Forrester on The New CIO - Change is needed, but will it be heeded?

I’ve been writing about The New CIO for a little over 2 years and I still see many of the same issues within IT shops and CIO offices that I saw in 2009.  Thankfully, Forrester has now decided to write about the topic. Gosh..they are slow. 🙂

In an article titled The New CIO — Embrace The Empowered Era Or Step Aside,  Khalid Kark puts his spin on why CIO’s need to adapt and why the CIO is (has?) changed.

Khalid writes:

The CIO role is about to change drastically and significantly. The CIOs who continue to manage technology and focus only on execution will not survive. The ones who embrace this change and step up to enable the business, empower the employees, and encourage innovation across the organization will succeed in this role

So true.

We’ve all seen this coming…I just wonder why its taken so long for some CIO’s to really get it?

Khalid provides five ‘new’ dimensions for the ‘new’ CIO to begin to focus on. They are:

• From alignment to convergence
• From execution to innovation
• From technology supplier to services orchestrator
• From operations to business outcomes
• From rules to guardrails

I agree with them all. In fact…me thinks I’ve been saying that for a while. Glad I was on the right track 😉

Good to see Forrester pushing CIO’s in the right direction.

I just hope CIO’s and IT groups don’t see these new dimensions as just another ‘idea’ that consultants are trying to sell…if so…I have a feeling we’ll be right back ’round to discuss these same issues next year.

Image Credit: Round and round and round By hugovk on flickr