The role of the CIO has changed significantly in recent years. CIOs have shifted from managing IT to driving business outcomes, from managing a set of IT engineers to becoming a change manager, from a procurement manager to a strategic decision maker. According to IDC’s CEO Survey 2024, around 64% of organizations have the CIO directly reporting to the CEO. Correlating this data with the digital maturity of organizations, CIOs report to CEOs most frequently in organizations with higher digital maturity.

As per IDC research, there are five levels of maturity for the role of a CIO:

*The infrastructure CIO focuses on technical management and operations aimed at providing stable and reliable IT services

*The service provider CIO has moved beyond a “keeping the lights on” role to focus on control, standardization, and security of apps and infrastructure, not enablement.

*Architect CIOs oversee the provision of a stable catalog of digital services that generally meet the current needs of the business but are not always well-positioned to meet new and emerging needs.

*Connector/orchestrator CIO has developed an evolving vision for the digital transformation of the business and is building relationships with LOB peers and business leaders to advance that vision. Innovation and transformation initiatives are coordinated and managed to create sustained business impact.

*Visionary/pathfinder CIO acts as business co-creators, visionary strategists, and technology pathfinders, helping their enterprises set a new path forward, capable of delivering groundbreaking digital strategies and solutions, and providing competitive differentiation for the business.

For CIOs to transform themselves to a visionary/pathfinder CIO, there are four dimensions for them to work on:

*Strategic Vision: CIOs should develop and communicate a strategic vision that aligns with organizational goals and drives technological innovation.

*Leadership Traits in a Digital Era: CIOs should develop leadership styles and approaches that are effective in managing digital transformation and fostering a culture of agility and innovation.

*Managing Change and Driving Adoption: CIOs should manage organizational change, overcome resistance, and ensure the successful adoption of new technologies.

*Balancing Risk and Innovation: CIOs should balance the need for innovation with risk management, ensuring that new initiatives align with business objectives while mitigating potential challenges.

Strategic Vision: CEOs are constantly under pressure to deliver growth at an optimal cost. They are also expected to be contextually aware of technology advancements and visualize their impact on their organization and competitiveness. According to IDC’s CEO Survey 2024, the focus for CEOs has shifted back to growth, followed by trust post-pandemic. On the other hand, 39% of the CEOs feel that gaps in the execution of digital business strategy are a major concern, having the greatest impact on their organization. CIOs with a strategic mindset are the need of the hour. Are CIOs there? The answer is ‘no’ according to the CEOs. Around 72% of the CEOs feel their CIOs are focussing on the modernization of IT, risk management, and cost reduction. The expectation is that, in next two years, CIOs focus on orchestrating and leading digital transformation to create new revenue streams.

CIOs need to work with business leaders and LOBs to determine the digital maturity of the business and where it wants to be. They need to identify what technology interventions are needed and pace them to align with the organization’s strategy. Initiatives must be communicated top-down, and change agents to drive these should be deployed bottoms-up. Create KPIs and mechanisms to measure, report, and communicate those KPIs. At the same time, CIOs need to have a mindset of agility and humility to accept mistakes, make course corrections, and improvise.

Leadership Traits in a Digital Era: Leadership traits depend a lot on the organization’s culture and decision-making structure. In a centralized structure, decision-making is with one technology leader, and in a hybrid structure, decision-making is with multiple technology leaders with one leader working as an orchestrator. While most CIOs are comfortable working in a centralized or decentralized setup, they need to develop leadership traits to work in a hybrid structure.

As CIOs are increasingly aspiring to become business leaders with a seat on the board, they need to ensure strong and smooth working relationships with other technology leaders like CDOs, CISOs, and CAIOs and act as orchestrators. Taking this a step ahead, CIOs are also expected to work as orchestrators with other C-level business leaders like CMOs, CHROs, and CROs. So, CIO needs technology skills, business acumen and communication skills to work with multiple stakeholders and help organizations to execute and govern digital initiatives effectively.

Leadership and communication skills to engage with the board are also critical. Gone are the days when CIOs used to interact with boards only during cyberattacks, outages, and escalations. Organizations can’t afford such tactical interactions anymore and CIOs are expected to drive discussions around how technology can help take the organization to the next level. Building skills to communicate the vision, articulate the strategy, and provide regular and meaningful updates are critical.

