CIOs share insights on the lessons they’ve learned this year about balancing operations and innovation, rifts between IT and the business, and how to capitalize on emerging value creators such as generative AI.
CIOs confronted a host of issues over the past year, with economic, political, and technology events creating both uncertainties and opportunities for organizations across all sectors.
Curious about what it all meant, we asked IT leaders to look back on the somewhat tumultuous year and reflect on what they learned. Here are the key takeaways they shared and how those insights will shape their actions as IT leaders moving forward.
1. Tending your existing IT landscape is critical
The need to focus on fundamentals was cited as a big takeaway from the past year, with CIOs saying they can’t be as nimble, fast, or strong as their organizations require if the foundational IT isn’t up to snuff.
Some admit they learned that the hard way.
“This year we had a huge influx of requests, and with that influx we saw the need to better tend to our landscape,” says Ricki Koinig, CIO of Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources. “It was hard for us to keep up with all the good ideas and priorities that the divisions had, because every time we moved forward, we hit a wall because of our environment — maybe it was something that wasn’t documented or it was too old.”
Koinig says CIOs — including herself — must think of their IT environment like a garden that needs to be continually tended to yield the best returns. She says she and other CIOs must know and understand what’s in the environment, and they must be able to identify what’s where so that their IT teams can strategically plant alongside and on top of it.
Similarly, Koinig says CIOs and their teams must make tending their existing environment a priority along with implementing new elements; that balanced approach ensures everything grows well together.
Koinig says she’s putting those beliefs into practice in 2024, aiming to create a better equilibrium between working on new initiatives and nurturing what’s already in place.
2. Never underestimate the importance of being brilliant at the basics
Similarly, CIOs say the past year has reinforced the need to be brilliant at the basics.
Jay Ferro, executive vice president and chief information, technology, and product officer at Clario, a maker of clinical trial management software, acknowledges that this mantra is not new to most CIOs. Still, he says it’s worth remembering and repeating because it’s as important now as it has ever been.
“You can get distracted by buzzwords, shiny objects, transformation, but so many times you’re reminded — in not so good ways — that you’ve got to keep the trains running on time. That’s your ticket to doing those cooler things,” he says.
Ferro says he was reminded of that message throughout the year, particularly when reports of IT shortfalls made the news — like those headlines Southwest garnered as 2023 started, after its overloaded IT systems wreaked havoc on the holiday travel season.
3. The same goes for agility, adaptability, and flexibility
The ever-increasing pace of technology advancement, most notably seen with the emergence and rapid adoption of generative AI, also highlighted the criticality of agility.
“As I reflect back to December 2022, we had the most important technology I’ve seen during my career land, which was generative AI. Large language models had been around for a few years, but generative AI brought about a particularly rapid pace of change. And it wasn’t put only in the hands of the in-house technology experts; it was used by everybody, and those people did some beautiful things with it,” says Ankur Anand, CIO of professional services company Nash Squared.
Anand says the speed of the technology’s evolution and its adoption, as well as its democratized use, put a bright spotlight on the need for agility and adaptability within the enterprise — traits that are critical for any organization that wants to quickly create new operational models and seize on “the innovation happening in the world” when lightning strikes.
“We can’t wait for traditional demand-and-delivery models to catch up,” he says. “We need to be flexible to the world as it’s happening. The organization has to be more agile and more collaborative because things are changing day by day and demand is changing more and more each day.”
4. Don’t delay — especially on transformative tech
On a related note, Sean Wetcher says 2023 showed that there’s no longer any place for a wait-and-see approach — particularly when it comes to transformative technologies.
“Standing still is not an option — unless your business is willing to forfeit competitive advantage to rivals,” says Wetcher, CIO of software maker Boomi.
He cites AI as case in point, saying “leaders should identify the best ways for their organization to leverage AI by keeping a laser focus on what drives business value. For example, consider how to apply AI to processes in your organization to deliver more engaging experiences for customers, streamline and optimize core operations, or advance transformation initiatives through the integration and automation of products, services, or business models.”
It’s a message Wetcher takes to heart.
“This year’s AI transformation reinforces the approach we have always taken, that each and every decision must be tied to business outcomes,” he says, explaining that his company established a robust framework — including an AI policy with clear guidelines for responsible AI adoption — to foster and support the integration of AI into its operations.
5. Business and IT are not as aligned as you might think
Gen AI played into other lessons-learned over the past year.
That’s the case for IT leader Daniel Uzupis, who cites reports of many business leaders wanting to go all-in with generative AI even as IT advises on the limits of its use for various reasons — or as IT finds great use cases only to be shot down by business fears.
Uzupis, who became CIO at Union Community Care in October, says such scenarios showed him that “a massive disconnect” remains between business units and the IT team in many places.
“I can’t say what the problem is, and I don’t think it’s a fault that rests on either side, but I do think it’s a combination of the two,” he says, adding that part of the disconnect stems from the ongoing misunderstanding that many have about the role of information systems and the IT team. He also sees their underestimation of the value IT can provide as another issue.
