Saturday, August 17, 2019

The Monthly CIO Debates Collection & “Digital IT” Book Tuning: The CIO’s Five “How”s to Improve IT Maturity Aug. 2019

Debating is not for stimulating conflicts, but for brainstorming better ways to do things.

Due to the changing nature of technology, IT leadership role also continues to involve & shift the focus, to move up the maturity level. More and more CIOs are requested to take more responsibility and many CIOs present the breadth of leadership competency. The proactive IT debates help IT leaders to brainstorm better ways to do things and improve management capabilities. Here are the monthly CIO debates collections about envisioning digital IT leadership and running high-performance digital IT organizations.


         The CIO’s Five “How”s to Improve IT Maturity 


How to Run Differentiated IT to Reach the Zenith of Digital Maturity  The majority of IT organizations today still limit their role as a support center to keep the lights on. Bottom line thinking is one of the great limitations of the modern IT organization. The true IT value is hard to derive from support services since measuring productivity can be elusive and difficult to quantify. Also, with explosive information flow and disruptive digital technologies, all forward-thinking organizations claim they are in the information management businesses. Hence, IT as an information steward of the business has to be run as a strategic partner and a key differentiator of the company, in order to improve business competency and reach the zenith of digital maturity.

How to Run Digital IT as a Revenue Rain Maker Traditional IT organizations are perceived as a cost center, running in an inside-out operation driven mode. Nowadays, with the exponential growth of information and lightweight digital technologies, forward-looking organizations across industrial sectors claim they are in the information management business, and there is a high expectation of IT to drive changes and lead the digital transformation. Therefore, the invisible divide IT vs. Business needs to go away, and CIOs should market themselves and advocate IT as an integrated component of the company, in order to run IT as an innovation engine and revenue generator for the business. CIOs must set priorities right and have an IT transformation checklist on how to answer the questions such as: How do we get revenues now? How will we do in the future? How should IT help the company win businesses? How can IT contribute to customer acquisition and retention? And how to run digital IT as a revenue rainmaker?

CIOs as “Chief Improvement Officer”: How to Demystify the Triple Puzzles of IT Digital CIOs have to deal with multiple challenges. On one hand, modern IT plays a significant role in gluing the enterprise puzzle together to ensure the business as the whole is superior to the sum of pieces. On the other hand, due to the complex nature of technology and the exponential growth of information, IT itself is also like the large piece of the business puzzle sometimes being misplaced, because many IT organizations are still perceived slow, expensive, and not integrated with the business. In today’s digital dynamic and technical environment where IT is being used more and more around the globe for revenue-generating initiatives, how to run a digital-ready IT as a thresholding competency of the organization via demystifying the following triple puzzles?

How to Rebuild Trust between IT and Business IT plays an unprecedented role in modern organizations today, information is the lifeblood of business; and digital technology is often the innovation disruptor. However, there is still a lack of trust relationship between business-IT, within IT or between IT and vendors. Is it because most of the businesses still perceive their IT organizations as a cost center or help desk, rarely invite IT to the big table to co-create strategy? Is it because IT speaks technology jargons the business doesn’t understand, or IT plays as a gatekeeper, not an enabler for taking advantage of the latest digital technology trend. Is it also because nowadays technology vendors walk around IT to directly sell their SaaS solutions to the business functions? What are some effective ways to build/rebuild trust in the IT organization? What are the considerations for the non-IT organizations to gain the trust from IT? What are the considerations for a service provider to gain the trust of IT organizations?

How can CIOs Shift their Focus to Avoid Becoming “Chief Irrelevant Officer” More often than not, technology is the catalyst for driving business change and digital transformation, information is the lifeblood of the business. The expectations for CIO have grown multi-fold, and they are expected to be visionary and path-finder for organizational strategy and growth. How should CIO shift their focus to improve leadership effectiveness and how can CIOs prioritize the limited time and resources to ascend IT maturity?


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