Managing Change and Driving Adoption: While digital strategy and execution take center stage for CIOs as their roles evolve, managing change to drive adoption is equally critical. CIOs are best placed to act as change agents for the organization. CIOs need to become the change agents for their organizations not only to drive technology initiatives but to drive business initiatives. Before that, it is important for CIOs to understand who their stakeholders are. There are four stakeholders that CIOs need to deal with: management (CEOs, CFOs, COOs), LOB leaders, the board of directors, and their own teams. The journey of change should start with their own teams. The team needs to be convinced and onboarded on to the vision, mission, strategy, and execution plan of the CIO. To enable that, creating a culture of experimentation, failing, and learning, moving from project focus to products and customers, leveraging agile/DevOps, and calculated risk-taking are some of the initiatives that CIOs need to focus on.

CIOs need to encourage entrepreneurial behaviors to create organizations within an organization to foster innovation which will eventually help the organization to come up with new products and services. Driving adoption needs change management with a different lens. Driving home a consistent theme, building a sense of urgency, and introducing new business metrics that better communicate the value of IT is important.

Balancing Risk and Innovation: Driving innovation is about putting a mechanism in place to discover new ideas, vet, prioritize, and commercialize them. The pace of innovation is also important, as innovative ideas need to be taken to the market faster to be competitive. Innovation also brings resiliency to the organization.

IDC defines digital resiliency as the ability of an organization to rapidly adapt to business disruptions by leveraging digital capabilities to not only restore business operations but also capitalize on the changed conditions. The culture of innovation comes with a culture of entrepreneurship. There are multiple stakeholders in the journey of innovation: the board, CEOs, LOBs, other C-level peers, the IT team, IT vendors, and the industry ecosystem. The accelerated pace of innovation and involvement and multiple stakeholders (both internal and external) make an innovation journey risk-prone, which needs to be managed by the CIO, who acts as an orchestrator. Innovation drives growth, while risk management ensures security and compliance.

A major challenge while CIOs drive innovation comes from the fact that ideas come from disparate departments and, if left unmonitored, can lead to shadow IT, eventually increasing the risk for the business. CIOs need to establish a structured process for soliciting, ideating, vetting, and working on new ideas while meeting organizational standards within organizational boundaries. Technical challenges, market fit, and regulatory and financial implications need to be considered during the process of evaluation. Open communication and critical feedback from all stakeholders can ensure early resolution of potential issues.

According to IDC’s C-Suite Tech Survey 2023-24, the second most serious hurdle to completing digital initiatives is that security leaders slow down the initiatives due to risk management concerns. Integrating innovation initiatives as a part of larger organizational risk management framework and active involvement of personas like Chief Risk Officer and CISO in innovation governance is also critical.

The shift that is needed:

According to IDC’s C-Suite Tech Survey 2023-24, CEOs are taking the lead in driving digital initiatives in their organizations, and on the other hand, the majority of the technology leaders want to develop further as a CIO but with a more visible focus on digital transformation.

This clearly shows that CEOs want to be at the forefront of their organization’s digital initiatives, and technology leaders want to be aligned with them in driving digital initiatives. Technology is evolving at a rapid pace in this “AI Everywhere” world. CEOs are aggressively evaluating newer technologies to make a difference in their business and looking at CIOs as trusted associates who can handhold them on this journey. According to “IDC FutureScape: Worldwide CIO Agenda 2024 Predictions”, two-thirds of CIOs will not meet their 2025 digital revenue goals due to misaligned investments hindering business performance.

Primary reasons for this include a legacy mindset, outdated technologies, and, eventually, a struggle to balance budgets between digital initiatives and existing IT. CIOs need to demonstrate efficient resource allocation to balance the maintenance of existing IT systems and the adoption of advanced digital technologies. CIOs also need to deepen partnerships with other leaders in their organization to ensure technology decisions are holistic, integrated, and reflective of the broader business ecosystem.

The time has come for CIOs to move away from the role of keeping lights on and take up the leadership role of becoming the bridge between technology and business strategy.