12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices
By Pearl Zhu
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About this ebook
The book “12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO’s Situational Leadership Practices” is the extensive brainstorming and logical content expansion of my book “CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of IT,” to reimagine and reinvent CIO leadership via practicing multitudes of digital influence.
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12 CIO Personas - Pearl Zhu
12 CIO Personas
The Digital CIO’s Situational Leadership Practices
Pearl Zhu
Copyright @2017 Pearl Zhu
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means –whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic –without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punished by law.
ISBN: 978-1-387-44682-7
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1 The CIO as Chief Information Officer
Chapter 2 The CIO as Chief Innovation Officer
Chapter 3 The CIO as Chief Insight Officer
Chapter 4 The CIO as Chief Improvement Officer
Chapter 5 The CIO as Chief Instrument Officer
Chapter 6 The CIO as Chief Interpretation Officer
Chapter 7 The CIO as Chief Inspection Officer
Chapter 8 The CIO as Chief Interaction Officer
Chapter 9 The CIO as Chief Intrapreneur Officer
Chapter 10 The CIOs as Chief Investment Officer
Chapter 11 The CIO as Chief Integration Officer
Chapter 12 The CIO as Chief Influence Officer
Conclusion Enhance Digital CIO Personas with Enriched Leadership Portfolio
Acknowledgement
About the Author
Introduction: The Digital CIO’s Profiles, Personas, and Personalities
The digital CIOs have to wear different colors of hats and master multiple leadership personas and management roles effortlessly.
Figure 1 12 Personas of CIO
Compared to other CxO positions, the CIO role is considerably new with about three decades of history. But the contemporary CIO is one of the most sophisticated leadership positions in modern businesses. Due to disruptive nature of technologies and exponential growth of information, IT leadership has to be continually reimagined, refined, refreshed and re-energized. CIOs are no longer just glorified geeks, but business savvy strategists and transformative digital leaders. Great CIOs have multiple personas, varying personalities, and impressive leadership profiles. The personas can be seen as the public relations
part of digital CIOs that allow them to interact socially in a variety of situations with relative ease. Contemporary CIOs are expected to wear many hats to practice situational leadership effectively.
This book "12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO’s Situational Leadership Practices is the extensive brainstorming and logical content expansion of my book
CIO Master: Unleash the Digital Potential of IT," to reimagine and reinvent CIO leadership via practicing multitudes of digital influence.
● Chief Information Officer: Back to basic, CIOs are Chief Information Officers,
who take charge of one of the most invaluable business assets - information.
● Chief Innovation Officer: Ideally, CIOs are Chief Innovation Officers
who are expected to constantly propose new ideas and challenge the status quo.
● Chief Insight Officer: Go deeper, CIOs are Chief Insight Officers,
who can provide information-based insightful advice for business executive peers and lead profoundly.
● Chief Improvement Officer: In practice, CIOs are Chief Improvement Officers
who lead IT to continue optimizing business capability and improving organizational maturity.
● Chief Instrument Officer: Technology is the linchpin of the emergent digital ecosystem, and CIOs play an instrumental role in chartering digital paradigm shift seamlessly.
● Chief Interpretation Officer: CIOs are fluent in both business language and IT terminology to ensure cross-functional communication without lost in translation.
● Chief Inspection Officer: CIOs should do periodic IT management quality checks to ensure its effectiveness, efficiency, performance, and maturity.
● Chief Interaction Officer: CIOs need to be far more diplomatic and build solid business relationships across the digital ecosystem.
● Chief Intrapreneur Officer: CIOs are able to run IT as a software startup and the business in the business.
● Chief Investment Officer: IT investment in the business can often become the decisive factor to run a high-performance organization with the long term perspective.
● Chief Integration Officer: CIOs need to reinvent IT as the linchpin to bridge IT-business gaps and strengthen the weakest links to catalyze digital transformation.
● Chief Influence Officer: Digital CIOs today must develop their leadership competency to make multidimensional influence across the organization and the digital ecosystem.
Besides above mentioned, digital CIOs even have more enriched personas such as Chief Inquisitive Officer,
Chief Inclusiveness Officer,
Chief Initiative officer,
Chief Interface Officer,
Chief Imagination Officer,
Chief Intelligence Officer,
Chief Investigation Officer,
and Chief Inspiration Officer,
etc.
