For CIO’s, things are shifting!

 

The CEO used to ask the CIO about uptime and system reliability. Now most conversations are about strategies, and especially AI strategy. The board wants an AI roadmap. The CFO wants to know the ROI on AI. The CMO wants AI in the product. And for this updated version of the role, the earlier training is not holding up fully.

 

In my 22 years of experience working with technology and leaders, the evolution of the CIO role has been linear with some spikes. Cloud migration. Digital transformation. Modernization. Each wave took years to reshape the role.

 

AI has taken 21 months.

 

The CIO went from managing infrastructure to being the person the entire C-suite turns to when they don’t know what to do next. That’s not a promotion. That’s a completely different job description – with the same title.

 

This is what we at Mind IT Systems are seeing, especially since due to Mirai.events, we started on-ground working groups with CXOs.

 

CIOs answering the old question, How do we keep systems running?, are simply getting outpaced.

 

The CIOs who are thriving are answering a different question. How do we redesign how work gets done and bring the workforce along for this journey.

 

This is not a technology question. This is a leadership question. And the hardest part isn’t the AI. Models are the easy bit, actually, currently.

 

When AI changes what a job is, not just what tools someone uses – that’s an identity shift for the workforce. And identity shifts require a different kind of leadership than a software rollout.

 

The CIOs we work with and who are taking this head-on, the conversations are not entirely about AI. They are also about the workforce, behavioural change, threat perception, who is defensive, who is taking things in stride, and who are the ones doing brilliant things with AI that nobody had noticed earlier.

 

These conversations are just so valuable. And some CXOs are doing way better than others.

 

I thought of sharing this because I read a piece published on CIO.com today, calling this the Chief Transformation Officer moment for IT leadership. Apart from the fancy term, it does resonate.

 

My personal view is that the transformation has to start inside the IT function itself before it can lead the enterprise. If your own team doesn’t trust the direction, the rest of the organisation never will.

 

To every CIO and CXO reading this, you may have noticed it already, but there is now a clear demarcation that the job has evolved. Maybe it’s the most significant opportunity the CIO or CTO role has ever had. The question is whether you’re leading the change or managing the reaction to it.

 

So to my network – Has your role changed more in the last 18 months than in the previous decade? What’s been the hardest part of this shift?

Shailendra Gupta
(Co-Founder and CEO of Mind IT Systems)

 

Shailendra is Co-Founder and CEO of Mind IT Systems and is responsible for strategy and business relations.

With around two decades of experience in getting things done in marketing, sales, strategy, delivery, or technology, he has a successful track record of leading startups and mid-size companies and being a prime contributor to stakeholder management, growth, and value creation. A thought leader in the geo-social space, he is highly respected for realizing new paradigms in marketing, solutions, and approaches.