Be open!

In the past two years, I must have pointed this out several times in my stories, editorials and columns – the CIO’s job is changing from an inside-out profile to outside-in profile.

As organizations proactively embrace digital, the expecta­tions are very high. But as you have probably read in many research reports of late, a lot of digital journeys fail completely. While some reports try to sugarcoat the finding saying they ‘do not achieve the desired results’, a failure is a failure.

And there is a reason I am harsh on these euphemisms like ‘fail­ure to achieve desired results’. I would argue that in many cases, they did not have a very well-defined outcome in the first place. Yes, sustainable, profitable growth is everybody’s business, but dif­ferent paths lead you there based on where you are, what you can do well, and how you want to prioritize.

In many cases, the expectations are sky-high but the exact goals are hazy. An outside-in CIO can actually help the business leaders, thereby helping them define what to expect from digital in the short run, medium run, and well, there is no long run today. Kidding!

That is why keeping your eyes and ears open are important. That is why an open medium like Twitter is important to be in. LinkedIn is too focused. Facebook is built for a different purpose. Twitter is the outlet for ‘the world out there’—beyond the CIOs, beyond your friends, and beyond your industry and regulations.

Once CIOs know what is happening around, they will not get lost without clear instructions; they can call out what is possible and what is not. Why, they can even show where the value could lie. They would not wait for the problem to be defined, and once defined, they would not try to follow it blindly—something that they are used to today. What is worse, many a times, they can call out an impractical goal leveraging technology, but still do not. That is because they lack the confidence, not about their own job but about the big picture.

And a big picture is what a medium like Twitter can give you, provided you use it well. Else, it would be a blind-men-and-ele­phant story.

Do tweet your comments to me at @shyamanuja

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