Telecom & Technology Consulting
Starting during the dotcom era of the mid 1990s, we’ve seen a vast shift in the traditional corporate hierarchy. Whereas the CEO used to make every decision unilaterally, he or she must now consider the perspectives from leaders of other key departments. That’s especially true for the CIO, which is why tech leaders and CEOs need a special type of collaborative relationship.
And that’s the way it must be for success. Every single organization’s fortunes depend on their technology – their buying decisions, their strategies, their deployments, their innovations.
As such, it is common today for boards to bring CIOs to the table to get their advice about how technology can not only drive ROI, but also how it could spur brand growth. After all, these are the people who best understand the technology and how it can contribute to the company’s overall vision. In this way, the CIO has leaped from one who merely supported strategy to being an educator, evangelist, and in many cases, an industry influencer.
This new CIO-CEO dynamic requires a high level of teamwork and trust. Gone are the days where CEOs provided 100% of the direction. Instead, they partner with the CIO to identify how technology can provide a competitive edge. For the relationship to flourish, there must be a genuine agreement that the chosen path is the right path for the organization. Any perceived or real leverage of power on the part of the CEO can damage the relationship, and in turn, hinder the company’s progress toward its goals.
At a high-level, it appears it’s the CEO that must learn a new way to approach their jobs (and perhaps check their ego at the door). But CIOs must also shift their mindset and embrace a more empowered role. In the past they used to be order-takers, but tech leaders are now expected to be visionaries who propose change; they must grow from those who implement strategy to those who connect the dots between a corporate destination and the technology required to profitably arrive there.
All of this change requires open communication and ongoing conversations. The more CEOs and CIOs listen to each other, the better they align expectations and address concerns. With constant talking, texting, and meetings over coffee, the two most important people at the organization can reach more promising conclusions than those derived from the old top-down form of decision-making. They are decisions that are simultaneously customer-centric, employee-centric, and ROI-centric.
These “soft skills” are rarely mentioned as essential for success in the world of high-tech. Instead, the dominant messages seem to be about innovation, brand building, digital transformation, and long-term scalability. But you can’t attain those results without having open communication, and its cousin, patience. Indeed, those are critical traits for assuring a fruitful CEO-CIO partnership.
That said, we’re not only talking about the evolution of the CEO-CIO relationship, but also a wholesale shift in the corporate culture. The flattening of the org chart must take place across the entire organization; collaboration and a free exchange of ideas must be the norm, not the exception. Begin with those at the top.
