Role of the CIO:
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Must include references in the paper from below:
• Broadbent, M., & Kitzis, E. (2005). The new CIO leader: Setting the agenda and delivering results. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
• Hunter, R., & Westerman, G. (2009). The real business of IT: How CIOs create and communicate business value. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.
• Ross, J. W., Weill, P., & Robertson, D. (2006). Enterprise architecture as strategy: Creating a foundation for business execution. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
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For your final paper in this course, write a 5-7 page paper in which you discuss your understanding of the role of the CIO as framed by the lessons you have learned in this class. In your paper, discuss your comprehensive understanding of the operational framework of the CIO. How, specifically, does a CIO translate organizational and technology strategy into action? What lessons have you learned in this—and in this program—that help you to execute this transition?
Your paper should consider and incorporate each of the topics we have discussed in this course (Enterprise Architecture; CIO Leadership, Big Data and outsourcing; social, legal, and ethical issues; communications and selling business value).
Your paper will be graded on the quality of your:
• Definition the regulatory, cultural, and societal restrictions that comprise the context for the CIO.
• Assignment help – Discussion of your personal perspectives about how these contexts inform the ways in which a CIO creates, communicates, and sustains value for the organization.
• Explanation of how the CIO can use the course framework to make organizational IT and strategy decisions.
• You should demonstrate an expert ability to communicate about role of the CIO, your own perspectives on this role, and the impact on IT and organizational decision-making. Your analysis is thorough and well‐written.
Role of the CIO
The CIO in today’s world has assumed the role of the most senior technology executive within organizations. Basically, they run the information technology activities and change how those processes are executed. Through shaping the technological strategy within a firm, the CIO is able to perform actions that give leverage to enhancing business processes. For a CIO’s strategy to be effective, they first have to create a foundation for execution, which is the IT infrastructure and business processes automating a company’s core capabilities (Ross et al. 2006). Once a CIO is able to digitize company activities, they can take advantage of the opportunity offered by the foundation for execution to translate strategies crucial to business continuity. The foundation for execution gives the CIO the enhanced ability to improvise, innovate, and react to informed decisions. The role of the CIO is challenged by cultural, societal and regulatory constraints which can be overcome if the CIO can react to big data and outsourcing, employ proper leadership, create a relevant enterprise architecture, observes social, ethical and legal issues, improve on communication and sell the business value to stakeholders.
Regulatory, cultural, and societal restrictions compromise the context for the CIO as these constraints have proven to be an ever-expanding concern. Compliance laws are ever-changing and it is up to the CIO to determine what is legal and illegal within the workplace. An unsettling challenge is that these compliance laws are ever being modified and the scrutiny within data-driven organizations can limit the freedom of the CIO. As the federal government extends its reach to organizations, CIOs have to stop considering business value only and consider the legality of their practice. These laws demand that the IT departments establish controls, observe protocols, identify risks, and asses their compliance. With big data tasks, there is the need to observe data retention to ensure that only legal actions are performed within such data. CIOs need to decide which data should be retained in their databases and what actions should be performed within datasets containing critical consumer information. The issue of privacy and confidentiality is one that keeps CIOs on their toes to refrain from litigation of their organisations.
Cultural restrictions refer to the workforce within the organisation that are supposed to back up the notions of the CIO. Sometimes, people are against change, and especially when it is complex and hard to understand. It is therefore important to asses an organisation for the capability to change and willingness to adapt to an idea. In negative environments, workers may not be willing to support the CIO since they fail to understand the essence of technology. In such cases, a CIO may have challenges implementing the appropriate ideas that are supposed to generate business value. The CIO and IT teams, therefore, have a task to play to ensure that the organisation transforms into a culture that embraces change and innovations. Through proper communication and observing ethical and social issues, it is possible to realise change.
Societal restrictions are often faced when a CIO has low social intelligence. This means that the CIO can connect with the business leaders and the IT team to deliver the needs of the organisation. To achieve social intelligence, CIOs are expected to communicate in business-relevant languages, exhibit interpersonal skills, show overconfidence in their decisions, and communicate IT priorities. Through achieving these elements they are able to win over the business leaders and fellow IT members. Moreover, CIOs are expected to act as business leaders rather than functional leaders focused on IT. They need to remind the members of their purpose and the bigger picture of attaining their business goals.
When it comes to enterprise architecture, it is the logic behind organising IT infrastructure and business processes. The combination of these two elements gives the CIO the ability to plan on a long term basis the integration of the IT infrastructure with organisational strategy. The IT infrastructure is standardised and customised to fit the business needs and capabilities of an organisation. The CIO sees the enterprise architecture design through four stages to create an appropriate model. These stages include Business Modularity, Business Silos, Optimized Core and Standardized Technology (Ross, 2006). As the CIO takes the organisation through these stages, he/she gets a better chance to increase the strategic importance of the organisation. Enterprise architectures enable the CIO to gain and give a holistic view of company processes to create added value.
