There’s a fundamental shift underway, underwritten by transformative technologies, unprecedented global competition and ever-increasing customer/ consumer expectations. This type of broad-scale change requires a new type of leadership at every level of our organizations, including traditionally defined roles like Information Technology leadership positions. CIO Magazine’s recent article on The five-year future of the Chief Information Officer role lays out a compelling, and likely true vision for how functional IT leaders must transform to deliver value in the future. This leadership transformation will also apply to traditional Marketing, Marketing Research, Operations, Product Development, Innovation, HR and Finance leaders.
The article pushes for functional IT leaders to be accountable for envisioning and delivering innovation and entrepreneurship results, to link people and ideas across the company and between companies, and to drive collaboration across traditionally disconnected supplier bases.
We’d argue that many organizations are already behind in making this type of leadership transformation based on the number of opportunities we see companies sitting on. Phrases like “what needs to be true” must replace phrases like “we don’t have the time or budget” or “it’s not in my job description.”
If you’re a functional leader, what does this mean for you? How do you personally need to grow, evolve and change to keep up? How does your function need to evolve and change to stay relevant and to keep adding value?
Photo licensed under Creative Commons 2.0 via Flickr user: izzyplante
