Tag: CSO

Over the last year, it seemed that CIOs faced an existential threat. This threat was coming from new roles – Chief Digital Officer, Chief Security Officer, Chief Data Officer – as well as the business becoming more and more involved in digital transformation, and looking to inject its influence into IT.

It even got to the point early on last year, where there were questions as to whether or not the CIO’s role would continue, or would it dissolve or devolve into these different roles.

During the course of the year, we investigated this, and have come up with a strong point of view that in fact, the CIO has survived this challenge, redrawn its charter, and has emerged as a very powerful and sustaining executive role in the organization.

You know, in this new charter, what we find is there is no other executive in the organization that has the breadth of vision across all the different operating parts of the organization or the depth of resources to be able to deliver on digital transformation and support the new digital operating models that are emerging – leaving the CIO as the natural place for this responsibility to stay in.

And the new breed of CIO, therefore, is redrawing their charter to support this new vision. Now, redrawing this charter is not easy, and it requires substantial changes in organization, IT organization, as well as a substantial commitment to deepen the relationship with both the business and the board so that the CIO in the organization can play this transformative role.

I look forward to hearing from you this year on how your progress toward this new charter and your experiences as you build this very important role in your organization.