ALONE

‘You’re not alone’

JANELLE HILL

FOR COMPANIES, THE PANDEMIC HAS THROWN UP MAJOR CHALLENGES, INCLUDING DIGITAL ONES. THERE’S NO ROADMAP FOR THIS, OR BEST PRACTICES FROM THE PAST. BUT AT THE SAME TIME, WE’RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT, SO IT PAYS FOR CIOS TO WORK STRATEGICALLY WITH BUSINESS EXECUTIVES. AND THE CIO IS BECOMING MORE AND MORE OF A CONDUCTOR.

By Martijn regting

Janelle Hill, Chief of Research for Gartner’s CIO ractice, spends much of her time connecting IT and CIOs to the business’s strategic goals. ‘CIOs are currently facing a number of major challenges here,’ she says, ‘one of the biggest being is their concern for gross returns. This is true, of course, especially in the private sector, but also in certain public sectors where providing a full service can be quite a feat during these pandemic times.’ Moreover, everyone is struggling with the question: how do we get back to the o ce? ‘Gartner refers to hybrid working, i.e. working partly at home and partly in the o ce. But there’s no experience of that, and there are no best practices. And it’s hard to deduce any learning points, because the situation around COVID is still so fluid.’

QUESTIONS REMAINING

‘Should we have all employees tested? Should we say that only fully vaccinated people should come into the o ce? These are the kinds of questions that management are grappling with. And they’re not limited to the working-fromhome conundrum. Are we going to visit our customers in person? Are we going to travel to go to conferences? There’s no straight-forward answer.’ But if there’s one thing that we have learned from the pandemic, it’s how dependent companies have become on digital information. ‘Any CEO who was in any doubt about this before now knows: doing business and providing services today is absolutely impossible without technology. And this means there’s now a big focus on technological investments, so the return on investment can be increased.’

YOU’RE NOT ALONE

‘I think the best advice I can give is: don’t try to do it all by yourself. There’s huge demand for highly advanced technology applications, such as AI and the Internet of Things. It’s all so complex and so interwoven with the business that CIOs just can’t operate independently anymore. A strategic partnership with business executives is essential.’ It’s good to see so many companies deliberately hiring young professionals, who have grown up with technology, known as digital natives, Hill believes. ‘Even though they have usually only just graduated, they generally have better digital skills than most middle-level and executive managers. This new generation of professionals is helping to accelerate digital transformation.’

BUSINESS TECHNOLOGISTS

Gartner refers to these professionals as business technologists. ‘They play an important role in the democratization of IT and enabling business departments to develop apps themselves. And research has shown that 1 of employees are classified as business technologists, which suggests that almost half of all employees consider building and maintaining technology solutions as a prominent part of their work.’ A lot of companies know that in order to obtain the right insights, they need to look for data scientists within their own organization. ‘Companies often have a lot more skilled people under their roof than they realize. And we are also seeing the role of the CIO changing alongside. All those data scientists working in different departments in the organization don’t report to the CIO directly, but still do work for them. The CIO is becoming more and more of a conductor, who needs to lead using influence and inspiration.’

MULTI-DISCI LINARY TEAMS

Hill recommends that organizations work with multi-disciplinary teams, which include traditional IT staff, business technologist, and business experts. ‘These teams then have to coordinate the way they work. It would be di cult if the IT director had just planned major system maintenance over the same weekend that the sales director has to provide an analysis. And we also need to clearly lay down who is responsible for what.’ What skills and competencies does a successful CIO need to have? ‘I don’t know whether the necessary skillset has really changed. If anything, some aspects have become even more important. A good CIO needs to understand the business, strategy, and market. They need to be well aware of the latest and most popular technologies, and also understand the IT landscape of their own organization. They need to come up with ideas that inspire the business.’

COORDINATING ROLE

‘But these are all skills that were already needed for a good CIO. The only really new aspect I can think of is that the CIO should now be able to lead people elsewhere in the organization. They need to master the art of leading by influence. I wrote a paper on this last year, looking at the difference in the way traditional brick-and-mortar organizations do this compared with borndigital companies.’

‘I discovered that at least of natural digital companies had a Chief Operating O cer, in addition to the CEO and CIO – a much higher rate than the brick-andmortar companies. The COO doesn’t typically have anyone reporting directly to them. They can’t tell anyone what to do, but they do have influence. And that’s how CIOs need to be operating more and more. They need to understand all the business operations and act as a coordinator between them all. They need to make sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.’