Are you a controller or value creator?

BY Shyamanuja Das
In EDITOR SPEAK
Jul 29, 2019
5767
5

“Mature organizations do recognize that the value of technology comes most from combining the more efficient, more effective IT-leveraged parts of the business to create a whole organizational effectiveness that is more than the sum of the parts”

Are you a controller or value creator? - ITNEXT

Most of the CIOs—irrespective of their age and experience—today realize that understanding of business and being able to communicate in the language business understands are extremely critical for carrying out their responsibilities as CIOs or senior IT managers.

However, those are at best, necessary conditions—and far from adequate to be an effective CIO.

This is why.

While most IT managers would talk to you about how CIO’s role is changing and how the expectations from the CIO are changing, many are yet to reconcile to the fact that a CIO’s importance in an organization is not measured (anymore) by the amount of budget he/she controls but the kind of business value he/she creates.

As the cover story in this issue illustrates, increasingly a lot of decisions concerning IT are being taken by the functional and LOB managers. Two factors have necessitated this change. On one hand, IT is now more interwoven in business; on the other, today cloud model allows the business managers to go for the functionalities that they are interested in without worrying about what lies beneath—the IT infrastructure.

Mature organizations do recognize that the value of technology comes most from combining the more efficient, more effective IT-leveraged parts of the business to create a whole organizational effectiveness that is more than the sum of the parts. In short, what the CEO/COO have been doing all these years, has to be supported by an effective technology and the person they turn to do that is the CIO.

That is why Sohini, who has written the cover story, calls them the Chief Integration Officers. They will increasingly help in maximizing business value through effective integration.

It requires a change in attitude—not change in skills. While among the older generation of CIOs it is considered a great virtue to be able to do that, it is becoming a basic expectation from the next generation.

That is why it is important that the next-level managers prepare themselves for the change. There’s no certification for this. You just have to realign your expectations and tune your attitude.

Begin by unlinking your importance in your organization from the budget you control—even when the vendors who you deal with in your day-to-day life will try their best to make you believe the opposite.

Read the ITNEXT July 2019 Magazine

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