It’s the time to raise the profile of digital CIOs. The digital CIO is the highly complex executive role to manage one of the most crucial business assets - Information and Technology. It is not sufficient to only keep the lights on, and the digital CIO shouldn’t be perceived as the stereotypical IT manager only. Contemporary CIOs need to make leadership influence on the organization from board level down to the business unit and within the IT organization because they are in the unique position to oversee underlying organizational processes and build differentiated business competency. Regardless of which industry or the nature of organization you are in, the digital CIO is a strategic business leader first, and a tactical IT manager the second. It is important to raise the profile of digital CIOs because forward-looking organizations empower their IT leaders to drive changes and lead the digital transformation. IT is the linchpin to weave all necessary business elements into the differentiated business competency. Visionary CIOs must look at where the business is today and where it will be in five to ten years and ensure that information and technology can enable that vision going forward. CIOs must look at the future of business from both strategic planning and technology envisioning lens, master the art of creating unique and differentiating value from the pile of commoditized technologies. Digital CIOs today should be business generalists with T-shaped
knowledge, speak both 'business' and 'technology' dialects fluently, and translate from one to the other seamlessly, without lost in translation.
The high-profile digital CIOs are multi-dimensional thinkers and versatile business executives, having the right blend of leadership skills, business acumen, technical expertise, and digital fluency.
The CIO’s personalities also vary. There are introvert CIOs and extrovert CIOs; there are systematic thinking CIOs, but also intuitive CIOs. In fact, many CIOs have paradoxical personality traits which allow them to lead IT with balanced mindsets, activities, and speed so that every level of the organization has great working relationships with IT teams. Good personality testing covers critical thinking, problem-solving, pressure handling, creativity, inventiveness, and communication skills, etc. However, the personality test cannot measure tenacity and insight. It is also difficult to measure transferable skills and cross-industrial innovation ability, especially when there is a natural bias to select exactly what you need today (status quo) vs. skills needed to change for the better tomorrow. Consider the personality test more of a stereotype tool to assess the psychological preferences in how CIOs would perceive the digital ecosystem and their thought processes and mental strength to make decisions. The strong CIOs can succeed in high-pressure situations and first-time evolution.
The important thing is that CIOs as the top leadership role must have a strong mindset, a unique personality, and a clear idea of what needs to be done, yet creative enough to not hold the company back from growth. Regardless which personality they have, digital CIOs need to be both transformational and situational, innovative and tactical, business savvy and technology insightful, communication-effective and operation-efficient.
Figure 2 12 CIO Personas
Chapter 1 The CIO as Chief Information Officer
: Back to its root, the CIO role is to be a Chief Information Office,
as an information management master for the dynamic digital corporation. Because nowadays IT is permeating into every corner of the organization, and information is the lifeblood of any business across industrial sectors.
Chapter 2 The CIO as Chief Innovation Officer
: Digitalization opens the new chapter of innovation. CIOs need to present the entrepreneurial spirit, learn to think and lead innovatively, take calculated risks while nurturing contingencies and growing great talent, etc.
Chapter 3 The CIO as Chief Insight Officer
: The pace of changes in IT would force more CIOs to shift into the insightful digital leadership role for exploring the breadth and depth of digital new normal. Because IT plays a significant role in driving the digital transformation, also because IT is uniquely positioned to observe processes across the enterprise and build differentiated business competencies.
Chapter 4 The CIO as Chief Improvement Officer
: Continual improvement
is an IT mantra in the digital era. There is never enough
to optimize IT operations and improve organizational maturity. Continuous improvement is by tweaks of things in the old fashion way to bring efficiency. But, even a very small improvement leverages a new way of doing things, brings an outside method or view, and shifts the paradigm, to get digital ready.
Chapter 5 The CIO as Chief Instrument Officer
: The digital paradigm has many dimensions, organizations can harness the power of information to provide the emergent business trends with a fact-based vision of where to aim and how to get there, through identifying the right information, validating it and communicating it to right people at the right time. Information Technology is the linchpin of the emergent digital ecosystem, and the CIO plays an instrumental role in chartering a multidimensional digital paradigm shift seamlessly.
Chapter 6 The CIO as Chief Interpretation Officer
: The clear-cut divide that used to be there between IT and business in the olden days is vanishing fast; IT is the business. IT-business relationship needs to be shifted from alignment to integration to ensure that the business as a whole is superior to the sum of pieces. The top leaders such as CIOs have to be fluent in both business and IT dialogues, and switch them back and forth without lost in translation.
Chapter 7 The CIO as Chief Inspection Officer
: IT plays a significant role in digital transformation, as more often than not, technology is a major digital disruptor today. The purpose of digital transformation is to embed digital technology into key business processes and improve business capabilities to compete for the future. The quality check of IT management is to ensure IT is the enabler and even a game-changer of the digital transformation.
