The pandemic has highlighted the crucial role that CIOs play in business operations. It has also helped them to get a seat at the C-suite table. Now, it is crucial that they take this opportunity to influence the board and strengthen their relationship with the CEO.
COVID-19, for all the devastation it caused, revealed the vulnerabilities that many organizations were ignoring. It accelerated digital transformation initiatives and helped the CIOs to finally get the spotlight and importance they deserved. Now, CIOs should capitalize on the reputation they gained during the COVID and utilize it to become a strategic partner to the CEO. They should lead the organization towards a digital innovation journey and become key technical advisors for their organization. However, to achieve this, they should understand what steps they need to take.
Here are five important steps that CIOs should take to become strategic business partners for their CEOs.
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During COVID, technology-enabled organizations kept their business afloat, especially in creating a remote workforce of which the CIOs were crucial. It strengthened the position of CIOs among the board of directors and made their opinions count. However, CIOs should not stop here. They should identify ways to co-create their IT infrastructure initiative with CEOs. CIOs should find ways from making IT just an enabler to incorporating it into the business strategy. This will enable CIOs to not only strengthen their position on the board, but will also allow them to define new business models of working with tech, data, cloud, and digital.
One of the best ways for CIOs to ensure they can build a reputation with the CEO is by proactively leading innovation. CIOs should be able to demonstrate business acumen as well as an understanding of the future shifts while working through the issues with CEOs and other strategic leaders. This will help them to maintain their reformed role within the organization.
CIOs should take advantage of the opportunity in hand, and reassess the technology investments to ensure that organizations survive while the COVID is aligned with the future business strategy.
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CEOs and other business executives often find it difficult to explain what they are aiming to achieve. It may be due to their limited technical knowledge and not knowing what they can achieve. CIOs should be able to lead them through these questions to understand what needs to be done and what can be done to achieve it. However, they should be able to maintain the balance between corporate vision and market trend as too much focus on one aspect may not be able to flourish or prevent them from ever taking a flight.
The pandemic has exposed the much vulnerability on which the businesses were operating. While some organizations were able to tackle the cyber-attacks, others had to suffer big-time, forcing them to completely transform the infrastructure. The ones who were not able to do it had failed to survive. Therefore, CIOs should take the responsibility to navigate the organization safely around obstacles and threats. Not only that, if they want to impress their CEO by being their strategic business partner, they should look for evolving risks.
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Vishal Muktewar is a Senior Correspondent at On Dot Media. He reports news that focuses on the latest trends and innovations happening in the B2B industry. An IT engineer by profession, Vishal has worked at Insights Success before joining Ondot. His love for stories has driven him to take up a career in enterprise journalism. He effectively uses his knowledge of technology and flair for writing, for crafting features, articles and interactions for technology enterprise media platforms.
