My chief information officer, Ashish Gupta, is in an unusual position. I once held the same role working for another organisation. Not many large businesses have a CEO that was once a CIO.
For Ashish, having an ex-CIO as his key stakeholder is either a blessing or a curse – and I’m sure at times it’s been the latter. But it’s clear to me that there are now great opportunities for CIOs to grab the boardroom spotlight and take a more creative and leading role in their business.
A connected world
If the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a reality, within six years, there could be 50 billion connected devices in the world. Many of these will be used by my company, our customers and suppliers. The amount of data these devices generate will be huge.
For me, as CEO, I need to understand how I should respond to this and what the potential opportunities and costs are for my business.
So in this digital, connected world, it’s natural for me — and all CEOs — to turn to my CIO and expect them to give me new ideas to help take the business forward.
CIOs are the obvious candidates to spot digital business opportunities. They have a unique view of how people use technology and data in every part of their organisation to deal with different business challenges. For an ambitious and imaginative CIO, this perspective combined with their technological know-how allows them to join up the dots to see a bigger picture. And by doing this, they can unlock value.
This is the type of conversation that I, as a CEO, now have with my CIO.
Super conductors
So to me, my CIO must be like a conductor, orchestrating technology, data and people across the organisation to create new business outcomes. It’s a role that demands not only the technical knowledge that my CIO has always excelled in, but creativity, commercial nous and communication skills too.
This changing role of the CIO is at the heart of many conversations I’m having with my customers’ CEOs and CIOs. And it’s echoed by our latest research, `Art of Connecting: creativity and the modern CIO`.
We found that two in three boards now expect their CIO to be creative and this expectation filters down into the key performance indicators (KPIs) they set for them.
So, although boards still set technical targets for their CIO, such as network availability and security, the new trend is to judge their performance largely on business results that they can creatively contribute to. These include areas such as employee satisfaction, lowering operational costs and customer satisfaction.
As a CEO, it’s significant to me that these new KPIs include metrics around experience – the experiences of our customers and the experiences of our colleagues. Users don’t care about the details, or the technology.
They only have high expectations. The better the experience, the more colleagues will use things to transform how they do their job and the more customers will want to do business with us. So in delivering a good experience, CIOs can help transform the business, both from an operational perspective and in securing revenue.
This should be reflected in the conversations that all members of the board are having with their CIO, from HR and marketing through to strategy and finance.
So, my advice for CEOs looking for new ideas to transform their business is "have a conversation with your CIO". For those ambitious CIOs looking to follow me in making the leap to CEO, my advice is "keep ahead of your board by taking the creative conversation to them".
If your CIO can anticipate the changes that are going to be needed by your organisation and then make them happen, they’ll have earned their seat at your leadership table.
And if they can do that, I’m sure your business can have a prosperous New Year.