Chapter 8 The CIO as Chief Interaction Officer
: Good relationships with the right people make a business work. All businesses come down to people who plan to implement a solution. Whether it is with IT assistance or just by re-engineering an existing process, the work begins with people, the praise comes from people and the complaints often originate with people. Modern CIOs as Chief Interaction Officers,
can master how to well manage different dimensions of IT relationship to improve leadership effectiveness.
Chapter 9 The CIO as Chief Intrapreneur Officer
: Corporate Entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship has been recognized as a potentially viable, it means for promoting and sustaining organizational performance, renewal, and corporate competitiveness. Being entrepreneurial is first the mindset, and then attitude, skills are the easier part to be developed. Intrapreneur leaders present solid leadership attributes such as full open communication,
creativity,
confidence,
resourcefulness,
decisiveness,
ownership,
self-adaptation,
and resilience.
Chapter 10 The CIOs as Chief Investment Officer
: Nowadays, technology is the disruptive force behind digital transformation and information is the gold mine all forward-thinking businesses are digging in. Companies across industrial sectors claim they are in the information management business. Thus, IT investment in the business can often become the decisive factor for running a high-performance organization with the long-term perspective.
Chapter 11 The CIO as Chief Integration Officer
: It is the digital era, IT organizations are transforming from Build to last,
to Design to Change
and Cloudify to Speed Up.
Especially, in large complex enterprises where there are many revenue streams, many business units, many geographies involved, many products and services will be having a variety of data, the variety of systems to handle the business. Integration is not always cost-effective, but to ensure that the application eco-system offers real value and future agility.
Chapter 12 The CIOs as Chief Influence Officer
: Last but not least, CIOs are Chief Influence Officers.
The command-control leadership style is no longer fit for the hyperconnected and highly transparent digital new normal. Digital CIOs today must develop their leadership competency to make multidimensional influence across the organization as well as the digital ecosystem. A digital CIO has to be a digital visionary, a transformational leader, an empathetic communicator, a good facilitator, a great listener, and an excellent digital game changer.
Modern organizations have their own sophistication with silo functions, the sea of information, and the pool of talents. The CIO is an inherently cross-functional role, to bridge the business and IT; the data and insight, the business’s today and tomorrow. The digital CIOs have to wear different personas and master multiple leadership and management roles effortlessly. They need to lead at the strategic level for conducting a complex digital orchestra; they should be handy managers to plumbing information and keep it flow smoothly; they also have to be like the diligent gardeners, to build a unique IT landscape via tuning technology, removing waste, nurturing culture, and empowering people.
Chapter 1 The CIO as Chief Information Officer
Information by itself is meaningless until it’s interpreted and analyzed to capture insight and harness innovation!
Figure 3 The CIO as Chief Information Officer
Compared to other CXOs, the CIO role is considerably new with about three decades history. However, the magic I
in CIO’s title implies many high expectations for such a contemporary leadership position. But fundamentally, back to its root, the CIO role is to be a Chief Information Office,
as an information management master for the dynamic digital corporation, because nowadays IT is permeating into every corner of the organization, and the information is the lifeblood of any business across industrial sectors.
● The word information
is central to the digital IT: Technology
is the operative part of information technology,
that leads to some CIOs focusing on the technology part, rather than the information part of the definition. Now information is the lifeblood of the organization, and all forward-thinking organizations declare they are in the information business. IT indeed needs to shift from T
driven operation management to I
focused information, insight, and innovation management. The information side of the IT description is a bit nebulous by the other favorite buzzword of the day: big data.
That gets closer to the role of the CIO though. Because if the CIO role is to survive and thrive for more than an on-demand term, the focus has to be on acquiring, managing, manipulating and mastering information management, and providing insight to the organization. Or simply, the CIO role needs to be elevated to the information
part of the definition, or back to the basic as the title implies: Chief Information Officer.
● Digital IT is all about how to deliver the right information with the right format to the right people at the right time to help them make the right decision: IT is the steward of business data and information. Data by itself is meaningless until it’s interpreted and analyzed. Technology enables large data sets to be captured and presented for analysis, but the value hidden in data is only revealed through intelligent reasoning. Information is raw material when you manipulate the raw material in meaningful ways, which give you business insight to interpret and utilize, then you have established the business value. IT plays the critical role in information lifecycle management to transform raw data - information - insight/intelligence - wisdom. As the tech matures and the technology becomes better understood by most of the enterprises, information will get better and become more valuable, and it will become a digital business capability IT can build on.
