Brinley Platts posted on LinkedIn this week with a post that started with…

“Over the past decade, the shape of the CIO role has changed enormously, with the focus shifting to business value rather than delivery of pure technology. CIOs should now be business leaders who can hold their own at the Exco, using their knowledge of new technologies and ways of working to influence business strategies that increase shareholder value.”

I’m not sure it’s just the past decade. Back in the early 90s the IT profession was shouting from the roof tops about how important tech was becoming for a business. That the IT directors should be on the top table and that they should be looking to demonstrate how tech could drive business value.

Brinleys post goes on to talk about culture change and having an innovative mind to being about to identify how tech can change or be at the heart of a business.

No one can argue with Brindley he is absolutely right. The opportunities to how tech can improve peoples life’s, how it can improve the customer experience and how it can change the operational processes of a business are infinite.

As a CIO being able to work across the organisation and enable the tech team to have a vision of the future, to select the change that matters and to remain and focused on setting up the business for success with the tech that is deployed is key.

Just below these high level statements that I’m sure any “top table” exec could twist to their discipline is often a whole heap of complexity to muddle through.

  • From the minute the business was founded tech would have played apart, through the years and maybe decades the technology and application landscape would have mushroomed with mergers and acquisitions further complicating the picture.
  • The support, maintenance and enhancements of what many call the legacy that has made the business what it is today and all the data held within it is critical to the vision of the future how to consolidate, migrate and decommission is easy to say but takes due diligence, resilience and determination to improve the business foundations for the future
  • The IT operating model is complex as many businesses have outsourced services – help desks, desktop support, infrastructure and application support, and development are being delivered in many cases by vendors with outdated contractural terms with services described within the context of a world that is very different today transferring services to new partners and setting up the services for the vision of the future again takes due diligence, resilience and the foresight to set up the new agreements with the future in mind.
  • And then where the real magic happens, with many lessons learnt from the past, putting effort, focus and real deep thought into developing the future tech with the customer and employee experiences that will unlock the business and create real shareholder value is a critical dimension that takes a sense of opening up technical teams beyond the innovation teams to the art of the possible, to walking in the footsteps of the customers of IT and really focusing on experimental and incremental delivery of technical capability.

It’s a tough job, the role of a CIO. The opportunity to transform the tech landscape, the partner relationships and the mindsets of the teams of people (in-house and partners) to deliver the next generation of tech at a time when the tech is just advancing quicker than any business can absorb and deploy with the backdrop of the legacy spaghettis is immense.

So absolutely the right place for the CIO is the top table, is selling the tech potential and for all the others sitting around the top table listening to the CIO appreciate the back drop, appreciate the legacy and appreciate what it takes to transform it’s a tough role but as Brindley says it has a real chance to significantly change the shareholder value of a business !!