R "Ray" Wang
R "Ray" WangMonday's Musings: Next Generation CIO's Face 11 Skill Shifts In A Disruptive World
Less than 5 years ago, the mighty CIO controlled his or her organization’s destiny by shepherding multi-million dollar projects and ruling with a fist. Business leaders had to pay homage to the IT team and they hated it. The economic crisis, advent of the cloud and SaaS, and the massive number of IT failures have rapidly changed the role of the CIO. Saddled with the burden of maintaining legacy projects and faced with a shortage in budget and resources, businesses now move around the IT team as they must meet a flurry of business requirements. CIO’s have lost a lot of control in guiding how technology is used in the enterprise because the world of consumer tech has out innovated enterprise class technologies.
CIO's And Their Organizations Challenged By The Pace Of Change In The 2010's
Similar to this past decade, organizations will face massive amounts of change in the next decade. While change is nothing new to CIO's and their organizations, the velocity of change has increased - to a point where the rate of obsolescence outpaces the rate of change. Conversations with over 200 CIO's this year reveal an anxiety in remaining nimble, cutting costs, and just keeping up with change. CIO's must rapidly respond to disruptive forces in the market, workforce dynamics, business models, and pace of technology adoption (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Four areas of change responsible for major disruptions in today's organizations
[caption id="attachment_3987" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="(Source: R Wang & Insider Associates, LLC)"]
[/caption]
The Bottom Line - The CIO Role Shifts To Match Next Gen Enterprise Requirements
What's the role of the CIO in this next gen enterprise? Well, next gen CIO's must help organizations navigate complexity while realizing the benefits of a solid business technology strategy. While the immediate focus may be on hot topics such as security and risk, third party maintenance, cloud and SaaS, and email replacement and unified communications, there are significant transformations across 11 broader skill sets (see Figure 2.) Next Gen CIO's must begin the process of transforming themselves and organizations in 2010 to meet the demands of the decade, anticipating the disruptive business models, technologies, and processes to come.
Figure 2. Eleven Skill Shifts For The Next Gen CIO
[caption id="attachment_4131" align="alignnone" width="599" caption="(Source: R Wang & Insider Associates, LLC)"]
[/caption]
- 10 Essential Elements of Social Enterprise Apps
- Personality Traits of the Next Gen CIO
- Lessons Learned From Next Gen CIO's
- Profiles of Next Gen CIO's
Your POV
What skill shifts are you seeing in your work as a CIO? Do these shifts resonate? Do you have a different point of view? Please post or send on to rwang0 at gmail dot com or r at softwareinsider dot org and we’ll keep your anonymity.
Copyright © 2010 R Wang and Insider Associates, LLC. All rights reserved.