● The digital CIO is an information master: The digital CIO should focus on the information content and context; how that information can be tapped from the underlying data and be utilized to turn it into valuable strategic insight, how the information and insight can be penetrated through the business and be actively used in managing business processes and shaping the business capabilities to execute business strategy solidly. Today, the CIO is not just managing IT to keep the lights on but is managing the information to enable enterprises to become nimble and gain the competitive edge, harness innovation catalyzed by IT and lead to business transformation.
As CIOs will continue to be put on the front line to run IT as a digital transformer, they need to ensure their organizations are information savvy. And where CIOs have had success, has been bridging the business value gaps, IT has to explore the abundance of information that brings value to the business for its long-term prosperity.
1 What is Information Management
Information Management is to make sure that the right information is shared with the right persons at the right time in the right place.
Information nowadays is a big resource and asset for organizations, and assets need to be managed successfully! When dedicating to managing business information for a couple of decades, should CIOs go back to the fundamental, to ask themselves: What is Information Management theoretically, philosophically, strategically and tactically, anyway?
● Information Management is to make sure that the right information is in the right place at the right time and shared to the right persons: Managing information and the information position of an organization is what ought to be called Information Management. Information Management means, that the business has the information, that the information has the right quality (actual, right, complete...), that the information is used properly, but also that the means to manage information (the information provisioning) is a strategic imperative. Today, the recognition of information management is maturing with boards being educated on the power of information adding to the bottom line and top-line business growth, and of course, the increasing cost as there's more of it.
● Information needs to be available for consumption: Information is consumed by customers to make decisions. Internal customers use it to grow the business or better manage systems or keep people engaged. External customers use the information to make decisions to buy a product or service. Information Management is a service delivery business which is very important to all businesses and industries. Information Management is to gather, collate, validate, transform, loading and maintenance of controlled data into a controlled environment at the same time not compromising the budget. Information Management includes a set of integrated management processes and services that enable and support the capability of collectors, producers and users to store, locate, retrieve and transform information, allowing it to become the right information in the right form and of adequate quality to satisfy the demands of the organization.
● Information Management enables an organization to maximize efficiency: The organization plans, collects, organizes, uses, controls, stores, disseminates, and disposes of its Information, and through which it ensures that the value of that information is identified and exploited to the maximum extent possible. The aim has often been described as getting the right information to the right person, in the right format and medium, at the right time. Information Management is the overall process of aligning the use of information through the MANAGEMENT (What data you have, in what format and the location & method it is held?), ASSURANCE (Data held is safe, secure and processes are legislatively compliant) and EXPLOITATION (Collaboratively enabled and fully support the business objectives).
Information is used to educate, inform and provide decision making for people who use it. Information Management is the systems and processes which are implemented to access and publish the information. The key to Information Management is integrity. The information has to be approved and as up-to-date as practically possible in a system which can be accessed by people who need it.
2 Three Digital Information/Knowledge Management Principles
Everything exists in a constant state of change and knowledge of an evolving thing must evolve with the thing at the faster pace.
Digital organizations are information overloading and knowledge abundant, but very few of them are truly running the digital-savvy and high-intellectual business. IT plays a critical role in information management to ensure the right people getting the right information to make the right decisions timely. CIOs as Chief Information Officer
: How to set digital information/knowledge management principles and develop the best and next practice to keep information flow, knowledge flow, and therefore business flow?
● Information/ Knowledge Management is a business or human problem, not a technological problem: Information does not live alone but permeates to everywhere in the businesses. Information potential directly impacts the business's potential of the organization. The art and science of information management are to optimize its usage and achieve its multidimensional value and full potential. Information/knowledge management is a business and human problem, not a technological problem. Thus, the value of information is not isolated. IT should first work to identify how information is associated with the valued tangibles of businesses, products, and resources, how to refine information into knowledge and capture the unique business insight. From knowledge management perspective, look at the organizational structure to figure out where in the organization the requested expertise might be sitting - part of taking knowledge seriously as a corporate asset involves assigning responsibility for knowledge within the organization, both maintaining and improving knowledge flow. Digital is the age of people, the focus of information/knowledge management should focus on solving people-centric business issues, not just technological problems. Information is the means to the end, not the end itself.
