CIO - Time is up or now is the time?!

In this age of digital, every company is becoming a technology company. It is disrupting the role of CIO. CIO faces many challenges while companies trying to reinvent to stay relevant. Let us discuss some of those challenges faced by a typical CIO and some suggestions later in this article to turn the tide for a win-win.

Expectation mismatch - there is a ground reality that is completely in the opposite direction of what the company wants to achieve. Business is under tremendous pressure to meet the market demand. Customers are looking for value and quick solutions. And, there is an information overload around us projecting all the positives of digital transformation, without much detail on how the success was achieved. Most of the organizations learns the hard way that there is no one-size-fits-for-all approach exists. It may work differently in startups than in traditional companies. The pressure is now on CIO, with a question “they have done it, why not we?”

Aging IT infrastructure and applications – this the one of the major challenges faced by CIOs. Due to consistent reduction in budgets, typically several equipment are identified as non-critical to business operations, and never upgraded. Most of the equipment (along with firmware, operating system etc.) remain outdated and not supported by respective vendors. But in this connected world, every piece of equipment and applications are becoming critical for business. Companies are either retrofitting legacy equipment with sensors that are Internet connected (IoT), or opening up ports to configure systems remotely (automation) without conducting proper risk assessment. The same holds good for applications as well. Poor coding practices, workarounds, unsupported applications etc. When such applications are blindly opened up for connected solutions, it expands the attack surface infinitely for attackers. This is one of the major nightmares faced by today’s CIO that has the potential to cripple the company itself. Attacks have become sophisticated and is not stopping only at the IT infrastructure. OT infrastructure is increasingly becoming the target to inflict maximum damage. A typical CIO is torn between enabling business and securing the aging infrastructure.

Lack of collaboration between IT and OT, is another challenge CIO faces daily. OT sees, IT as restrictive and rigid, while IT views OT as demanding.

Skills and culture – CIO faces a reluctant workforce, who are not aligned with company’s strategic intentions. Sometimes decisions are taken without enough transparency at the leadership level, gets interpreted differently, and outside factors adds fuel to the fire. The IT workforce feels that they are left out of the decision making process and lack of empowerment will become a drag on overall efforts of the CIO. Awareness and training is often an afterthought and in the process crucial workforce that comes with years of domain expertise is reluctant to participate in any transformation initiatives.

Now comes shadow IT – in the name of agility a lot happens nowadays outside CIO’s view span. Sometimes IT (and CIO) will get to know the existence of such applications(or assets) only when there is an integration attempted to the IT managed assets. CIO faces the test of his life now that there is a working system as far as business is concerned should be integrated to another production system as far as IT is concerned, without any prior thought process around access controls, data governance, security and so on. Though there is an acceptance now on shadow IT, organizations have not figured out a good way to integrate and apply uniform corporate policies, without stifling innovation.

Organizations are hiring Chief Digital Officer and/or Chief Data Officer. This is often perceived as a direct attack on CIO role itself. In some companies, CIO assumes additional responsibility as innovation officer and digital officer. But in several others CIOs are losing out the board room space once he/she held to the new digital and data roles.

All these and many more are working in tandem to dislodge CIO from the corner office to the corner. On top of these challenges CIO is accountable for continued availability of the business applications.

Now let us discuss how CIOs can stay relevant.

First and foremost don’t pull back. Don’t become another person waiting for orders. Come to the forefront. For years CIOs have been the eyes and ears of the company’s operations. CIO knows, company’s business and what it takes to support its availability 24x7. CIO knows what is in good shape and what is not. Since CIO has the bird’s eye view of everything happening in the company, he/she starts with an advantage, while the company transforms itself to digital. Armed with ground reality, CIOs have a greater opportunity to influence the strategy and success. But this requires a new way of thinking and (digital) mindset.

Be always on a questioning mode – what can I do differently? What can I do to differentiate company’s product and services so that they stay ahead of the competition? Questions could be as simple as, can I implement a new feedback mechanism to capture the pulse of the customers? How can I help my sales team by pushing context aware insights to their phone? Or taking a notch up, can I implement a VR solution for product demonstration?

Be an innovation champion and inculcate innovation thinking in the team. With constant and consistent innovation, it should become the culture of the organization. CIO should reach across the aisle and bring cross functional teams under one roof. Through collaborative efforts, the teams should always focus on creating new business value, improving efficiencies and doing more with less.

Ditch the PowerPoint presentations, show-and-tell should be the new approach in board room meetings and with executives. CIOs should insist on developing quick prototype or pilot and should be able to demonstrate live its business value. In this digital era decisions are taken on demonstrated value, than on the perceived value that comes much later from well thought-out long drawn proposals.

Problem solving mindset – CIOs should encourage the teams to solve business problems. It requires IT and OT coming together to arrive solutions that will have long lasting value. IT teams have been applying fixes in hardware and applications for years and they take pride in fixing issues. OT team is experienced in applying process fixes and workarounds to meet the business demand. Now coming together of the brains will help proactive problem solving for better business outcome. The business problem could as simple as, how to do reduce cycle time to get the product to the customer? Brainstorming could reveal removing a single bottleneck or a simple process tweak could cut down days from product delivery cycle. Such iterative approach, could bring quick visible value to business, at the same time will keep the process ongoing for additional value creation.

Then comes skill development. CIO has an expanded role in this digital age, and expected to assume many roles within the organization. CIO cannot do it alone. The entire team should be aligned with the vision. It is hard to keep the team motivated when they do not possess adequate skills to navigate fast changing technology landscape. Skill development needs to happen at all levels within the team. They have to unlearn few things and learn many things. It requires open communication with the team on organization agenda, what headwind organization faces, how as a team we plan to navigate, what support is available and how they can create value for the company.

Last but not the least, CIOs should identify and align with strategic partners – they will help CIO look good and smart in front of the executives. With the fast past advancements around us, it will be very difficult to find in-house talent for all the possible outcomes. Traditional sourcing based on requirements will not transform businesses, as focus will be limited to cost saving and profit. By having strategic partners in key areas, CIO should be able to tap into cross industry knowledge, expertise and talent pool. For example putting together a quick pilot, prototype creation, use case identification, etc.

In this digital age, CIOs are uniquely positioned to excel, connecting old with the new. CIO is armed with so many different options that never existed. CIOs do not have to lobby for public cloud or IoT anymore within their organizations. Cloud and mobility have already become mainstream and accepted across industries, and even in highly regulated industries like healthcare. IoT and edge computing will also soon become the must have, when the value of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence is well understood within respective business units. Cyber Security awareness is on a new high and data protection is everyone’s priority in the company.

By taking the center stage, well connected and forward looking CIOs can transform themselves for long haul in this digital age. "Time is up or now is the time" is in CIO's hands!