Chapter 1
Technology Leadership Is Indispensable and Essential
Now is undoubtedly the best time to be a transformational technology leader. We face challenges, but we also have unprecedented opportunities for leading and facilitating innovation, disruption, and growth in core, parallel, and new markets.
That's why it's absolutely essential for technology executives to choose the right technologies and make the wisest investments. The future of their organizations depends largely on the choices they make today.
I predict the technology industry will continue to prosper and grow. Today everyone is a technology consumer, and that trend shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, every reliable indication points upward. IDC anticipates $7 trillion in IT-related spending in the 2019 to 2022 time frame.1
In their anxiety over future earnings, investors often make poor choices. Sometimes fear of the unknown overcomes rational instincts. As technology leaders, we simply cannot afford to make decisions based on momentary events and temporary setbacks. We must think in strategic terms. That is both our role and our responsibility.
The economy itself is strong, and tech remains a driving force for growth in markets all over the world. Though there are signs on the horizon of an economic slowdown, a major recession appears unlikely.
Long-range forecasts are notoriously inaccurate, and it seems like a waste of energy to fret about events that might or might not happen 12 months down the road.
Here are some predictions for the shorter term:
- The need for cloud storage will accelerate and continue growing.
- Cybersecurity will remain a major challenge for companies of all sizes.
- The war for talent will make it harder to hire and retain the best employees.
- The shift from traditional IT to infrastructure as a service will continue as more companies seek to reduce capital expenditures.
- Achieving excellence in IT executive leadership will remain a top priority at forward-thinking organizations.
For those of us operating within the tech industry, it's hard to be a pessimist. From our perspective, the future seems bright and full of promise. That doesn't mean there won't be disappointments and bumps in the road. That said, it is no longer possible to imagine a world without digital technology.
Technology has become an economic necessity at every level. You simply cannot run an organization of any kind without technology. Soon the majority of the world's citizens will be digital natives. For them, technology is a basic right, like breathable air and clean drinking water.
I am a realist, not a starry-eyed optimist. I firmly believe we are in the opening innings of a global transformation. We have a long way ahead of us, and technology will continue playing the dominant role in defining our future as a global society.
Role of the CIO in Guiding the Enterprise to the Future State
One of the greatest challenges that corporate executives face these days is positioning their companies to survive and thrive in the next three to five years and beyond. According to the Harvard Business Review, 52 percent of the companies that were in the Fortune 500 in the year 2000 have gone bankrupt, been acquired, or ceased to exist due to digital disruption.
Because of their unique view across the enterprise and outside of the organization, CIOs are well positioned to help the CEO, line-of-business leaders, and fellow members of the C-suite to identify and act on new business opportunities that can deliver new customer experiences and help differentiate the brand.
A good starting point for CIOs and technology executives involves fostering innovation among their teams and with key stakeholders in the enterprise. âIt's critical for CIOs to encourage innovation and out-of-the-box thinking,â says Vishwa Hassan, director of Data and Analytics at USAA.
Because innovation often stems from failures, it's also important to reassure team members that failure can be acceptedâso long as the organization learns from its flops. âIt's important to reward failureânot for a big project failure but for failures that occur early on in the life cycle so that learnings from those failures can be incorporated into key attributes of what doesn't work,â Vishwa adds.
Vishwa also recommends offering process- and standards-based solutions for ensuring enterprise stability while being nimble enough to demonstrate quick turnarounds for revenue-generating projects in sales, marketing, logistics, and other areas in the company.
Meanwhile, when it comes to assessing advanced technologies that can help provide the organization with a competitive edge, Vishwa points to the use of operational analytics as a potential differentiator. âI'd recommend focusing on analytics that in near-real-time impact operations compared to a dashboard or model output that a group has to review and implement actions based on those results.â
Tailoring the Message for Board and C-Suite
As CIOs and technology executives spend an increasing amount of time presenting to their boards of directors, they're discovering how the messaging needs to be tailored to meet the needs and interests of board members. Indeed, 78 percent of CIOs say they are communicating with the board more than ever before, up from 67 percent in 2018, according to IDG's 2019 State of the CIO survey.2
Most board members are interested in the business impact of technology investments, the costs associated with those investments, and the inherent risks associated with implementing and applying technologies. Since most board members aren't technologically savvy, they're not interested in highly technical discussions.
I caught up recently with Dale Danilewitz, EVP and CIO at AmerisourceBergen, to capture his approach to connecting effectively with the board and for moving the business forward. Here's a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.
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Hunter Muller: How do you lead into the C-suite and help the board understand how to digitally connect with the customer to reimagine and reinvent the customer experience?
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Dale Danilewitz: I think the short answer is that my CEO is productively paranoid. He is constantly concerned about what's next on the horizon and the various forces that may impact us or create obstacles for us to deliver on our goals. For me, it is therefore not about a decision or strategy to open ourselves up to the prospect of disruption. It should be inherent in one's culture. I'm a big believer that technology is not the catalyst to raising the prospect of disruption, it should be one of the many industry forces that can influence a company's path to deliver on its strategy, both as an enabler and as a competitive inhibitor.
One should regularly be using scenario planning while engaged developing and revising one's strategic direction. This includes both evolutionary and revolutionary planning. If there's a trigger point that indicates the strategy is not delivering, you must be courageous to change or pivot. We now call this disruption, but I believe that disruption has been occurring since the inception of business, and technology is more of an accelerator, introducing disruptive forces more rapidly than in the past.
One can't allow oneself to plan within the confined parameters that one applied in the past. One needs to elevate oneself to ensure one understands the industry and societal forces that are shaping the business landscape. Peter Schwartz introduces the concept of scenario planning in a 1996 book called The Art of the Long View, where he uses the rise of the oil giant Dutch Shell Oil to illustrate the benefits of this approach.
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HM: The Fortune 500 will turn over even faster now because of technological disruption.
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DD: Technology is a contributor to shifting your industry. If you have a culture of strategic planning where you are constantly accounting for all variables that could influence your future, then you're in a much better position to factor in the advances of technology and the opportunities that they offer.
Yesterday I was talking to someone about board positions for IT professionals. It's interesting because when you look around, the number-one priority considered by boards when it comes to information technology is cybersecurity, and that's always something I'll address with my board. Many boards and board members are nontechnical, which requires us to explain technology in the context of business opportunity and risk. T...
