cross-functional teams. Telco incumbent Spark is making a bold move transforming to agile-at-scale across its business. Dr Claire Barber, Chief Digital Officer at Spark shared that having diverse teams allows you to focus on alignment through purpose rather than alignment through role hierarchy. 

Community Mentorship

The pace of change in digital tech is impacting our communities. New Zealand needs a better pipeline of people entering digital tech careers. Jobs in the digital tech industry will increase and digital tech will replace some, more traditional, roles. The digital divide will continue to deepen as more services shift to the virtual world. New Zealand needs a society where young people make good education choices and where everyone can access and use digital services. 

David Kennedy, Group CIO, Transaction Services Group says that CIOs need to get out from behind their desk to get involved in community leadership:

"Never before has it been so important for us, as senior leaders, to contribute to the domestic longevity and international success of kiwi businesses, today and for the future. We need to share more, we need to think of the children...we need to do more!" David Kennedy, Transaction Services Group.

TechWomen, winner of the 2018 Engaging Youth in ICT Award, is a great example of IT leaders encouraging young people to learn the skills for life in our digital future. Its ShadowTech programme provides secondary school girls with a 'day-in-the-life' tech-career experience. The experience encourages girls to take education pathways that improve the pipeline of people entering tech careers.

Technology Alone is Nothing

"Technology is nothing without the power of the human spirit" Ian Taylor, CEO, Animation Research Ltd and Winner of the 2018 Outstanding Contribution to Technology and Business Award

As leaders in our fields, we each have a part to play in the success of our business, our people and our communities. As the pace of technology change increases, the importance of people and culture also increases. The more technology we put in place the more the human spirit becomes important in our company culture, in building strong diverse teams and in evolving confident communities of tech users.