CIO versus CEO: who really drives enterprise agility?
Enterprise agility – the ability to change direction quickly – is a decisive factor for success in today’s digital world. Rather than being disrupted by competitors, agile enterprises are making their own decisive moves, whether introducing new products or services, entering a new market or even creating a new business model altogether.
Neil Ward-Dutton, vice president at researchers IDC, says agility matters because digital technologies have penetrated industry. IDC research shows that 65 per cent of European chief executives (CEOs) are under significant pressure to deliver results from digital transformation. But with enterprise agility more crucial than ever, whose responsibility is it to drive that transformation?
The answer to this question is complicated. Transformation efforts often start with a specific project in one business function. So, a chief marketing officer (CMO) might work on a project to transform how content is used, a chief digital officer (CDO) might focus on a customer engagement programme, while the chief information officer (CIO) might move legacy systems to the cloud.
However, as transformations move beyond their initial stages, the critical success factor is collaboration. Businesses looking to make the most of a new way of working in a particular function will look to create a wider, cross-business transformation. Mr Ward-Dutton says this means the leadership of transformation is more like a team sport.
“New innovative teams need to be working hand in hand with established teams running core operations,” he says. “Organisations that really deliver on transformation are those that create dream teams of senior executives working collaboratively. These teams typically have at their core the CEO, CDO, CMO, CIO and CFO [chief financial officer].”
This focus on collaborative transformation leadership resonates with Steve Bates, global leader of the CIO Centre of Excellence at consultants KPMG. His discussions with CIOs suggest we’ve now reached a tipping point: all organisations want enterprise agility.
As organisations become more agile, the requirement for collaborative leadership continues to increase. And while successful transformation is a team sport, CIOs will often play the captain’s role, due to their hard-learnt experience of using digital systems and services to create enterprise agility.
“As a modern business, you have to be able to pivot quickly and much of this is underpinned by technology,” says Mr Bates. “CIOs can help other senior executives to make that transition. After all, agile is how CIOs have been working for the past 20 years and the business now wants to harness the way these pioneering digital leaders have been working.”
It’s a sentiment that resonates with Dayne Turbitt, UK and Ireland senior vice president for enterprise sales at Dell Technologies. He agrees CIOs have to move far beyond infrastructure management and into roles and responsibilities that make use of their hard-won experience of digital transformation.
