EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
MATTHEW HARDMAN , CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER ASIA PACIFIC , HITACHI VANTARA
CIOs need to start with how they exhibit a challenger mindset . Where once IT strategy was determined by the IT department , it has increasingly become the foundation of every department in an organization , from the leaders to the front line . Everyone is being exposed to the latest trends and technologies from vendors .
The promise of innovations leading to massive competitive advantage and market gains can be intoxicating and some may feel they are labelled as laggards if not adopting the latest .
The challenger CIO needs to have the courage to cut through the noise and direct the conversation on innovation that enables demonstrable business impact .
Secondly , CIOs need to be able to demonstrate humility in their role .
Ten or twenty years ago , the rate of technology innovations hitting the market was more gradual than what you have today .
Finally , CIOs need to have a passion for people with a must-have eye on developing talent in three areas , the talent in the team , the talent in other teams in the organization and finally the development of talent external to the organization .
The development of talent in their own team will be foundational to help scale the appropriate behavioral characteristics that will underpin their business strategy , developing those individuals to make connections to the business outcomes being pursued or even developing their capabilities in stakeholder management , will help that team be viewed as a strategically advantageous .
Developing talent in other people ’ s teams will help to mitigate the risks of uncontrolled technology sprawl and over-provisioning .
Finally , in relation to the development of talent in the industry , if you only are identifying the talent needed to fill the open roles today , you have more than likely missed the talent you want .
Today , they not only have to deal with differing vendors , but also different approaches and platforms within the same domain .
The capability for people to select and provision technologies to address business opportunities , accelerated by IaaS and SaaS , means that CIOs cannot be across them all , and while they can execute the previous quality of challenging the need for these innovations to address opportunity , they also need to have the humility to be open and listen to why someone perceives a technology or platform can help address an opportunity .
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