Saturday, September 7, 2019

The Monthly “CIO Master” Book Tuning: Strategic IT Leadership Sep. 2019

The CIO is not just a tactical manager, but a strategic business leader with multidimensional thinking competencies and multifaceted perspectives.

Compared to the other executive positions, the CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and reenergized. The magic “I” of the CIO title sparks many imaginations and modern CIOs need to wear different hats and play multiple roles. Here are a set of blogs for CIOs to practice strategic leadership and reinvent IT to get digital ready.

      

                          Strategic IT Leadership


Five Facets of Strategic CIOs With the increasing pace of changes and fast-growing information, clearly, the role of IT is at the inflection point to go through significant changes. IT shouldn’t be just satisfied with the surviving mode, it has to be thriving. How well an IT organization can adapt to the dynamic environment directly affects the future of the business significantly. The CIO is not just a tactical manager, but a strategic business leader with multidimensional thinking competencies and multifaceted perspectives.

Three Perspectives of Strategic CIOs Due to the exponential growth of information and continuous disruptions often led by technologies, the business will not just use IT as a digital extension, but leverage IT across their organization to attain the enterprise-wide digital competencies. CIOs have to be the strategic business leader to lead, advise, and execute proactively, with the goal of clarifying the direction for the whole company to follow and developing the best and next practices for accelerating performance. Here are three perspectives of strategic CIOs.

Does Your IT Organization Lack of “Strategic BoneThere is no doubt IT plays a critical role in both improving bottom line business efficiency and top-line revenue growth. However, there is no "one size fits all" magic formula on how to run the IT organization as a strategic partner and a revenue generator. Different IT organizations and enterprise as a whole are at a different stage of business maturity. The role of CIO is the mirror of the business reputation as an innovator or a plumber; a strategist or an operator; a change agent or a controller, etc. Lack of “strategic bone” is perhaps one of the root causes of diminishing IT influence and keeping IT irrelevant for the long run.

IT Strategic Planning: How to Make It Right With continuous disruptions and fierce competitions, many IT organizations suffer from overloaded tasks and overwhelming growth of information. They encounter so many daily distractions that stop them from laser focusing on achieving strategic business goals. High performance CIOs should have knowledge and leadership influence to demonstrate IT as strategic business competency. They need to build a good strategy which is an integral component of the business strategy, based on the circumstances that will allow the highest probability of IT management success. But more specifically: How to make IT strategic planning right?

Running IT as Strategic Differentiator of the Business With the overwhelming growth of information, rapid changes, and fierce competitions, nowadays IT has a lot of things to leverage, IT touches both hard business processes and soft human behavior. IT needs to work both in IT and on IT; IT and business need to develop a true partnership and work to pursue the desired outcomes. IT has to shift from “IT vs. business” to “IT as the business.” IT has to move from a reactive order taker to the strategic differentiator of the business.

The blog is a dynamic book flowing with your thought; growing through your dedication; sharing your knowledge; conveying your wisdom, and making influence through touching the hearts and connecting minds across the globe. The “Future of CIO” Blog has reached 3 million page views with about #6000 blog posting. Among 59+ different categories of leadership, management, strategy, digitalization, change/talent, etc. Blogging is not about writing, but about thinking and innovating new ideas; it’s not just about WHAT to say, but about WHY to say, and HOW to say it. It reflects the color and shade of your thought patterns, and it indicates the peaks and curves of your thinking waves. Unlike pure entertainment, quality and professional content takes time for digesting, contemplation and engaging, and therefore, it takes time to attract the "hungry minds" and the "deep souls." It’s the journey to amplify diverse voices and deepen digital footprints, and it's the way to harness your innovative spirit.


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