The new age CIOs -- A Paradigm Shift

The new age CIOs need to be revolutionaries! !  It’s a great thought that’s doing the round of the industry, more specifically the IT industry. Till recently, CIOs role was being confined to being the steward of business and usherer of technological advancement within the organization. But the main aim was always to make the life easy for business; and making business processes better, faster and more cost effective.

But the things are changing now. Technologies like cloud, social and mobile computing are bringing in a paradigm shift to the way business and technology interact. And the CIOs are in the forefront of this change and in the process are shaking up business models and transforming how business is done. Another vivid change is that the technology agenda is becoming the business agenda, and CIOs are aligning them together. 

Besides technology, the next-generation workforce is also prompting the CIOs to bring in changes which seem quite revolutionary in the workplace. The new workforce demand and require new tools to interact and collaborate together and produce results that enhances the productivity of the organizations. The ways the workers work today have undergone a 360 degree transformation and the CIOs are bound to facilitate those changes.

Hence, the new age CIOs will:

•  Challenge old rules and usher in new changes
•  Adopt technology which might initially seem disruptive (for example, many CIOs are adopting cloud even though there are internal grumblings from the employees comfortable in the traditional mode of computing)
• Give preference to technology over business to bring in organizational transformation
• Facilitate the social and mobile computing proliferation
• Develop centres of excellence
• Encourage innovations
• Enable employees to connect, collaborate and interact in the way they are comfortable and want to
• Revolutionise the organizations and make them future ready

One should remember that CIOs will still look to improve efficiency, deliver on traditional business needs, maintain existing service levels and ensure that relevant information and metrics are present to enable the top management to make better business decisions. But the new age CIOs will go steps further rather than be confined to the traditional role—they will be a strategist, catalyst, revolutionary and visionary!!