Innovation Needs an Innovative Tech Leader

The modern CIO should transformational skills that can help enterprises excel in their domains

Currently, business and technology innovation are quite intricately linked, and the demand for digitally-driven transformational services is growing rapidly. Nowadays, every business leader is realizing the importance of a technologically-driven business enterprise. The secret behind the success of every organization is technology, but without the presence of a tech-driven leadership, it will be impossible for the entire team to excel. A functional CIO must be ready to become a strategic business leader based on the increasingly numerous numbers of upcoming trends towards mobile-first consumers and the virtual workforce. These trends facilitate them to make artificial and business intelligence decisions that help enterprises to strive, increase growth, and global stability as technology becomes increasingly critical for enterprise success.

A functional CIO is a strategic business leader that delegates support functions aimed at shaping people, supplying resources, and mapping people’s skills and competencies. But because of the speed and rapidly growing scopes around this technology, it has become quite challenging for the leadership to keep themselves afloat of all technological updates. This problem is not limited to tech leaders themselves, but it also extends to the job market, hence, tech leaders have to step into ‘in-source’ these responsibilities.

For the past several years, executives have stressed themselves due to the need for skillful CIOs who can move beyond simply managing IT to leveraging technology to create value for the business, but now, this priority has become a necessity. New technologies have become the center of attraction, making and breaking top technology trends, reshaping the competitive landscape, and disrupting business models. This is one of the many reasons why companies are focusing on a more tech-driven leadership.

But despite this urgent requirement, out of the organizations that have pursued digitization, around 80 percent of those companies are still at their nascent stage of technology transformation. Sometimes, many illegitimate factors delay the progress, but sometimes the mind-boggling complexity of legacy systems is responsible for such delays. But among these, one of the most challenging aspects that CIOs face is the degree and extent to which their responsibilities extend. Their role needs to cross over cost and performance responsibilities in order to transform IT into a core driver of business value.

The primary principles that CIOs should follow to encourage innovation

Skillful leadership is crucial to achieving business goals. There is a set standard of principles that CIOs can follow and encourage the implementation of a holistic transformation. But for that CIOs need to first come to terms with the scope of the transformation itself. They need to reimagine their roles in technology organizations. This is one of the most critical principles that not just CIOs but all tech leaders can follow. It includes establishing the role of information and technology as a business and innovation partner to design a tech-driven business strategy, integrate tech management across organizational silos, and deliver excellent user experiences. To help technology generate business value, a transformative CIO has to analyze and monitor the goals of the business strategy. CIOs are inherently responsible for establishing and shaping the business strategy, agenda, and strong performance based on the core IT goals.

A full technology transformation is not about moving to the cloud or adopting artificial intelligence. It also involves infusing technology into every strategy discussion and process throughout the organization. During the enterprise transformation, leaders should start with a mindset that both the need for transformative change and commit to a multiyear journey at the same time. Besides, an effective talent strategy requires a culture that supports talent. Building a center of excellence team will also help the success factor and in doing so requires each team or group of people to have the autonomy to reduce bureaucratical processes.

Bottom line

To simple conclude, CIOs have to be the leaders of transformation. The CIO’s job has continued to change and grow. There was a time when a CIO was limited to managing and deploying technology. But as companies across the country embrace the digital revolution, modern tech CIOs are being entrusted to lead the business transformation. They have to inculcate the skills and knowledge that will enable them to become legitimate contenders to lead businesses.

Share This Article

Do the sharing thingy

About Author

More info about author