The CIO role has evolved dramatically over the last decade. Today, it’s about driving business innovation with technology—whether implementing AI, managing digital risk, or accelerating IT and digital transformations
There’s no question that the role of the CIO has changed significantly over the last decade. Instead of focusing on keeping IT systems up and running, you now are responsible for orchestrating business innovation with everything related to tech: assessing the value of implementing AI, mitigating digital risk, driving tech advancements, accelerating both IT and digital business transformations.
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There’s a real opportunity ahead for you in 2025 to ensure that your IT organization no longer is a cost center burdening the business but, instead, a strategic enabler. But you first must address these four telltale signs that your IT organization is holding back your business:
1) You feel as if you’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off — every day.
Having worked with CIOs at enterprise organizations for the past three decades, I know that a reactive, chaotic approach to IT is never going to go away completely. Yet when you feel as if you’re running around like that proverbial headless chicken every day, you know it’s time to make a change. Not only is operating in reactive IT mode stressful and unproductive, but it is also highly inefficient and costly. Why continue a ticket-by-ticket approach to your IT support desk, for example, when you can address the same issue affecting hundreds of employees at once?
When you can shift to a proactive IT mode by using data to stave off IT issues and enable employees to be more strategic and productive, you can set a better tone for your IT organization and business at large. Nobody on your team wants to be that poor chicken — with you leading the flock. You’ll never be able to run toward your strategy vision if you’ve lost sight of it.
2) You feel as if your team is suffering from “swivel syndrome” — with nothing stopping it.
Whether you’ve come up from the business ranks or risen from the IT trenches, you know what I mean by “swivel syndrome.” Either you hear about it constantly from your team or you’ve experienced it directly. When your level 3 systems engineers have 18 tabs open while investigating a complex issue, you know you’re staring down inefficiencies — while your best engineers are wrestling with frustration.
When you can do more with less by empowering your team with better ways to conduct root cause analysis and anomaly detection, you can stop the “swivel syndrome.” For instance, you can enlist data to help focus your team’s attention on the 13% of the high-impact tickets that contribute to 80% of lost time from impacts on employee productivity or the business itself. Why waste time managing the other 87% of tickets from tedious issues that can be handled by automation?
3) You feel as if you’re driving in a blinding snowstorm — all year long.
I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I know how disorienting whiteouts can be when you’re caught driving in a sudden snowstorm. You can’t see two feet in front of you. When this blinding snow happens, you act as fast as possible to get off the road. So why are you still driving down the IT highway with severely limited visibility — all year long? Just like a poorly pixelated picture, a partial view of your IT estate can be costly in terms of your bottom line and digital risk. What’s hiding in that estate? Pricey software waste? Issues that can erupt in business disruptions? Shadow IT (and now even shadow AI) that expands the vulnerability surface?
When you can create a complete picture of your digital estate by using data, you can see the road ahead and any obstacles along the way, allowing your organization to become AI-ready and innovative. You’ll have a clear view of how to enlist your IT expertise to achieve your company’s product roadmap, support lines of business, and empower your employees to achieve their productivity potential with the right tech stack.
4) You feel as if you’re playing “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” — and always missing the mark.
Think of any new tech investment as a birthday present from your CFO. Let’s take Windows 11 as an example. Your employees may be excited about its productivity updates and faster boot times. But if you’re deploying a widespread update without visibility into its impact on the digital employee experience, you’re just playing “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” at that old-school birthday party. You’re spinning around forever disoriented. You’ll never hit the right mark to ensure that the software update plays well with your existing hardware estate and already-outfitted apps.
When you can take off that blindfold by arming yourself with data across your endpoint estate, you can see which devices have what software on them, where they are, and who they’re assigned to based on personas. Once you have the visibility to pin that tail in the right place, you can swish away glitches and other anomalies before they have a negative impact on the user experience.
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Be the visionary for your business.
I’ve shared four ways to give yourself the visibility you need to be the visionary you are meant to be. Once you can free your IT organization from the traditional blind spots that limit you, you can set yourself up to be innovative, agile, fast, strategic, and collaborative.
These attributes are within reach in 2025. You just have to quit running around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off bwak-bwak-bwaking at complex problems it can’t see in a blinding snowstorm where a drove of tailless donkeys is blocking the road ahead.
