Fortune Magazine recently (well, November!) published an article entitled, "Meet Your New Leader." It described an apparent transition that is underway in CEOs of large, publicly traded firms from the "Visionary", charismatic, autocratic CEO to a new form of leadership that the article likened to the make-up of a Lifeguard.
But this isn't about racing to the rescue. Rather, the article pointed out some key characteristics of this new type of leader:
- Calm in the face of crisis
- Comfortable not knowing what's going to happen
- Ability to scan the horizon and anticipate coming shifts
- Ability to work with a team and with rules set by others
And while this article was about CEOs, I couldn't help but feel that it applied equally to CIOs as well.
I largely "grew up" in the era of the technically-focused, autocratic CIO. Vision and strategy would be set at some high up level and passed down to us minions to go implement. It basically worked - but let's face it, technology was a lot simpler then.
The combination of the sheer business criticality of technology and customer visibility to it, coupled with exponentially increasing complexity makes this approach woefully outmoded and frankly, fraught with risk. So, like the new vision of the CEO, the CIO of the future is going to have to have a very different approach to building and managing the technology landscape.
If you'll indulge my interpretation, I believe that the modern "lifeguard" CIO is going to have to look at their role very differently. They will need to focus more on:
- Building adaptable and agile organizations - rather than architectures
- Identifying where technology may impact their business - rather than on how the business may impact their technology
- Integrating technology into business strategies - rather than aligning IT to business decisions
- Harnessing the creative innovation within their teams - rather than capturing only organizational efficiencies
Admitedly, most IT organizations are nowhere near this state of maturity - and in fact many of the "rather" statements are stepping stones along the maturity path. Still, I think it's important that we always be mindful of where we are going so that we can constantly evaluate if we are on the right path.
It seems clear to me that as technology architectures continue to increase in complexity, and while the impact of technology on the business becomes more and more mission critical, the demands on IT leadership are going to change and grow. The leadership required will look a lot less like the "in command" General most common today and much more like the Lifeguard. It's probably the only way that IT will finally get to where it needs to go. So the question is, as you go through your career, which skills will you work at developing? Sunblock anyone?
Note: You can read the article by clicking here.
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