Gartner: CIO as Business Transformation Leader

CIOs are positioned to play an integral role in corporate strategies as enterprises develop plans to emerge from the Great Recession. The key is knowing how to accomplish transformational change that fulfills the strategy of your CEO and fellow C-suite executives while keeping the business running. It’s time to start thinking about how you can emerge as a change leader in your enterprise. Your ability to offer several ways to deliver on enterprise transformation goals could boost not only your own career, but also the livelihoods of your team members
Market research firm Gartner recently the CIO Advisory: Top 10 Questions You Need to Ask When You Are in the Midst of a Strategic Change. This set of 10 guidelines and action items to give CIOs and other IT leaders the tools you need to lead the transformation of your enterprise. As Gartner points out, IT departments can be a “key enabler or a key constraint.” 

“When organizations have to navigate a business transformation, the IT organization is usually in the middle of it in some way, either as a key enabler or a key constraint,” said Jorge Lopez, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner in a prepared statement. “CIOs rarely have a leadership position in a change of this scale, and they need to prepare more vigorously to ensure that IT does its job to advance strategic change."

Gartner has identified 10 questions for CIOs to ask when they are in the midst of a transformation in which a focus on strategic change could help. The questions and action items are broken down into three sets: contextual, implementation and organizational.