CIOs share their objectives to shape IT outcomes in the year ahead, from building better business alignment to transforming IT into a business catalyst.
CIOs are readying for another demanding year, anticipating that artificial intelligence, economic uncertainty, business demands, and expectations for ever-increasing levels of speed will all be in play for 2024.
Yet, CIOs remain both undaunted by that list and expectant about what they can achieve. They’re articulating ambitions and formulating objectives, turning those would-be challenges into opportunities.
What exactly do CIOs hope to accomplish in the upcoming months? We asked a representative group of CIOs to share what they’ve resolved to do. Here’s what they list as their 2024 resolutions.
1. Build better business alignment
Multiple CIOs plan to strengthen their ties to other functional areas in ’24, building on the work they’ve done in recent years to create even more synergy.
As Lee Boelens, CIO of workforce solutions provider GDH, says: “IT is more than a department; it is an important resource that should be woven into each of the other departments.”
2. Create dynamic, flexible teams
Alignment only gets IT so far, though. To ensure results, some CIOs say they’re creating teams that can easily pivot as business needs change. George F. Claffey Jr., CIO of Central Connecticut State University, is one such CIO.
“Emphasizing agility and flexibility is key in this dynamic environment,” he says. “To adapt to these changes, we are modifying our organizational structure. We’re moving away from rigid hierarchies of managers and subordinates, transitioning towards more dynamic and flexible teams.”
Claffey notes that undertaking such a shift goes beyond making structural changes. It requires a shift in cultural mindset, one that alters how the organization functions operationally.
“The goal is to redesign our organization into interdisciplinary teams. Such teams can be assembled based on specific projects, offering greater speed, flexibility, and agility,” he says. “This approach is vital for staying competitive and responsive in an era where technological advancements, particularly in AI, are rapid and transformative.”
3. Answer those persistent questions about AI
As GDH’s Boelens observes, the swift advancements made in AI have left CIOs and their C-suite colleagues grappling with significant questions. He sees 2024 as the year to have good answers.
“With AI being the talk of 2023, [there were questions on] how do we, as a company, handle its adoption, governance, and education about it to our employees,” he says. “Almost all of GDH’s tech stack will have some kind of AI component in 2024. So, what does that mean for our employees and customers? Will our employees fight against or embrace AI? What level of service do our customers expect with AI? What benefit does AI serve to that department? How might AI change that department’s processes? How will we create governance and training for each department?”
Boelens says GDH formed an AI task force comprising department heads “to have meaningful conversations on the impact of AI.” His goal is to surface answers to those big questions and to “ensure all departments within our organization understand how AI assists with their day-to-day tasks and how to use it properly and safely.”
4. Achieve aggressive AI goals
That’s not to suggest CIOs are slowing down their AI work.
Chris Bowers,CIO of Boston Consulting Group, puts it this way: “In 2024, we’re going to go after generative AI very aggressively. We’re piloting, PoC-ing. We have many irons in the fire. And we’re learning as we go. We have a bunch of short-term things we want to get out very quickly.”
Bowers expects the pace at which IT is expected to deliver AI-enabled solutions will speed up. He’s determined to keep up, finding ways to help his staffers be more agile in using AI to accelerate insights that inform innovation.
“With AI, we’re driving faster than I have in my 15 years here,” he adds.
5. Bring the whole organization on the AI journey
CIOs also see the need to bring everyone along on that AI journey, something that takes a well-articulated narrative about the benefits AI can bring to those who are and will be impacted by the technology.
That’s the case for Yi Zhou, CTO and CIO with Adaptive Biotechnologies. He plans to scale his company’s experimental generative AI initiatives “and evolve into an AI-native enterprise” in 2024.
“This vision represents a fundamental shift, positioning AI as an integral part of our business fabric rather than just an add-on. It involves reimagining our strategies, business models, processes and culture centered around AI’s capabilities, to reshape how we work and drive unparalleled productivity and innovation,” he says.
To do that, he’s working with his enterprise colleagues and a cross-functional AI steering committee to devise a comprehensive AI integration initiative. Zhou and his company’s leadership team are setting up AI incubation labs and tiger teams. And they’re focused on upskilling the workforce “to be AI-fluent, ensuring every employee is either AI-ready or an AI advocate.”
6. Embrace AI with care
No one denies that AI will bring big changes, and that its continuing evolution will lead to changes that are unforeseeable. That has Martin de Weerdt preceding thoughtfully.
“AI becoming mainstream will have a profound impact on many of the processes and tasks [that] organizations and people execute every day, and it can bring tremendous benefits,” says de Weerdt, CIO of human resources services firm Randstad. “But at the end of the day, it boils down to statistics. Statistics can be very misleading. Hence, we need to ensure that we maintain a moral compass and a human conscience in how we apply AI.”
And that moral compass will have to come from within, he says. “Legislation will lag, so organizations and more particularly CIOs will have to be guardians of how AI is applied, particularly when it comes to people and their behavior,” de Weerdt says.