“We in [information systems technology] have a better understanding of how the organization works than people think,” he says.
Like other CIOs, Uzupis sees how IT’s work across all functions gives the tech team visibility into the organization’s strengthens, weaknesses, and needs. But Uzupis has found that some businesses don’t appreciate or take advantage of the insight that IT can bring to strategic planning.
Enterprise accounting practices exacerbate the situation, he says, as financials look at yearly figures while IT investments for strategic goals are often multiyear endeavors, a mismatch that continues to create tensions within many organizations.
“Sometimes organizations make tactical decisions that don’t work well for the long-term success of the organization,” he says.
6. Addressing AI requires a comprehensive approach
CIOs say they’ve also learned over the past year how to take on generative AI — and AI as a whole — as some have embraced it wholeheartedly, others fear it, and still others don’t know what to think.
“You have this huge appetite for change with some leaders, but others are on the other side saying, ‘No, we can’t do this,’” says Amy Evins, CIO of Avient, a manufacturing firm. “So you have to educate people on what is it, what does it look like, and how you’re going to treat it.”
To deal with that, Evins decided the best strategy was to take a very intentional approach for utilizing the technology. She started by identifying the principles that form the boundaries for AI use and then developed policies to ensure that implementations will work within those boundaries.
“People are going to use AI, and I thought, ‘How can I partner with them? I don’t want to prohibit people from exploring this, so how do I safely enable it?’ So I’m giving people a sandbox and can say ‘go’ but stay within this contained [sandbox],” she explains.
Other CIOs say they, too, have used the lessons of the past year to crystalize their approach to AI (and generative AI in particular), noting the importance of applying good governance and other existing best practices to the use of this technology.
Ferro, for example, says he has developed an approach that focuses on prioritizing projects projected to bring the most value and on starting small, proving value, and then scaling.
“CIOs get swept up in the hype, too. But you can only place so many bets. So focus on the best use cases for your company. You can innovate on the fringes, but make sure what you’re investing in is useful to your company and your customers,” he adds.
7. Flexible work models (done well) can pay dividends
For Ferro, the continuing work-from-anywhere option has convinced him that this workplace policy is not only here to stay but also calls for CIOs like him to prioritize the enablement of flexible work. “It’s being really deliberate about user experience,” he explains.
That means holding panel interviews and creating user groups to provide a steady stream of feedback; reviewing trouble tickets to find patterns that indicate problems and places for improvement; and providing adequate training to ensure all workers are comfortable and confident leveraging collaboration tools and other workplace technologies.
It also means finding ways to help teams — include those within the IT department — come together to collaborate, connect, and celebrate.
“That means you’re available, you’re doing proactive outreach, you’re showing gratitude, you’re not just waiting for things to come to you but doing spot-checking. And you’re not just focusing on employees’ productivity but you’re focusing on them as individuals,” says Ferro, noting that his IT staff is spread over 30 countries. “We have to take care of the whole person. In this day and age of hybrid work, we’re all used to kids and pets on the screen. You have to lean into that and accept that.”
8. Still, RTO isn’t so bad
On the other hand, some CIOs say reports over the past year that show the downsides of remote work have them rebalancing their employees’ schedules.
That’s the case for Saby Waraich, CIO and CISO at Clackamas Community College. He points to general reports about lower worker productivity in 2023, people working two jobs simultaneously, and increasing isolation and mental health concerns as reasons to reevaluate the state of remote and hybrid work.
Waraich’s team had been fully remote for a while and is now working back on site three days a week. He plans to reassess that schedule early next year to determine whether to bump up the in-office schedule to four days a week.
9. Be ready for the unexpected
Another lesson that this past year has surfaced is the need to be ready for events that may not be on the agenda.
As IT leader Sam Segran explains, CIOs had been working on longstanding priorities and as a result many weren’t prepared for changes that came out of left field.
“The major priorities for CIOs for the last few years have been business alignment, cybersecurity and infrastructure resilience, user experience, digital transformation, data management, emerging technologies including AI/ML and quantum computing, and supply chain issues. However, the two biggest takeaways from 2023 have been the overwhelming increase in the rate and scope of impact from generative AI and impact from the political and social fronts,” he says.
Segran, CIO and vice president of IT at Texas Tech University, says those two events left some CIOs in reactive mode, noting that CIOs were “scrambling to incorporate, manage, facilitate, fund, and support this tremendous increase in the use of generative AI.”
Meanwhile, he says concerns and restrictions that arose around TikTok, WeChat, and other technologies “placed an additional level of operational challenge on CIOs in terms of increased cybersecurity and operational cost, fulfilling compliance, and helping customers find alternate technologies where feasible.”
CIOs should keep such incidents in mind as they move forward, Segran says, and take actions to be better positioned to respond. He lists the need for CIOs to be well-informed on news topics; to provide continuous training for all employees; to increase collaborations with non-IT partners; and to use behavior-based policies that can remain relevant and constant even in an evolving technology landscape.
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