The New Book “12 CIO Personas” Chapter 3 Introduction: The CIO as “Chief Insight Officer” ~ Future of CIO

Friday, January 5, 2018

The New Book “12 CIO Personas” Chapter 3 Introduction: The CIO as “Chief Insight Officer”

11:11 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Information-based business insight helps to forecast the emergent business trends and customers’ needs.

Organizations across the industry sectors are stepping into the deep “VUCA” new normal with the exponential growth of information and continuous technological disruptions. The pace of changes and complex nature of technologies force more CIOs to shift to the insightful digital leadership role to understand the organizational interdependence and bridge IT-business gaps seamlessly.

Inside the mind of digital CIOs: The digital CIOs are mindful, not necessarily over-thinking, they are imaginative, inquisitive, and innovative; they are also strategic, critical, and systems thinkers who are able to perceive the big picture of the business, comprehend the complexity and systemic issues they face and able to understand the interconnectivity between parts and the whole. More importantly, CIOs need to have “simplicity” as a mindset; by nature, technology is complex, but IT is not for enforcing complexity, but to optimize and hide the complicated side of IT from customers and delight them with intuitive designs and elegant solutions. Thus, CIOs today have to spend more time on thinking thoroughly and act promptly to adapt to changes, forecast and manage risks, do more with innovation, and focus on the long-term winning position to run a high-performance and high-mature digital IT.

Insightful IT leaders are the trusted advisors for the business: CIOs can provide the holistic business insight via effective information management. More to the point, without analysis and understanding of the CIO, how does any c-executive direct the creation of a business strategy that is increasingly dependent on technology and competitive advantages that derive from the information. The CIO plays a crucial role as “Chief Insight Officer,” to provide information-based advice to business executive peers and the corporate board. It also means that IT focuses on curing the root cause of the problem, not just band-aid the symptom. CIOs are good at the perception of technology trends, business solution or talent pipeline. With the knowledge of both business and IT and through an outlier unique lens, insightful CIOs can mind the gap between IT and business, and dig through the new dimensions of the digital transformation.

An insightful IT organization is like the digital brain of the business: An insightful IT organization can process and refine information to capture knowledge, insight, and wisdom, ensuring the right people getting the right information to make right decisions at the right time via the right processes. When information flow frictionlessly and has been used to make informed management decisions to develop new products/services, enter new markets, exploit new channels or having information to be able to conduct day to day operations which have an output value, etc, it becomes one of the most invaluable commodities of the business and the lifeblood of the digital organization. Thus, an insightful organization plays a crucial role in driving business awareness, gaining contextual intelligence, sensing opportunities, predicting risks, and maximizing the digital potential of the business.

IT shouldn’t be the afterthought of the business because technology is often the disruptive force behind digital innovation. Information-based business insight helps to forecast the emergent business trends and customers’ needs. Insightful IT leaders can harmonize IT and business relationship, enforce cross-functional communication and collaboration, with the goal to build up a high-performance, high-intelligent, and high-mature digital IT organization.