Are you equipped to face the changing profile of IT leadership?

Analyzing current training programs for leaders is a good barometer to see how effective responses to change are against the needs of companies. Such a review was carried out by Harvard Business Publishing in its 2024 Global Leadership Development Study, which identifies a number of changes in relation to current core curricula. The scope of training programs for leaders has been expanded to include managing automation and robotization projects, as well as mastering ways to incorporate gen AI and ML technology into business operations.

Moreover, 40% of respondents emphasize the importance of culture as the foundation of effective leadership, and 38% highlight the development of innovative capabilities of their leaders. The report also emphasizes that modern leaders must meet the changing demands of a dynamic market, which requires them to constantly learn and adapt.

New IT leadership: anticipate trends

As challenges increase, leaders’ actions toward implementing new tech must be proportionate to ambition of business outcomes. A key characteristic of IT leaders, according to those surveyed recently by the Innovation Advisory Council, is the ability to anticipate technological change. As many as 71% believe they should have a strategic vision that not only allows them to react to trends, but also predict how they’ll change. Almost the same number believe they should have the ability to quickly implement new technologies to achieve measurable success.

But adopting innovative technologies is only part of it as adjusting the mindset to continuous improvement, and being willing to pivot when necessary, is just as critical. So half of respondents, therefore, consider the ability to collaborate interdisciplinarily to be a key feature of a technology leader, while about a third prioritize innovation, creativity, and an expert-level knowledge of cybersecurity.

Turbulent transformations

In theory, this mindset would help stabilize organizations. But it’s the practice and effort put in to be more agile with emerging technologies and cultural shifts that will realize a more fulfilled reality as business outcomes. So the new IT leadership spelled out in the study is intended to generate fresh enthusiasm among somewhat detached veterans of various transformations who might stymie progress. But are C-level managers’ tenures shorter in organizations that have more transformation programs? And how long are they expected to keep building it themselves, considering 85% of senior executives were involved in at least two significant transformations in the past five years, according to a 2023 study by EY and the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, while 67% of respondents indicated at least one transformation process had failed to achieve intended results.

In organizations that didn’t achieve their transformation goals, the percentage of employees expressing negative emotions increased significantly. For 50% of those employees, transformation is synonymous with layoffs. For companies where the goals were achieved, this ratio is still 34%.

Among people in senior management positions, a successful transformation process reduces negative emotions by only nine percentage points. However, in the case of failure to achieve the assumed goals, this increases by as much as 45 percentage points, from 19% to 64%.

Toward digital leadership

It’s no coincidence that when studying the issue of new leadership in IT, there are attempts to compare characteristics between leaders and employees, not only leaders with other leaders. The essence of change lies in these relationships. Researchers from IT University of Copenhagen and the Copenhagen Business School have attempted to systematize what others write about changes in technological leadership. One article analyzes several publications containing references to digital leadership, IT leadership or e-leadership.

Technological changes have created too many barriers for traditional leadership models, requiring the need to define a new concept of digital leadership. The authors in Copenhagen define that as a process of social influence mediated by technology, and aims to change attitudes, thinking, and behaviors in organizations so digital leadership can occur at any level of the organization with one-to-one and one-to-many interactions.

Analyzing various articles reveals changes in the set of characteristics and role of a digital leader compared to other leaders and employees. This is particularly true for the ability to influence change through technology. Emotions also play a key role in this communication, which requires leaders to develop their own emotional intelligence as well as that of their teams.

A duty to be dynamic

The role of the digital leader is evolving from the traditional managerial role to a more complex one. In digitally enabled companies, employees have greater autonomy and can organize their own work and leaders need to adapt their approach to support this autonomy. Work is also becoming increasingly organized around smaller collaborative networks, so leaders must also be able to operate in a networked context, not just a hierarchical one. Therefore, a framework that describes a major change in the roles of digital leaders and in the set of characteristics is required for effective management in the digital era. So instead of silos, there needs to be an increase in employee autonomy and the development of dynamic networks of cooperation.