Digital IT Reflection and Resolution

IT reflection needs to focus on strengthening its strength and improving its weakness. IT resolution should focus on innovation, improvement, and digitalization.

Digital is the age of people and innovation. The main barriers to innovation are the static mindset, silos, rigidity, inflexibility, or bureaucracy, etc. Technology is often the disruptive force behind the digital transformation. IT must become the strategic partner of the business, the trendsetter of the organization advancement, and the catalyzer of the digitalization. What should be the CIO’s digital IT reflection and resolution?

Which scope of impact does the CIO make? Do you want the company and other departments looking to you for leadership around the competitive application of information & technology in a rapidly changing market? The CIO sits in a unique seat of having the opportunity to see across the entire landscape of the business. Thus, they shouldn’t act only as the functional manager, but become the business strategists and innovation leaders to amplify their leadership influence in the business scope, their industry, or even the entire digital business ecosystem. What the CIO and IT, in general, must truly understand the business vision and goals. They have to understand issues contextually and communicate them creatively, as language influences perception. Without a clear strategy and a way to communicate it in the language of the business, CIOs will always have trouble getting even "aligned," no mention of reaching the higher maturity level of IT being proactively enabling and engaging with business partners. IT needs will only expand. IT resolution shouldn’t be empty; setting metrics shouldn’t be a too much inward focus. IT value-based management needs to be driven by concepts like collaborative value or collective advantage and multi-layer ROIs.

Is IT provocative: CIOs need to keep pondering how IT can bring business to their company, and what are those “proactive” exercises from bottom line support to top-line business growth. Do you personally want to adapt to changes to meet the shifting needs of your company and staff? Do you want to lead change efforts at your company? Does IT stretch, challenge, or interrupt the status quo? Does IT expand the zone of possible change and development? Is IT in a high-involvement process? The role of the CIO continues to evolve rapidly in the midst of the information or digitalization and accelerating changes in technology. While it is assumed that the core of a CIO is to manage the IT organization and systems that support ongoing business operations, CIOs must not preoccupy themselves with operational platforms and process improvements only, CIOs must have a higher level of influence on how businesses change and how IT can streamline the change. The digital CIO has to look forward and actively position the business in the right place to take full advantage of opportunities and manage innovation in a structural way. Driving digital paradigm shift is not a passive activity, it is a proactive pursuit. IT-driven change is the journey of continuous delivery and improvement. It’s about proactively and continuously trying to improve/develop/ change everything in a prioritized order as long as it creates a more long-term business advantage.

Is IT a learning organization? Does IT drive team building and organizational learning? Do you want to be in a constant learning mode? With fast-growing information and shortened knowledge life cycle, and the important responsibility of managing information/knowledge, IT needs to become a learning organization which can also build learning capability for the entire business. Because nowadays organizations are socio-technical and information savvy. Learning organizations are comfortable with complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty, paradoxes and they have a penchant for candor. High organizational learning relates to high response in recognizing and addressing system constraints. Developing people capability and systems capability raise different "learning" issues. It is imperative to build the culture of learning and improve knowledge management which involves the use of technologies and processes with the aim of optimizing business adaptability. IT needs to help the company integrate information and knowledge management, explore the breadth and depth of knowledge, its prospects and practice to improve the collective learning capability in the organization, it evolves working with knowledge, refines information, captures insight, wins foresight, and gains perspectives for building business competencies.

IT reflection needs to focus on strengthening its strength and improving its weakness. IT resolution should focus on innovation, improvement, and digitalization with a proactive attitude and versatile capability. IT needs to be a proactive business problem solver to gain a sense of achievement, unleash the full digital potential, and move their businesses to the high-level of maturity.

Posted in: CIO Master,IT Innovation,IT Transformation