He and his company have already taken steps in this direction, having installed an “equity board” tasked with evaluating how the company uses data and AI.
7. Transform IT into a business catalyst
CIOs say they want to further transform IT. Having moved IT from a cost center to a business enabler, some now set their sights on making it a “business catalyst.”
“In today’s dynamic business environment, IT must transcend traditional roles,” Adaptive Biotechnologies’ Zhou says. “We’re aiming to revolutionize our approach by not only delivering outcome-based tech solutions but also by reimagining IT as an integral, revenue-contributing part of the business. This strategy aims to utilize technology not merely as an operational tool, but as a core driver of business success.”
Zhou plans on using cross-disciplinary teams that blend tech expertise and business acumen to keep every tech initiative “linked to business objectives and revenue generation,” fostering an entrepreneurial mindset within IT and encouraging teams “to think beyond traditional boundaries and identify new revenue streams,” he says.
Hervé de La Sayette, global CIO of Hoya Vision Care, lists the same objective, saying he has resolved “to further develop how IT can contribute to the business, to being a bigger part of the decision-making about where to take the company.”
He adds: “It’s not about sharing costs or P&L. It’s about sharing value objectives.”
8. Foster strategic innovation
Like CIOs everywhere, Moe Asgharnia, CIO of professional services firm BPM, wants to see more innovation happening. But he’s more specific in his quest for innovation in 2024, saying he wants “purposeful innovation.”
“Purposeful innovation will be all about aligning technology solutions with the strategic goals and values of our firm in addition to the needs of our clients. We will take an intentional and strategic approach to driving positive change through technological innovation,” he explains. “To be purposeful innovators we will focus on identifying specific challenges and opportunities that can be addressed through innovative technology solutions while fostering a culture of creativity, collaboration, and continuous improvement.”
9. Get hip to the latest tech
CIOs know they can’t invest in “technology for technology’s sake.” On the other hand, however, de La Sayette sees the importance of watching for and learning about all the glitzy tech hitting the market.
“Generative AI showed how flashy new things can help the business,” he says, “and at least for my part, we need to be better positioned [to take advantage of] new technologies, to understand what we can do with new technologies and how we can use them to provide better services or improve operations. We always have to have IT prepared for new things, and I want to do better understanding what is possible with new technologies.”
10. Do more with less
Although research indicates that CIOs might not have a choice on this one, as budgets for many IT organizations remain relatively flat or even in decline, some CIOs are championing do-more-with-less of their own volition.
Rob Waddell, EVP and CIO of Eliassen Group, provider of professional services, consulting, and talent solutions, is one of them. He’s set on helping his company grow without having to always add more staff.
He has a plan to do that. He says it starts with building a superior leadership team. Next is modernizing the technology stack, shedding legacy components, and implementing software-as-a-service automation and intelligence to eliminate low-value tasks (including those within his own IT department) so that teams can shift to higher-value, high-impact work.
“We’re implementing the right technology to accelerate our processes, make them more efficient, make the user experience fantastic and deliver advanced capabilities to the business,” he says.
That work is already helping IT do more with less heading into the new year, Waddell adds, as the modern ecosystem has reduced the need for integration and other maintenance work that can pull technologists away from initiatives that more directly impact business success.
“For 2024 we’re focused on delivering ROIs around efficiency — working more productively, with more user satisfaction, to have better profitability.”
11. Be transparent about IT’s needs and challenges
At the same time, CIOs need to be upfront about the limits of IT, says Marcus Session, vice president of IT for Tampa International Airport and a leader with the Society for Information Management (SIM) Tampa Bay chapter.
As such, Sessions says one of his resolutions is to “be honest about the needs and challenges of IT.”
Session says CIOs — himself included — have a history of failing to surface those topics when talking to C-suite colleagues. “But we do ourselves a disservice when we don’t lay out the truth, so we have to have courage and be honest and put the information out there,” he says.
It’s a tough move to make, he admits. But enterprise leaders should better understand how, for example, the economy, inflation, and staffing challenges are impacting IT just as IT is expected to know how those factors affect other business units.
Session says more forthrightness from CIOs benefits the organization, allowing it to more effectively address those challenges and plan how to deal with or tackle them.
12. Put security first
Getting better at security is a perennial resolution, but Wayson Vannatta, CIO of software company Nintex, is bringing a new approach to it for 2024. His mantra moving forward: Choose security over convenience.
That may sound like a stretch goal, but Vannatta says his plan to mature his company’s security strategy, and packaging new or enhanced security protocols as part of the Zero Trust framework, could help smooth over resistance to his resolution.
“If we go with the Zero Trust approach,” he explains, “it takes out some of the debate about what is better — convenience or security. And it helps tip the balance back to security.”
13. Be ready for more change
Given the events of the past several years, and how quickly and unpredictably the world can change, GDH’s Boelens aims to embrace that continuous nature of change and encourage others to do the same.
“Each department and individual within the organization needs to understand that what and how we do things today will not be the way we do it in the future,” he says.
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