Innerstrategicinfluence ~ Future of CIO

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

Innerstrategicinfluence

6:06 PM Pearl Zhu No comments

Strategic thinking is about starting the end in mind.

Compared to the other executive positions, the CIO role continues to be shaken up, refined, reinvented and reenergized. The magic “I” of the CIO title sparks many imaginations and modern CIOs need to wear different hats and play multiple roles.

The purpose of "CIO Master - Unleash the Digital Potential of IT " is to provide guidelines for building a framework to run a highly effective, highly innovative and highly mature digital IT organization. Also, it provides the principles to reinvent CIO leadership via practicing multitudes of digital influence. Here is a set of blogs for brainstorming the role of CIOs and reinventing IT to get digital ready.

Strategic Influence

InnovativeCIO with “Strategic and Paradoxical Intelligence” IT is increasingly supportive of the competitive position of the business. IT matters not only because it’s pervasive, but also because it continues to advance, its nature of the "constructive disruption" and its “paradox in management.” IT leaders have to deal with issues that combine contradictory features or qualities. At the highest level of organizational maturity, IT needs to become the game changer for their company.

IT Strategic Planning With continuous disruptions and fierce competitions, many IT organizations suffer from overloaded tasks and overwhelming growth of information. They encounter so many daily distractions that stop them from laser focusing on achieving strategic business goals. High performance CIOs should have knowledge and leadership influence to demonstrate IT as strategic business competency. They need to build a good strategy which is an integral component of the business strategy, based on the circumstances that will allow the highest probability of IT management success. But more specifically: How to make IT strategic planning right?

Strategic Thinker Strategic thinking is about starting the end in mind. Statistically, only 5% of the population is a nature strategic thinker. Being able to think strategically is an invaluable digital thinking skill that perhaps not everyone has, but it is critical to be future-oriented and make a progressive movement. Given that, the importance of diversity and formulating a team that has complementing skills cannot be understated. So, how to spot strategic thinkers and discover their talent and potential to build a solid leadership talent pool. Strategic thinkers are interdisciplinary influencers because thinking and logical reasoning are not for their own sake, but to make positive & intellectual influence and drive progressive & transformative changes. Here are three characteristics of strategic thinking.

Strategic CIO Modern CIOs have to wear multiple hats nowadays, from business strategist to tactical manager; from customer champion to talent master. A qualified CIO has to be a strategist, but what image comes to mind when you think of strategic CIOs?

Strategic IT Many organizations still consider IT as a maintenance department and Cost Center, which lenses do you take to look into IT depends on the senior executives’ perspectives, background, and the organization’s culture as well. Forward-thinking IT organizations are at turning point of change from transactional IT to transformational IT and from operational IT to strategic IT.Digital CIOs today need to have both business acumen and technological understanding to become the trustful business advisor and empathetic IT manager in order to lead effectively and digitize IT effortlessly.