The CIO role today: Change agents need only apply

If you’re not yet an agent of change at your organization, your career as CIO may be at risk of falling behind.

That’s because the majority of CIOs now see themselves as innovators and champions of change rather than technologists, according to a recent survey of people holding the job.

While the drumbeat for CIOs to be strategic thinkers has been building for some time, the survey, conducted by Deloitte in February and released in June, marks a watershed moment of sorts: About 54% of CIOs now view themselves as change agents rather than as technical gurus, with another 59% describing themselves as enablers of transformation and innovation rather than someone who achieves operational efficiencies.

The findings align with CIO.com’s own 2024 State of the CIO survey results, which highlighted the CIO as a change maker in the business spotlight.

Both surveys show that the past year — one in which generative AI broke mainstream — has seen a considerable shift in the perception of the CIO remit.

To wit, Deloitte’s 2023 survey of CIOs and other IT leaders found that just 37% saw themselves as owners and drivers of innovation, while about a third saw themselves as providers of tools and analysis undergirding innovation.

The perfect position

As organizations increasingly depend on technology to drive business innovation, CIOs are in a perfect position to drive change forward, says Lou DiLorenzo Jr., National US CIO program leader at Deloitte Consulting.

The new survey doesn’t necessarily suggest that CIOs see the role differently than they did in the recent past, but that they have achieved greater permission from their organizations to be change agents, he says.

“The role is expected to have a bigger impact,” DiLorenzo says. “It’s already a pretty big remit and a platform, but there’s an increasing opportunity and expectation that this role and the executive in it will help drive commercial outcomes, enable growth, and enable cost reduction.”

Deloitte breaks CIOs into two categories, defining CIOs who are change agents, enable transformation and innovation, and take risks as “contemporary CIOs.” In contrast, those who are technical gurus, achieve operational efficiencies, and mitigate risks are “traditional CIOs.”

This newer kind of CIO needs to be in tune with the way their companies make money and understand the demands of customers and regulators, DiLorenzo says.

Being a catalyst or change agent is “about being a bit provocative about what technology can do to create new business, stimulate the business differently, or work to serve customers,” he adds.

This takes strategic thinking and a clear-eyed view about which technologies can help the business and which are pure hype. CIOs should ask themselves several questions about new technologies, DiLorenzo says.

“What’s real?” he says. “What’s maybe too early for prime time, and how do we think about pilots and innovation vs. making a bigger bet?”

According to the survey, half of CIO respondents see themselves as risk takers, and half as risk mitigators. But more CIOs still see themselves as technology leaders rather than business leaders, underscoring that the role remains rooted in technology rather than having evolved away from it.

Permission to innovate

This change to the role is partially driven by CIOs, who see innovation and strategic thinking as more interesting than keeping IT systems running, and partially by other leaders in the organization who want more from the IT team, says John Cannava, CIO of Ping Identity, an identity security vendor.

“It’s the stakeholders knowing that they have to partner with us to get what they want out of these IT systems,” he says. “These systems are core to what they do, and they are the only way that they drive change across an entire organization.”

The first two hires Cannava made when he joined Ping Identity in mid-2021 were not pure IT workers, but were a business analyst and a project manager, he notes. Cannava sees the CIO role as enabling changes across the organization, and that requires a deep and broad understanding of the business.

“When I think about my role currently at Ping, it’s not just CIO, but I lead business transformation,” he says. “I have an organization that we fashion as kind of an internal consulting organization, and their job is to partner with the business and elicit ideas and opportunities on where we can use technology to drive value.”

Deloitte sees CIOs as serving four major roles: catalyst, strategist, operator, and technologist. While being an operator of IT systems is still a foundational part of the job, CIOs can delegate that responsibility so that they can focus on the three other roles, DiLorenzo says.

As many IT functions moved from on premises to the cloud, the CIO’s job has changed from the pure operator role, adds Cannava.

“At that point I noticed a pretty big shift from managing teams that were DBAs and managing the infrastructure for, say, an ERP environment to, ‘Hey, I don’t have to worry about that anymore,’” he says. “Now I’ve got some mindshare that can be dedicated to more interesting things around, like, how do we leverage technology to actually enhance the business process?”

Constant change

The current AI boom provides a good example of how the CIO role is changing, adds Uzi Dvir, CIO at WalkMe, provider of a digital adoption platform. AI can take on some of the technical aspects of the job, such as analytics, while freeing up CIOs to focus more on people.

“I’m a big advocate of putting the human user front and center, and I see soft skills as crucial for CIOs and their teams, as more of our remit centers around adapting AI technologies to the end-user,” Dvir says. “I see my mandate holistically to create the most efficient and easiest-to-use experience for our people using technology at work.”

With technology constantly evolving, CIOs must embrace change, he adds.

“CIOs must be, first and foremost, changemakers,” Divr adds. “I see the CIO role as the chief technology navigator for the organization. Anyone with a credit card can buy software, but it takes a strategic and thoughtful CIO and their team to be an asset to every individual in an organization as they navigate constantly changing technology.”

Organizational change and digital transformation only succeed with support from all areas of the business, and the CIO has a major role to play, adds Neal Riley, CIO at Adaptavist, a digital transformation firm. CIOs play a crucial role in transformation because change requires both innovation and platform flexibility, he adds.

“As the business shape changes, new ways of working and processes need to be adopted,” Riley says. “If a business can meet these changes with the right tools and the correct data, the likelihood of a successful transformation skyrockets.”

Breaking up the job

While CIOs see the role changing and expanding, another trend seems to be moving the position in a different direction. In recent years, many companies have created new IT leadership roles, such as chief data officer, chief digital officer, chief AI officer, and even chief business technology officer, in response to new technologies and increased focus on some in-house IT functions.

In creating these new roles, organizations often see an IT function that either needs more visibility or that becomes bigger and more complicated than one person with other obligations can handle, DiLorenzo says.

CIOs can view these job splits in a couple of ways, he adds. CIOs can welcome the new IT leaders as part of a team working toward the same goals. Business success is a “team sport,” he says.

“The goal should be to work together, because everyone’s success depends on each other,” he says.  “Creating a high-performing team of technology executives is critical.”

Still, the appointment of an additional IT executive should also prompt CIOs to evaluate their own performance, DiLorenzo says.

“It is an opportunity for some reflection,” he adds. “It’s an invitation to wonder, ‘Is this something I could have taken on? Why was I not viewed as someone who could add this to my remit? Is this an invitation to broaden my skill set?’”