The CIO Challenges
Let’s be real, the role of the CIO is a tough one. The size of the organization does factor into the complexities, but CIOs are all facing the same challenges today. Security, the rise of work-from-home, and budgets just to name a few.
But, what are the real challenges here?
Well, let’s take a step back. If 2020 taught us anything, it was to pivot quickly. While many companies were able to do this successfully, it wasn’t without failures along the way. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) recently published a report on the “COVID-19 and business failures: The paradoxes of experience, scale, and scope for theory and practice“.
So, what were the findings?
While there were many findings and details throughout the article, one big area stood out: Strategic Misalignment. NCBI defines this as “when the firm is unable to initiate change and upgrade and update its resources to respond to external environmental factors in a timely manner“.
For a CIO, this hits squarely in their territory. The “upgrade and update its resources” seems to call out technology and solutions to empower the organization. But, is that the case?
The new challenges that CIOs are facing are now:
- Collaborating and fostering harmony across technology, finance, operations, and lines of business.
- Empowering employees to upskill across the organization, and not just in IT.
- Balancing security and governance within the fabric of the tech stack.
- Recognizing the impact of low-code/no-code, and prioritizing it as a critical tool versus a last resort.
Who’s Holding the Tech Reigns?
For a long time, the IT department had a stranglehold on any technology usage, purchases, and creation. This led to animosity in the organization and the rise of “shadow IT“. As a result, the collaboration gap widened and created strategic misalignment.
Many areas of the business found low-code/no-code solutions and they saw quick returns in time, money, and resources. People started becoming more tech-savvy and, coupled with their intimate knowledge of the business, could create apps, automation, and business intelligence solutions. Thus, citizen developers were born and disrupted the technology landscape.
Now, CIOs are faced with creating collaboration with business teams outside of IT. The tech reigns are no longer “just an IT thing”, but an organization thing. The tech responsibility is spread across the organization. This means that the CIO must be strategic in their initiatives and be inclusive of ideas and creativity from all areas of the business.
From Gatekeeper to Guide
CIOs can no longer be the gatekeeper of technology. If any CIOs are still doing this today, then they are no longer competing fast but conceding faster. And, the organization is at a high risk of failure. Harsh, but true.
This presents an opportunity for the CIO. Since many organizations still require secure infrastructures, data privacy, process governance, and compliance, the CIO can now be a strategic guide.
The CIO guide will bring leadership insights to finance, operations, and lines of business to empower them in their decisions. By having cohesive decision-making, the company vision and goals are sharply in focus, each area of the business knows their role, and no one is operating in silos.