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Perspective:

Perspective

CIO Advantage

Accelerate your journey to success

Deloitte’s CIO Advantage is an invitation to you, as CIO, to be vulnerable and honestly assess how you stack up against the ever-growing expectations and mandate of this role. It can serve as both a mirror and a window to help you reflect on where you are today and set the course for where you want to be tomorrow.

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From our experiences, engagements, and conversations with clients across organizational size and industries, we still see two differentiated CIO personas: Those embracing the opportunity and reinventing their role, and those being viewed by themselves and others as running IT.

Which one are you?

By working to rediscover your strengths and blind spots, you can reinvent your approach by focusing on the “core” areas to help drive competitive career advantage and generate lasting impact.

The Expanded CIO Mandate

Delivering on the inherent expectations of your role is no longer enough. A path to success and relevance asks you to meet the role’s traditional operational responsibilities while also creating advantage by meeting broader opportunities around driving business outcomes.

Responsibilities
• Internal support
• Operational efficiency
• Technical guru
• Command and control
• Technology aspiration
• Technology risks

Opportunities
• Clients and prospects
• Growth and revenue
• Chief educator and evangelist
• Entrepreneurial leadership
• Blended passion and curiosity
• Enterprise risk management

Rise to the Challenge

The CIO’s role is constantly evolving and the opportunity surrounding it has never been greater. CIOs today are redefining their role in the organization and positioning technology as a strategic business driver.

Change agents

Transforming from technologists to change agents, CIOs shape and spark the ambitions of entire companies while maintaining the integrity of the infrastructure that enables it all.

Client-facing partners

Breaking down IT silos and building collaborative networks, they are strategic, client-facing partners who drive revenue generation, product development, and customer experience.

Visionaries

Looking beyond what’s immediately in front of them, they have their eye on the big picture and know what their business is doing now as well as what it should be doing next.

Innovators

Making bigger and bolder moves, they are unlocking the potential of technology by embedding transformation and innovation in their “run.”

Risk takers

They take risks despite being in an environment that doesn’t reward doing so. They also balance the traditional responsibilities of running operations with constant change – all at once with limited time, resources and agency.

Value drivers

Shifting perceptions from cost center to value driver, technology teams are more important to the top and bottom lines more than ever before.

Reinvent how you show up

By intentionally pursuing meaningful interactions with those around you, you can build trust, earn the respect of your peers, and establish yourself as an approachable leader. These actions will help build your credibility across the organization, signaling that you care about the people, culture, work, and processes.

Advocate for technology by showing how tech drives value by advancing strategic business priorities and creating competitive differentiation.

Be a strong communicator who is skilled in the arts of persuasion, influence and negotiation.

Cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset and view the intersection of technology and the business as a fertile ground for value creation.

Strive to understand regulatory, market, and competitive forces that may affect your business and your business partners.

Create a mission-based workplace where top talent wants to work.

Blend a passion and curiosity for your business with a passion and curiosity for emerging technology.

Rediscover your Advantage

CIOs are rising to the challenge of the “expanded mandate” and unlocking their potential by focusing on six transformational leadership areas. How are you creating advantage in each of these?

Orchestrate across “Tech Chiefs”

How can you collaborate with other tech leaders across your organization to drive business outcomes?

Configure credibility and influence

How are you building a personal brand so you can do less firefighting and more transformation?

Position technology to be a differentiator

Are you serving as a technology interpreter, influencer, and visionary within your organization?

Build the next generation of talent

Are you developing strategies for attracting, supporting, and retaining high-performing tech talent?

Artfully articulate the tech value story

Can you clearly quantitatively and qualitatively build the business case and report on tech investments?

Intentionally go outside your mandate

How are you broadening your skillset to reflect the CIO’s expanding responsibilities?

Chart your path forward

We get it. You’re busier than ever and often don’t have the luxury of time, or permission, to pursue everything we’ve outlined. Deloitte’s CIO Advantage is
designed to help you chart a path forward: Identify your starting points. Assess your strengths. Discover your blind spots. Make a plan.

CIO Advantage is both a journey of self-reflection and self-actualization. Asking yourself the right questions and being honest and vulnerable in how you answer them can be more powerful than searching for answers from someone who is on the outside looking in.

By doing this work, you can begin to surface opportunities for competitive advantage and long-lasting impact.

Wherever you are on your journey of professional and organizational transformation as a technology leader, Deloitte’s CIO Advantage can help you confidently increase your value in the changing information and business landscape.

Download CIO Advantage

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