Innovative CIOs need to follow their set of principles and develop the best and next practices to enhance their unique leadership strength.
Due to the exponential growth of information and often technology-led disruptions, clearly, the role of IT and that of the CIO is going through significant changes, CIOs need to follow their set of principles, enhance unique leadership strength, and tailor their business circumstances to make IT leadership influence by practicing the following five “I”s.
Interpreting: To reinvent IT as a strategic partner of the business, IT leaders need to be the enterprise polyglot to master both business language and IT terminology, have interdisciplinary knowledge and up level strategic communication skills to share technological vision, inspire changes, act as a bridge to mind the gap between IT and business by interpreting clearly what the business understands and what technology understands and ensure consistency in message delivery. IT plays an important role in interpreting business issues into a technology solution, also, leverage the necessary resources to solve them.
IT leaders should realize that communicating the concepts of technology on the groups they influence and the companies they empower is one of the most productive uses of their time. Don’t isolate yourself in the realm of technology, open up and look at the business holistically, including the business vision, goals, culture, competitions, etc. From the talent management perspective, the CIO as “Chief Interpretation Officer” needs to ensure IT staff understanding the commercial end point of their work rather than it being an abstract set of code by fostering effective communication and harnessing cross-functional collaboration.
Integrating: To operate a high-responsive and high performance digital organization, do not underestimate the perfect wave of combined IT-business integration of all of the exponential growth curves. There are technical information technology integration, operational integration, governance (GRC policy) integration or customer experience integration, etc. The ultimate business goals for IT-business integration is to ensure information consistency, maximize IT value, improve the organizational adaptability, security, interoperability, ROI, and speed.
Integrating: To operate a high-responsive and high performance digital organization, do not underestimate the perfect wave of combined IT-business integration of all of the exponential growth curves. There are technical information technology integration, operational integration, governance (GRC policy) integration or customer experience integration, etc. The ultimate business goals for IT-business integration is to ensure information consistency, maximize IT value, improve the organizational adaptability, security, interoperability, ROI, and speed.
While companies recognize the importance for IT to integrate into the business, but it is a task that eludes many organizations. Be cautious, integration can be very difficult and hard to justify ROI. Because each integration effort perhaps spins off into chain reactions that may not be recognized until the budget is gone. To improve the organizational maturity, IT needs to prioritize right and proactively work as an integral part of the business to capitalize on business opportunities, and IT can deliver the best solution to the business problems which meet the business’s requirement or tailor customer’s needs.
Innovating: The available digital technologies just make innovation easier to do now than in the past - less costly and more easily accessible. The abundant information brings unique insight for capturing opportunities to innovate. CIOs should accept and understand what they have to offer and strive for what is needed to establish and maintain the balance of operating and innovating. IT is in a unique position to get amazing oversight of the business functions, processes, and challenges required to integrate the organization together, has much more of an opportunity to enable incremental top-line and bottom-line value across the business, not just within IT, but at the organizational scope, even across the digital business ecosystem.
Innovating: The available digital technologies just make innovation easier to do now than in the past - less costly and more easily accessible. The abundant information brings unique insight for capturing opportunities to innovate. CIOs should accept and understand what they have to offer and strive for what is needed to establish and maintain the balance of operating and innovating. IT is in a unique position to get amazing oversight of the business functions, processes, and challenges required to integrate the organization together, has much more of an opportunity to enable incremental top-line and bottom-line value across the business, not just within IT, but at the organizational scope, even across the digital business ecosystem.
IT is the only entity in the organization supposed to understand business entirely, be able to connect the wider dots for sparking creativity and develop the innovation capacity of the company by acting like the glue and managing innovation in a systematic way.
Investigating: When IT performance is low and it’s still perceived as a change laggard and cost center, CIOs need to become the “Chief Investigation Officer” for diagnosing critical business issues and investigate the better solutions. Failure sometimes is inevitable. But fail fast and fail over. Dysfunctions and inefficiencies are easier to uncover if there is a good measurement system is in place, metrics are gathered on a regular basis, the trends are shown on the dashboard and a management process is in place to analyze those trends.
Investigating: When IT performance is low and it’s still perceived as a change laggard and cost center, CIOs need to become the “Chief Investigation Officer” for diagnosing critical business issues and investigate the better solutions. Failure sometimes is inevitable. But fail fast and fail over. Dysfunctions and inefficiencies are easier to uncover if there is a good measurement system is in place, metrics are gathered on a regular basis, the trends are shown on the dashboard and a management process is in place to analyze those trends.
The CIO also needs to be in touch with his/her customer/partner/ stakeholder base in a continuous fashion to head off the bigger issues and get a view of the organization and management team from the outside in look. They need to ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next. Businesses are looking for IT to add new methods for management of complexity, develop the next practice for business transformation, investigate innovative business solutions, improving product or service quality, or optimizing business capabilities, etc, to run IT as a business in the business.
Instrumenting: Literally, the transformation is radically change. Digital transformation represents a break with the past, with a high level of impact and complexity. Organizations need to take IT into consideration when establishing strategic goals to manage their digital transformation. IT plays a significant role in weaving all necessary elements together to instrument a digital transformation symphony by building dynamic business capabilities and influencing the culture of creativity.
The pervasive digitization means "reduced the time to knowledge.” Empowered by effective and efficient platforms and tools, people and organizations now can learn faster in a time when leading strategists were arguing that the only sustainable advantage is to learn faster than your competition. More and more businesses expect the consumerization style responsiveness from IT, IT needs to ensure its strategy allowing for digital speed, and IT is instrumenting the symphony of the digital transformation by knitting all important business elements into differentiated business competencies.
The high-effective CIOs can succeed in high-pressure situations and first-time evolution. The important thing is that the CIO as top leadership role, must have a strong mindset, a unique personality, high leadership skill set, and a clear idea of what needs to be done, yet creative enough to not hold the company back from growth. They make profound leadership influence by practicing five “I’s and making continuous deliveries to delight customers and improve the organizational maturity.
The high-effective CIOs can succeed in high-pressure situations and first-time evolution. The important thing is that the CIO as top leadership role, must have a strong mindset, a unique personality, high leadership skill set, and a clear idea of what needs to be done, yet creative enough to not hold the company back from growth. They make profound leadership influence by practicing five “I’s and making continuous deliveries to delight customers and improve the organizational maturity.
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