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Becoming a Digital Leader


HOW CIOS BECOME SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL LEADERS

CIO

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Episode 2: Setting the boardroom agenda

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CIOs have to prove their digital initiatives in stages, in order to eventually
become a digital orchestrator.

The common consensus among CIOs is that digital is not just about technology, it
is about processes and people too. Perhaps more importantly, the idea of digital
transformation is about creating an environment which enables the organization
to adapt to any situation, making changes to their technologies, processes or
people in order to ensure competitiveness.

As CIOs are often leaders of this change, they have to become more than
technology experts, and they must additionally become cross-functional
change-makers.

“In an uncertain environment, it’s about embracing the mindset, technology and
capabilities to drive change,” Gartner says.

That’s easier said than done of course, but there are several considerations
that CIOs should make in order to become successful digital leaders. While these
considerations should have been made prior to the pandemic, CIOs should be even
more focused on these factors now, as they try to navigate their organizations
through the toughest period of uncertainty they’ve arguably ever faced.

BECOMING A CIO “PARTNER”

Consultancy McKinsey says successful CIO leaders are communicating clearly,
taking care of their people, driving new ways of working, shifting processes,
stabilizing their core systems and – perhaps crucially – trying to anticipate
what comes next.

The first two points are critical; while there has been required focus on
customer experience in the past few years, it is up to an organization’s
employees to make that experience a reality, and so they need to feel involved,
understood and engaged from the outset.


...THE CIO MUST BUILD TRUSTED PARTNERSHIPS – BECOMING A COMMUNICATIVE “CIO
PARTNER” WITHIN THEIR BUSINESS...

To make this a reality, the CIO must build trusted partnerships internally and
externally – becoming a communicative “CIO partner” within their business.
Gartner says that half of CIOs state that they’re considered partner CIOs by
their business counterparts; building relationships with the CMO and CFO, among
others, is crucial. By doing so, CIOs can be trusted advisors to these other
departments, and help the entire organization to collaborate on a digital
environment that can help with times like these where uncertainty is prevalent.

To build on this trust, the CIO must prove that the technology strategy aligns
with business goals. University of Sussex CIO Jason Oliver is one of many CIOs
that believe in the mantra of having a business strategy rather than a
technology strategy. This can help the CMO to work together with the CIO on the
technology platforms that are required for customer experience, ensuring that
the marketing team is best equipped, while also adhering to the IT team’s
requirements for security, governance and integration.

FOCUS ON CREATIVE THINKING AND THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Digital leaders need to provide value to their business counterparts through
creative thinking; the ability to create and realize innovative solutions,
especially in the face of structurally complex or changing situations. While
during a global crisis, the initial plan may be to focus on remote working and
maintenance, CIOs have to pivot towards new approaches that can help the
business thrive in these difficult times. They must do this while still being
able to create clarity of purpose for their teams.

For instance, CIOs have to ensure that customer experience continues to be a
focus – if anything the pandemic has made it clear that customers value the
interactions they’re having with brands now more than ever. To be able to do
this, organizations have to understand what their customers need at different
points of their customer journeys.

Multi-channel data from business applications, data warehouses and lakes,
devices and other sources need to be combined and analyzed to create a
360-degree view of a customer, so that brands can engage with the customer with
relevant experiences and through their preferred channels, to enhance and retain
customer loyalty. Much of this will rely on powerful artificial intelligence and
machine learning tools that allow personalization to take place at scale and
speed in real time.

By having this connectivity and interaction with customers, companies can
prepare for uncertainty and anticipate what’s next. This is just one example of
a set of technologies that promotes business agility and adaptability, but there
are numerous technologies that CIOs may want to consider to digitally equip the
organization. The hard part of “digital” is not the technology, but the
transformation itself.

THE 3 STAGES TO DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

“It’s not really a technology challenge but a leadership challenge,” says George
Westerman, principal research scientist with the MIT Initiative on the Digital
Economy.

According to Westerman, great leaders will be able to build relationships, have
the vision, communicate well, negotiate the governance processes, and build
momentum and keep that momentum going.

“[Great leaders] have a constant dissatisfaction with the state of things,” he
says, adding that they also have an ability to constantly reenvision how
processes can be changed.

Throughout this piece, the discussion has been around constant change and
innovation, and this is why it’s important for CIOs to see their evolution as a
digital leader in three key stages, highlighted by Gartner.

Stage 1: The initiation model

This is where the CIO creates a buzz, educating business leaders, and leading
people, process and technology changes.

Stage 2: Becoming a catalyst for change

The CIO will move from evangelist to catalyst, helping to accelerate this model
and exploit business opportunities.

Stage 3: The digital orchestrator

The final model is where the CIO has effectively become the “digital
orchestrator,” that has helped every leader in the organization to become a
digital leader in their own right, with the technology resources to complete the
vision.

While technology itself cannot provide value on its own, new infrastructure and
applications can help CIOs to change the way a company works. Subsequently, the
business will be future-proofing itself, enabling the CIO to step away from the
day-to-day firefighting, and allowing them to become digital leaders that can
spend their time on customer-focused digital transformation.

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Episode 2: Setting the boardroom agenda

Prev

Tech teams need more diversity: what can CIOs do about it?

Next

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