Less than 5 years ago, the mighty CIO controlled his or her organization’s destiny by shepherding multi-million dollar projects and ruling with a fist. Business leaders had to pay homage to the IT team and they hated it. The economic crisis, advent of the cloud and SaaS, and the massive number of IT failures have rapidly changed the role of the CIO. Saddled with the burden of maintaining legacy projects and faced with a shortage in budget and resources, businesses now move around the IT team as they must meet a flurry of business requirements. CIO’s have lost a lot of control in guiding how technology is used in the enterprise because the world of consumer tech has out innovated enterprise class technologies.
CIO’s And Their Organizations Challenged By The Pace Of Change In The 2010’s
Similar to this past decade, organizations will face massive amounts of change in the next decade. While change is nothing new to CIO’s and their organizations, the velocity of change has increased – to a point where the rate of obsolescence outpaces the rate of change. Conversations with over 200 CIO’s this year reveal an anxiety in remaining nimble, cutting costs, and just keeping up with change. CIO’s must rapidly respond to disruptive forces in the market, workforce dynamics, business models, and pace of technology adoption (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Four areas of change responsible for major disruptions in today’s organizations
(Source: R Wang & Insider Associates, LLC)
The Bottom Line – The CIO Role Shifts To Match Next Gen Enterprise Requirements
What’s the role of the CIO in this next gen enterprise?
(Cross-posted @ A Software Insider's Point of View)
