The C-Suite needs to consult with its CIO for digital guidance if it wants to avoid becoming a laggard in today’s digital world. That’s one of the findings the CIO Executive Council reported as part of its new “Reinventing the C-Suite” model unveiled this week during the Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leadership conference in Tucson, Arizona.
The new model is designed to “change the way leadership teams innovate, transform, and collaborate,” and was developed with CEOs, CIOs, and other business thought leaders at 22 leading companies. It puts organizations into two categories: vanguards or laggards.
Among the findings: Organizations with C-Suite executives who consult with their CIO for digital leadership are vanguard. Hitting the point home was Cars.com Founder and President Mitch Golub who told the crowd that he mandates all of his C-Level employees to communicate as a group and share ideas. Hidden agendas are forbidden at Cars.com, Golub said in his video remarks: “If anything kills the effectiveness of a C-level team, it’s having silos.”
Organizations also need to have a strategic digital vision, which is something that sounds obvious, but in reality, it isn’t happening often enough, said Rick Pastore, the council’s vice president of strategy. The C-Suite needs its CIO to help to come up with that digital strategy, Pastore said.
Organizations need a “digital pathfinder” to provide digital strategy and literacy to the C-Suite, Pastore said. At SquareTwo Financial, executives look to their CIO to fill that role, said J.B. Richardson, Jr., senior vice president of operations, who counts on his CIOs to help the C-Suite understand how it can use technology to its competitive advantage.
“I look to our CIO Bill Weeks to be the person who can engage and help the awareness of the leaders such that they understand the details without having to get into the details,” said Richardson, who sees his CIO as “a leader first and a technologist second.”
What is your organization doing to educate and rally the C-Suite around technology? We’d love to hear about it in the comments.
