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How CIOs can survive CEO tech envy

CEOs used to think, “All IT has to do is just write a program.” It was up to the CIO to explain why, in IT-land, the word “just” really ought to be banned.

Then CEO tech literacy happened. It mostly happened, not because CIOs became better at explaining what IT is all about, but because “Digital” happened. Except that Digital didn’t end up meaning what many commentators said it meant.

Digital happened because business decision-makers entered the Realm of Pervasive Technology — in which the use of technology for a given situation is assumed, and case-by-case decisions about technology are about when not to use it, not when to approve investments in it.

Your CEO, not to mention the rest of the executive leadership team and other influential managers and staff, live in the Realm of Pervasive Technology by dint of routinely buying stuff on the internet — and not just shopping there, but having easy access to other customers’ experiences with a product, along with a bunch of other useful capabilities.

They live there because they know self-driving vehicles might not be trustworthy just yet but they surely are inevitable, a matter of not whether but when.

They’ve lived there since COVID legitimized the virtual workforce. They might not like living in the Land of Zoom (or Teams, or Meet), but not only do they interact there, they’re expected to figure out how to live and work there all on their own.

It’s because CEOs are living in the Realm of Pervasive Technology that, when they encounter something nifty on a website, app, or retail storefront then you, as CIO, can’t get away with shrugging off the notion of making it part of your company’s repertoire as an unrealistic expectation.

Simplicity is value

And CEOs have every reason to expect you to make it happen. Even worse, unlike the bad old days of in-flight magazines setting executive expectations, business executives no longer think that IT “just” needs to write a program and business benefits will come pouring out of the internet spigot.

They know from hard experience that these things are hard.

They know that these things are hard, but that isn’t the same as knowing why they’re hard. Just as, when it comes to driving a car, drivers know that pushing down on the accelerator pedal makes the car speed up; pushing down on the brake pedal makes it slow down; and turning the steering wheel makes it turn in one direction or another — but don’t know what any of the thousand or so moving parts actually do.

Continuing the metaphor, electric vehicles (EV) have far fewer moving parts than those with internal combustion engines (ICE) — dozens rather than thousands — greatly simplifying maintenance.

Which, at last, gets us to the point: Is your IT organization doing what it can to be a metaphorical EV and not an ICE?

That is, analogies notwithstanding, is your IT architecture, at all layers, as simple as it can be?

Take stock of your tech stack

Ask yourself … scratch that, ask your teams:

  • How many operating systems are in use? How many versions of those operating systems are in use? Of those versions, how many are up to date?
  • How many languages are in use? How many create recruiting challenges because few applicants have any interest in developing in them?
  • How many database management systems are in use? How many versions of those are in use? Of those versions, how many are up to date?
  • How many application suites are in production? How many modules of those suites? How many versions of those modules? Of those versions, how many are up to date?
  • Of your data repositories, how many are clean and well-structured, versus those that are a tangled mess?
  • In the business areas that make use of all this, how many applications does an average employee have to be familiar with to do their jobs?
  • How many interfaces are in use to keep data in overlapping databases synchronized? Are they batch or real-time? Are they custom-coded or connector-based?
  • For these questions, how easy or hard was it to find the answers?
  • If the CEO was willing to make the investment, how much staff, money, and time would you need to fix the worst failings in your IT architecture?

It was bad enough when CEOs thought of IT as a necessary evil, without knowing much about what it takes. Now they think of IT as a strategic imperative and have at least a basic understanding of what it takes to make it happen.

That’s much worse.

More from Bob Lewis:

  • The lazy CIO’s guide to better IT investment
  • The dirty little secret of ‘quick win’ IT
  • The dirty work of IT leadership: Dealing with malfeasance


Read More from This Article: How CIOs can survive CEO tech envy
Source: News

Category: NewsMarch 4, 2025
Tags: art

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