The Monthly “The Change Agent CIO” Book Tuning: Reboot IT to Get Digital Ready Dec. 2018 ~ Future of CIO

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

The Monthly “The Change Agent CIO” Book Tuning: Reboot IT to Get Digital Ready Dec. 2018

11:30 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Digital CIOs need to be proactive, visible, and influential, get out of the comfort zone and have to become the change agents to walk the talk effortlessly.

Change is inevitable, organizational change has become a common practice within an organization, but too often changes are made as a reaction to outer impulses, crisis, and demands. This is the bureaucracy’s way of meeting the challenges. A digital transformation is achieved via dynamic Strategy-Execution-Change lifecycle management, though it is not all linear steps, but an iterative, ongoing and upgoing change continuum.

Change in and of itself is never the reason. Change is an ongoing business capability. Change Management needs to be a mechanism embedded in the multitude of IT management. Digital CIOs need to be proactive, visible, and influential, get out of the comfort zone and have to become the change agents to walk the talk effortlessly. How to Reboot IT to Get Digital Ready and cultivate the culture of learning and innovating?

Reboot IT to Get Digital Ready

Rebooting IT to get Digital Ready Organizations are stepping into the deep digital normal with increasing speed of changes. Information is abundant, technology is pervasive. Never before has IT and business been so closely tied together, never before has technology moved more quickly and missteps have larger trajectory impacts on every aspect of the business. Therefore, CIOs play the crucial role in leading changes as they continue to be put on the front line. They need to deal with constant ambiguity and digital disruptions for rebooting IT to get digital ready.

“Thinkingaire Effect” in IT Transformation: Reboot IT Mindset IT plays a significant role in digital transformation. IT transformation is an integral part of the business transformation. There are changes in two shapes: One is internal where IT transforms and the second where IT helps transform or change the business in line with new strategic imperatives. Transformation is the radical change, IT needs to reboot its mindset before it can change its attitude, and build the set of capabilities to drive digital transformation.

Tough Choice for IT: Change the Name, or Reboot Mindset IT is being treated as a cost-to-be-controlled for years -It may be reasonable because many IT organizations are seen as IT help desk to keep light on, or simply cannot give a fair accounting of where the money is going in terms of business capability or, more importantly, directly identifying the business value -- which leads to an inability for IT to its value to the lines-of-business. However, with business across sectors moving from industry speed to digital speed, IT becomes so pervasive and critical, information is the lifeblood of the organization, and IT is business’s “digital brain”; many companies started with marketing driven, then finance driven, consumer-driven, lately become IT driven. Can IT really be a game changer to drive business growth? Should the name then reflect the IT contributions and have people aware of the criticality of its value?

Nine Perspectives to RE-Imagine IT Outside in & Retool IT Inside Out In today's digital business environment, information is the lifeblood, and technology touches every phase of the business. However, the majority of IT organizations still get stuck at the lower level of maturity and running in the industrial mode as a cost center and commodity service provider. How to reimagine IT’s unleashed potential, rebrand IT’s tarnished image and retool IT in a systematic way?

Setting Principles and Initiating Next Practices to Reboot IT It is the end of the year, also the time for the digital CIO leaders reimagine and reinvent IT for digital ready: What is the IT role in your company? Are you there to just keep the lights on, or is IT expected to actively take part in strategic and tactical decisions? How to set principles, develop the next practices,...