CIO leadership is more about leading than managing as much as both roles complement each other. While in other departments, top executives are expected to manage their team, the CIO is expected to perform actions that exhibit leadership. For CIOs to effectively translate organisational and technology goals, they must lead their team by influencing them in a manner that changes their attitude, expertise, and decision making. If at all the CIO is to transform the capabilities f an organisation using the IT infrastructure, then the team associated with his/her department need to learn from example. CIOs are also expected to lead with their business colleagues to determine the requirements expected by top management and then reflect it within the enterprise structure. With these two strategies of leadership,
For some CIOs, they need to work with large scale data-driven organisations where they have to handle large datasets. Working in such an organisation is not an easy task as CIOs need to develop an environment to execute analysis for insights (Rijmenam, 2019). In such case, the CIO is required to get competent and qualified personnel who understand the intricacies of data analysis. With the right environment and personnel, it is possible to co-create and gain insights from the raw data. Big data strategies will, therefore, call for the CIO to outsource workforce to get the right candidates to perform the tasks with. Outsourcing is getting help from outside since the inside of the organisation cannot achieve some of the tasks. It is up to the CIO to decide when it is necessary to get additional help.
CIOs need to be socially active to the point where they engage with colleagues to learn of the business and IT trends that give an upper hand to articulating IT guidelines. Through the constant interaction with fellow executives and CIOs, the experience of the organisation’s CIO will improve, and they will make better choices for translating organisational and technology strategies. Moreover, CIOs should observe legal issues by creating clear and appropriate IT governance. This gives the IT infrastructure the trust and credibility it requires. Ethical issues mean that CIOs can observe compliance standards and rules and ensure that the team working in their department is aware of the possible risks that would emanate from possible misconduct or attempt to sabotage the information system. CIOs have a task of ensuring that the tasks they carry out are for the benefit of the organisation and ethically fair.
Communication is relevant to the process of translating organisational and IT strategies to meet the goals of an organisation. First of all, CIOs should learn to communicate in business relevant languages and not IT-relevant languages only. The ability to cut across both disciplines allows a CIO to improve their competence where they can contribute during meetings held by stakeholders (Hunter, 2009). That way, CIOs can communicate with stakeholders in a manner that addresses their business interests and proves that the changes by the CIO department are necessary and valuable. Communication techniques will also enable the CIO to shape and instruct team members on the intended IT infrastructure. Knowing how to communicate to employees ensures that they understand their objectives and are welcome to raise queries if there are any (Mitchelle, 2015). The CIO role encourages the art of decision making among players hence the need to create communication modes that are suitable to the organisation.
Selling business value is another task for the CIO that supports a company’s strategy to compete in the market. The CIO must weave in the operations of the IT department and Business departments instead of treating them as separate. Through this action, it is possible to manage a relevant IT portfolio that is designed to bring the success of an organisation as expected by the members (Broadbent, 2005). CIOs are also expected to demonstrate business value by helping leaders understand the contributions of IT to an organisation. These business values could be realised through the benefits IT has to offer in steering projects and seeing them through to the end (Suer, 2018). The advancements made by technology have helped the business world grow tremendously which means that CIOs should use this advantage to prove the benefits of IT in business. CIOs need to show how organisations can get a return on investments once they fund the necessary IT needs or support the decisions of the CIO. After all, the CIO is meant to pioneer the business success of an organisation through their decisions.
In conclusion, I view the role of the CIO as an ever-growing position that has many promises for the future to come. With the scope of activities that a CIO is supposed to manage and monitor, organisations are expected to flourish. This is because the integration of IT in business activities proves to give more returns on investments across all platforms. Working with both business departments and IT departments gives the CIO a more informed platform to make decisions that affect the business. Leaning towards one department more than the other could result in poor decision making. More organisations have been seen to adopt the CIO role into their C-Suite due to the need for informed technology decisions. I believe that enterprise architecture is essential to an organization and can be fruitful through the lead of a CIO and competent team as it focuses on capturing the business models into the IT infrastructure. With such a solid environment and the use of a CIO, there would be no reason to experience poor business. After all, informed technology insights are the future of business.
References
Broadbent, M., & Kitzis, E. (2005). The new CIO leader: Setting the agenda and delivering results. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press
Hunter, R., & Westerman, G. (2009). The real business of IT: How CIOs create and communicate business value. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press
Rijmenam, M. (2019). How Big Data Will Take The Role of the CIO to the Next Level. Retrieved from https://datafloq.com/read/big-data-will-take-role-cio-next-level/42
Mitchelle, J. (2015). Staying The Course as a CIO: How to Overcome The Trials and Challenges of IT leadership. John and Wiley and Sons. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=uEnxBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA95&dq=CIO+outsourcing&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjjwbqf5Z7mAhXOZFAKHS0HDxIQ6AEIZDAJ#v=onepage&q=CIO%20outsourcing&f=false
Ross, J. W., Weill, P., & Robertson, D. (2006). Enterprise architecture as strategy: Creating a foundation for business execution. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Suer, M. (2018). The Adaptive CIO. Retrieved from https://www.cio.com/article/3276274/how-cios-prove-business-value.html
