The New Book “12 CIO Personas” Conclusion: Enhance Digital CIO Personas with Enriched Leadership Portfolio

Digital CIOs have multiple personas to practice the situational leadership accordingly.

With increasing pace of changes and fast growing information, the role of IT and that of the CIO is going through significant changes. Overall speaking, the digital CIO is the leadership role, how CIOs provide the appropriate leadership and how they convey to leverage IT for the business value depends on the CIOs’ vision and their leadership strengths and styles. Further, whatever the management team needs or wants at the time out of the CIO will be different, and by the type of business needs will be different as well. Thus, the CIO role needs to be continually reimagined, refreshed, and reinvented. Digital CIOs have multi-faceted personas and need to practice the situational leadership skillfully.

Digital CIOs are born to change: Due to “disruptive” nature of technology and overwhelming growth of information. Digital CIOs are born to change as well. They must understand the issues or opportunities, listen to a wide range of opinions and approaches to think the new way to do things. Refreshing IT leadership is to keep the digital tempo for creating business synergies and accelerating digital transformation. Digital CIOs are often the outlier visionaries who are good at the perception of technology trends, emerging business opportunities or alternative business solutions. They are skeptical about conventional understanding of the problems so that they examine everything before accepting it for its real truth or advising it to others. They are informative, persuasive, and empathetic to close digital leadership and communication gaps via their niche talent and skills. A unique set of digital thinking helps IT leaders think broader, deeper, use longer-term frame, and take a holistic lens, to improve IT performance and maturity.

Digital CIOs should practice creative leadership to run an innovative IT: Digital is the age of innovation. Digital CIOs need to be creative enough to dream bigger for envisioning the future of the business and “sell the dream” via creative communication and vivid storytelling, bold enough to inspire the team, and also logical enough to implement it. Digital CIOs need to have the capacity to learn, relearn, and adapt. It is particularly important for practicing innovative IT leadership effortlessly. That means to have the willingness to try something new, to test, to learn what you knew again, with new perspectives, to listen and remain balanced. Digital is the age of options, it provides the opportunities for IT leaders to get really creative on how to delight customers and orchestrate changes, to ensure IT is strategically positioned to be ahead of where the business is moving next.

Digital CIOs have multiple leadership and management responsibilities, and have to practice situational IT leadership fluently: Digital CIOs need to be the business strategists, technological visionaries, customer advocates, talent masters, process overseers, and governance champion, etc. Digital CIOs also need to be able to communicate skillfully to avoid the “Lost in Translation” syndrome. Although the title is not as essential as responsibility, the digital standard needs to be built and the priority should be set. CIOs should present their leadership authenticity, enhance their leadership strength, practice the digital leadership philosophy they believe in, and tailor their own leadership style to make a digital fit.

Every leadership in unique and every CIO is unique. The focus of IT upon digital transformation is not about changing the title, but updating mindsets, skill sets, and toolset, set up the digital standard to improve IT competency and maturity in a continuous way.

Posted in: CIO Leadership,CIO Master