Moving from the back office to the front lines: CIO insights from the Global C-suite Study — from IBM Institute for Business Value
CIOs tell us that their place in the organizational pyramid has changed in the past five years. Many of them command more respect and possess more authority than before and they are working more closely with their C-suite colleagues.
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
Introduction
In the first installment of our recent Global C-suite Study, we spoke in person with 4,183 top executives covering more than 20 industries to find out how CxOs are earning the loyalty of digitally enfranchised customers and citizens.1 In this report we delve more deeply into what the 1,656 CIOs we interviewed are doing to help their enterprises become more “customer-activated.”
One thing is immediately obvious: just how far some CIOs have come in the past five years. In 2009, we reported that CIOs were rising up the management hierarchy and developing a new, more powerful voice. But they often had to juggle different roles to deal with conflicting goals.2
In 2011, we identified that CIOs were starting to think more like CEOs. They were becoming essential members of the C-suite, although there were marked disparities in the mandates they held — i.e., what the enterprises they worked for expected of the IT function. Most CIOs were helping to expand or transform their organizations. The rest were tasked with leveraging IT to make their organizations more effective, or pioneering radical innovation in the form of new products, markets and business models.3
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In short, while some CIOs remain confined to their traditional domains, a growing number are seizing the opportunity to take on a far bigger role on the front lines of the business.
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From DSC:
The corporate world moves much faster than the world of higher ed (or K-12). So, higher ed should take a look at what this study is saying and note what’s happening to the role of the CIO. My bet is that many of the same dynamics discussed in this report/survey will be on our doorsteps soon, if they aren’t here already.