CEO

We all know leadership is crucial. When it comes to helping your business on the journey to becoming digital, leadership, along with a mandate plus building the team, become critical.

The CEO has to make sure there is a strategy. The CEO has to make sure everyone takes a holistic business perspective. No one else can do this.

• Business growth and innovation
• A more agile operating model
• A great customer experience
• Connected and collaborative employees
• Culture development and a learning environment

Can leadership for the change be delegated? A CEO can try. Maybe that will work. Probably not though. We kind of know that intuitively.

The CEO can be less involved if you’re still in the early stages of moving in this direction. It will work with ad hoc and one off initiatives like rebuilding a web site.

There are of course lots of priorities on any given day. The Board of Directors may have given some clear business mandates. They can’t be ignored.

Other C-suite members need to get on board and lead the charge with the CEO. There are several likely candidates. The CMO is one. They can drive lots of change. The CIO should be another. The technology underpinnings demand it. The CFO needs to identify investment funds and be very supportive. There are others like the heads of sales and customer service.

Some companies are creating a role of the CDO — Chief Digital Officer. The jury seems to be out on whether this is great approach or not. If selected, it would probably make sense (from my perspective), to have the CMO and CIO report in to that person. Otherwise, they may go begging for collaboration with varying degrees of real help.

Again, priorities matter. Having this on the CEO agenda makes a difference. If there is not CDO, consider forcing a role that might be known as the digital CIO. The role of the CIO is changing and many feel the CIO is forced to send more time maintaining current IT systems, rather than searching for new solutions. Yet, at the same time 70 per cent of boardrooms expect their CIO to be an innovative force and creative disruptor.

You probably know the  consequence: bi-modal IT as Gartner likes to call it or, better, a ‘multi-speed’ approach to technology-led initiatives as the press release reminds us.

Here is how CEO are addressing the staff leadership function in terms of who is leading the charge.