● You can't resolve the 21st-century problems with the mindsets shaped half-century ago: In the last couple of decades, the world has moved from the industrial age with knowledge scarcity to the digital era with information abundance; from the siloed society to the hyper-connected internet economy. The problems emerging today are also totally different from a couple decades ago. Hence, you can’t solve the 21st-century problems with the mindsets shaped half-century ago. Because people’s mindsets have been shaped by education, culture, historical events happened in their lifetime, their growth environment, the books and media they choose to follow, the mainstream
mindset of the leaders in their era. Therefore, a human’s mindset is somewhat boxed, which categorizes all phenomena in a number of boxes that are based on individual experience and cognizance. As Albert Einstein wisely put: We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." It needs different mindset with updated knowledge, holistic thinking, and multidimensional intelligence to solve either existing or emergent problems radically nowadays. Knowledge is power. From information/knowledge management perspective, it is crucial that you value education/continuous learning, in both informal and formal way. Knowledge needs to be updated and managed more systematically. Knowledge informs us as to what choices are available. Understanding is the key to all doors. Wisdom tells you which doors to enter, and which ones NOT to enter. Questioning/challenging long-held beliefs or conventional wisdom is hard work and is often met with resistance. But, isn't that how change comes about and how information/knowledge management fits to the business purpose.
● One person’s knowledge is the other person’s information only, knowledge becomes outdated sooner than you thought, but insight and wisdom is timeless: There is no hard asset that you can buy today that will guarantee the success of your organization, data, information, knowledge, and wisdom are the different stages of information lifecycle that organizations need to manage more effectively. Either individuals or organizations evolve digital with the different speed, and they are also reaching the different stage of knowledge life cycle. One’s knowledge is the other person’s information only. Knowledge has a much-shortened life cycle due to the exponential growth of information and the increasing speed of changes. Digital knowledge management will enable not only information flow and knowledge flow, but more importantly, it will empower the mind flow, and transform the modern business from static to dynamic; from mechanic to innovative. In reality, perhaps in many organizations, there seems to be the expectation
that if you have a great business in one place and it's working ok, then knowledge, ideas, solutions, and advice will easily transfer and that piece of the jigsaw will fit snugly into somewhere else. At today’s global business setting with unprecedented complexity and uncertainty, It works here so it just has to work over there too
may not hold true when you factor in cultural aspects and local market conditions. Knowledge management is about understanding the whole meaning of languages and cultures. Working in multicultural and global environments and organizations, they need to develop their own language, to make the proper framing in order to access the process of understanding each other easily. Knowledge has its limitation, but insight can encircle the world more freely.
Everything exists in a constant state of change and knowledge of an evolving thing must evolve with the thing. The only thing anyone can truly know is themselves and even we grow and change every day. Managing information and knowledge becomes more critical than ever in the digital era, the static and siloed information/knowledge approach is too slow to adapt to the changes and dealing with exponential information growth. This requires a holistic look at the entire knowledge environment and identifies how the information management initiative aligns with the company or business unit objectives, to improve communication, collaboration, and overall organizational maturity.
3 The Intrinsic, Extrinsic and Epistemic Aspect of Information and Knowledge Management
Well-designed and relatively simplified information/knowledge solutions bound to unlock the enterprise knowledge, to turn a downward spiral into an upward spiral.
Figure 4 The value of Information Management
Information nowadays is the invaluable resource and asset of organizations, and information assets need to be managed successfully. Back to fundamentals, CIOs are Chief Information Officers, and one of the most important responsibilities for IT is to ensure the right people getting the right information, extract to sufficient knowledge and unique insight to help them make the right decision at the right time and location. But more specifically, what is Information Management theoretically, philosophically, strategically and tactically, and what are the intrinsic, extrinsic and epistemic aspects of information management?
● The intrinsic value of information management: Information Management makes information available and useful for growing the business or delighting customers. Information Management is the overall process of aligning the use of information through the management practices: What data do you have, in what format and the location and method it is held? And how to refine information into knowledge and business insight? Information is the lifeblood of the enterprise, but if not properly managed, it becomes at worst case a liability and at best case an underutilized asset. Information in itself isn't power, it’s the ability to seamlessly access, analyze and utilized data, information strategy as the key ingredient of business strategy which enables executives to make a data-based decision and build up an analytics-driven culture cross organization. Both information and knowledge are not equal to insight, but they are the foundation to capture insight and allow people to make right decisions. Thus, the goal of information management is to ensure information assurance -information held is safe, secure and processes are legislatively compliant, and exploitation collaboratively enables and fully supports the business objectives. The intrinsic value of information management is to turn the most valuable information and knowledge assets into corporately owned assets and improve the business decision effectiveness and business competency.
● The extrinsic value of information management: Information is the most invaluable asset in business today, besides people. Managing information and knowledge is a human problem and not just a technological problem. Information Management has the expansive impact on the economy, politics, culture, and human behavior. The tricky bit with information is that, depending on the level of granularity and aggregation, you can use it for multiple purposes. Not only is information interesting economic goods, but the value is also difficult to determine. Knowledge Transfer allows people to understand new topics and get access to knowledge. It