CIO role: How to move from gatekeeper to advisor
The CIO role has been around for more than 40 years, and in that time, it has undergone various shifts to become what it is today. The growth of the internet, the switch to digital, the move to cloud, and the shift to remote and hybrid workforces have all challenged corporate leadership, and especially CIOs, to redefine how they align their technology and teams with emerging tech trends and changes in corporate priorities.
During the pandemic, we’ve seen countless businesses, many of which had been relying on outdated technology with underfunded IT departments, invest in technology at breakneck speed in order to meet the challenges posed by the new work environment. Too often, however, these investments were made directly by departments, with a lack of oversight and control from central IT. It is now common to find staff members managing technology that the IT team may not even be aware of.
When technology decisions and investments happen outside of the CIO’s control, it changes the relationship between the CIO, IT, and the wider business.
Historically, the role of the CIO focused on identifying, implementing, and maintaining business IT systems, with budget set aside to explore and drive innovation within the organization. Moving into the 2000s and 2010s, CIOs were tasked with spearheading digital transformation and the journey to the cloud.
Today’s CIO must work as an advisor and partner to departments across the organization, seeking to understand the needs of the wider business and ensuring that those needs are met in a way that works both for the individual and the wider business aims. However, this distributed approach brings challenges: How, for example, does IT respond to a vulnerability in a piece of software that IT did not know was running?
Many IT leaders tell us that the barrier between shadow IT and business-led IT is becoming more and more blurred and is forcing tradeoffs around risk vs. flexibility. It is IT’s role to not only facilitate business needs but also ensure compliance and security. This creates tension between offering advice vs. imposing governance.
Today, IT managers and leaders are leaned on for strategic counsel more than ever before because of the dependency on technology for sources of revenue and growth. Additionally, the prominence of cloud, SaaS, and hybrid work requires IT leaders and managers to handle more complexity, requiring different skills than previously needed. A good example of this is the need for analytics to help businesses make more data-driven decisions.
