Along with technical recommendations, CIOs should structure intelligently formed strategies to drive digital transformation.
CEOs expect CIOs to play a significant role in the case of pioneering digital transformation. Gartner’s 2018 CEO Survey revealed that 78% of CEOs believe their companies are industry pioneers. Today, tech leaders believe that digital transformation is inevitable. To lead a company, CEOs need to have a team that is ready to adopt a pioneer mindset.
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Pioneers successfully execute ideas that help them stand out from the competition as well as bring industry change at the same time. A CIO needs to ask the team to work on and deliver ideas they would implement if there were no risks for the company. These ideas need to help the organization meet its strategic goals and provide a competitive advantage. CIOs need to be receptive to new ideas from their team members, encourage innovative thinking, initiate discussions with the team, and see how the idea can drive innovation for digitization. Tech leaders will also need to assume a certain level of risk while brainstorming ideas and avoid playing safe by a zero-risk version of these ideas.
The internal culture needs to adopt new ways of thinking and go a step beyond brainstorming and challenging the current state. Innovative mindsets can nurture in an enterprise by working tightly with leadership-level executives. In recent times, there has been an increasing awareness among CIOs and other C-level executives that change in the culture is not dependent solely on changing technologies, tools or operating models. The transformation will come when CIOs embrace their role as digital transformation experts.
They need to have leadership-level conversations and ideas exchange with their peers. It is also essential for CIOs to work with business teams across the company to drive a change in culture since digital transformation is hugely about cultural and mindset changes as well. They also need to establish the criticality of this change and ensure it is sustainable, for the transformation to be permanent.
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CIOs need to question fundamental truths about customers, products, and the market. Encourage out-of-the-box thinking by urging the team to dispute fundamental truth statements such as “Customers need our products and services.” Inspire and challenge the team to find solutions for the opposite state of the fundamental truths. The idea will have a different nature if a unique scenario is positioned in the minds of people.
CIOs can play the role of change agents by creating a strategy and a roadmap with clear deliverables to address these challenges. It will be helpful to sit with team members and evaluate progress regularly.
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Sneha Bokil is a Senior Editor with OnDot Media. She writes editorials on an array of topics ranging from IoT, AI, ML, and cloud computing, among others. She has over 9 years of experience in the field of content creation, where she has written on technology, both enterprise and consumer, and finance.
