Leadership
The first area of focus for CIOs in evolving their
role is leadership, applied not only in their own IT
organisation but equally, to the wider enterprise
and even beyond it. A clear vision, the ability to
lead change and to forge robust partnerships with
suppliers and customers, are now blurring traditional
IT functional boundaries and demanding skills and
experience reaching beyond those boundaries.
Multi-faceted leadership
The need for CIOs to demonstrate well-developed
leadership capabilities both within their own IT
organisation and the enterprise it serves, is clear
3
.
A CIO s ability to create a compelling vision for the
business, to collaborate, and to make and execute
sound business decisions, all create a strong skills
portfolio. However, if he wants to evolve this role further,
the CIO must add several more capabilities to transition
successfully to a broader leadership position.
Evolving CIOs are not only adept at being leaders
themselves, but also take a strong interest in growing
the leadership capabilities of their IT organisation.
They have effective coaching styles, particularly in
the context of transformational change. Their strong
commercial experience and well developed self
awareness is tempered with a realistic view of their
personal ability to broaden their role. And finally, all
evolving CIOs understand the imperative to develop
a considered succession strategy. When opportunities
to take on wider responsibilities present themselves,
the CIO, his potential successors and the rest of the
IT organisation must all be primed and ready for the
CIO to grasp them.
Leading change
Nowhere will a CIO s leadership skills be more needed
or tested than in situations involving business
and IT transformational change. Recent studies show
that globally, whether instigated proactively or in
response to external events, change is happening
faster than industry leaders predicted even two years
ago
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. Change is the new norm, and high performing
enterprises embrace change rather than flounder in its
wake. A CIO s ability to lead change proactively and
effectively is crucial to the success of the enterprise.
The pervasiveness of IT within the enterprise means
that many CIOs have a more detailed understanding
of business performance levers, and across a
broader spectrum, than possibly any Board member
except the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The
challenge is how to share and exploit the insight this
understanding provides.
CIOs must deal with change in multiple dimensions:
within their IT organisation, within the wider enterprise
and potentially externally to the enterprise, in partnership
with suppliers and customers as part of an end-to-end
service strategy.
The challenge of change
For CIOs, dealing with accelerating change carries its own
risks, as proven by the high failure rate of transformational
change projects and programmes. The consequences can
be very costly if appropriate mitigation strategies are not
in place. A global study of over 1,500 change practitioners
published in 2008
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shows that on average, only 41% of
transformational change efforts fully met their objectives.
However, when leaders who the study calls change
masters were involved, the success rate nearly doubled.
Change masters are experienced change managers who
consistently apply formal change management approaches
across all phases of a project or programme, including
allocating adequate resources in terms of budget, skills
and people. In contrast, for change novices the average
project success rate was a miserly 8% (Diagram 2).
Source: Making Change Work , IBM Global Business Services, 008
5
Diagram 2: Change masters double the average rate of
change project success
Share of successful projects
95
%
Success rate
increase
8%
41%
Top 20%
Change Masters
Average
Bottom 20%
Change Novices
Change Masters vs. Change Novices
The top 20% of organisations reported an average project success rate of 80%,
reflecting a 95% increase above the average share of successful projects
80%
