What differentiates successful CIOs? Social Intelligence Invest in building influence, grooming talent and articulating a clear vision Virtually every company is becoming a technology company at its core. This puts CIOs at a crossroads: They can step up to the challenge and become leaders that influence the business, or remain in the confines of the traditional CIO role, limited to influencing technology implementation and delivery. The direction each CIO takes will determine his or her future career trajectory and professional legacy. Some CIOs are embracing this challenge head-on, while others remain in the background, conceding technology leadership to those with titles such as Chief Innovation Officer or Chief Digital Officer. Deloitte’s CIO Program, recently evaluated CIO skills gaps and uncovered three specific gaps. Interestingly, all three gaps pointed to a bigger issue for CIOs—we call it “Social intelligence”. Social …show more content…
The lack of alignment between CIO priorities and business stakeholder priorities reflects the separation between technology strategy and business strategy. The bottom line is that CIOs should stop trying to align strategies; they should integrate them instead. IT strategy should be integrated with the business strategy (the notion that IT strategy is obsolete bears this out). It is the CIO’s job to determine where IT fits and focus on fusing the IT strategy with the business strategy. To respond very quickly to his industry’s rapidly changing model, DirectTV Executive Vice President and CIO Mike Benson implemented a “fail fast” strategy make mistakes, learn quickly, and move along—for his team. “There is not a single thing the business can do without IT involvement,” says Benson. “There is an IT component—a critical IT component—in all business activities, from creating a new offering to caring for our customers, which requires a high-performance innovation organization fearlessly focused on