I had an opportunity to speak about The Next Generation CIO at the Constellation Connected Enterprise conference a few weeks back, and the topic brought to light the theme of what really makes a CIO an effective business leader both today and in the future. In my view, the skills required for the next generation CIO aren’t much different than what’s required today. In line with what I presented previously on the subject, one must possess business savvy, leadership, relationship building, and social skills, have the ability to act as a consultant and integrator to the business, embrace the cloud and Shadow IT, and understand the power of data and mobile. It’s also knowing that it’s all about the business and not the technology, a crucial skill for success. All of the skills needed in the future are already present today in those CIO’s who are on the leading edge. Therefore, if you’re currently embracing these trends and skills, then you’re already a Next Gen Leader.
A CIO, both today and in the future, needs to be a business leader, always focusing on how IT can be leveraged in growing and improving business capabilities. This means the CIO needs to understand the business just as well as the other executives, while always speaking the language of the business. That’s the Golden Rule I wrote about earlier this year, and if a CIO isn’t doing this when speaking with the other executives, then they’ll just be viewed as the “IT guy” and not a business leader. Everything IT does needs to be focused on adding business value. It should not be about the technology, and that point is what has given the CIO a bad name in the past. Truly understanding how technology can best be leveraged for business improvement is a requirement, but the CIO of the past didn’t always get that point. Translating technology capabilities into new business and customer engagement opportunities is what sets the “Next Gen CIO” apart from the others.
The Next Gen CIO is a consultant to the business and an integrator, and should be embracing Shadow IT. Embracing Shadow IT means you don’t require everything to come through a central IT funnel, but CIO’s and their teams can still add tremendous business value to these decisions with contract expertise, integration direction, security oversight, and vendor partnering among other things. This is where the consultant role also comes into play. There is a great deal of innovation happening today that addresses specific business problems, and many times those in the business are the first to discover these new tools and approaches. They have the most knowledge on value, so letting the business champion and drive discovery is a great approach that helps IT from having to say no. What does need to happen though is that IT needs to be included in the discussion, particularly on the points mentioned above. Without it, the risk of having insecure applications, bad and expensive contracts, and data silos increases exponentially.
Lastly, a CIO needs to understand the power of data and mobile, and leverage the cloud as much as possible. My team has been cloud all-in for many years, and the business benefits go way beyond pure costs. The speed in which we gain access to new product functionality, while significantly reducing our in-house development staff has been transformational. On the infrastructure side, we’re almost out of the data center business and are relying on the mass scale and capabilities of others to meet our needs. Unless your company is in the hardware business, moving your infrastructure to the cloud, whether pure public or hosted private, is a requirement now and in the future. In addition to the cloud, a Next Gen CIO recognizes the demands, and capabilities of mobility and data. Using data to make critical business decisions is not a new concept by any means, but the availability of new data sources in the digital and Internet of Things world, and the amount of unstructured data being consumed has made this more critical and complex. When talking about transformation, digital business, and new business capabilities, leveraging data and the insights it brings is even more important. Helping the business take advantage of this data trove is a capability that will make IT critical for business success.
New skills are definitely required in the future but I believe that future is already here for many CIO’s that already have these skills. Are you one of them?
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