For chief information officers (CIOs) and chief technology officers (CTOs), success depends not just on what you know but also how quickly you can learn, adapt, evolve your team and define a vision. In a dynamically evolving market — in which data is more important than ever, and generative AI has jumped to the top of C-suite agendas — your efforts directly enable how a business operates, goes to market, differentiates itself and innovates for the future.
In other words, the challenges are profound, and the impact you can rapidly make today is unparalleled. The median tenure of CIOs and CTOs is under four years, according to an EY analysis of 1,200 executives at Fortune 250 companies going back to 1995.
With that in mind, the EY Center for Executive Leadership has identified broad groups of actions to perform to complete in 90 days, available in this full report, with a summarized one-page checklist. While intended for new CIOs and CTOs, the playbook can also be useful for existing leaders who need to reassert themselves in a changing organization.
After defining steps for how to gain foundational knowledge and how to develop and refine your vision for transformation, we describe what CIOs and CTOs can do today to drive accountability and improvement. Whether you are tasked with leading a large-scale transformation or overhauling business as usual for a given function, here are principles worth following to deliver results, manage expectations, continuously improve and drive accountability over the long term.
Establish common and regularly updated metrics
IT should be run like a business and guided by metrics that show whether it is covering its costs, with key performance indicators (KPIs) and service-level agreements (SLAs) to that effect. For example, one metric should be directly linked to time and money saved. Have your team keep a project list and update it weekly, ideally through dashboards.
“Agree upon a calculation with the finance function to be consistently applied to every project,” says Randy Mott, the CIO Advisor in Residence for the EY Center for Executive Leadership, who spent nearly 30 years as CIO for four Fortune 50 companies. “For some projects, such as an employee HR portal, that direct benefit may not be so easily defined, but it should still be documented.”
Prioritize projects and fully staff them
Sure: easier said than done. But this advice should translate into greater discipline regarding which projects are worthwhile. Oftentimes, a project should be done in, say, 90 days. But another priority crowds in, and the completion date fades into the distance. “Strive for a constant cadence of delivery,” Mott says.
Lower the “run” side of the business
Keeping the lights on tends to use up more time and energy than more strategic concerns do. Process standardization and automation enable you to cut the “run” side to reinvest in development without requiring a bigger budget that could put you in conflict with the chief financial officer. Assess where your effort is being spent — on the run side or development — and determine where you can streamline for more productive, value-added energy.
Enable your team to examine the art of the possible with tech
With technologies changing so rapidly, you need resources to assess what’s on the market, just like the business does, including scrutiny of your key ecosystem partners and suppliers. Your team should be equipped with information about current projects and systems and make informed estimates on costs and benefits. The transition from one tech platform to another is becoming less onerous than ever, and the ROI can arrive more quickly as well. Data and measurements pay off.
As Mott says, “If you know the labor devoted to a certain area, you can gauge the ROI for a tool that makes them 20% more productive.”
Be prepared to hold fact-based discussions with executive leadership and the board
What did your team deliver last quarter? Was it on time? What’s the annualized benefit? As noted, these are important answers to have in the back of your mind, not just for continuous improvement but also to orient your discussions with other business leaders around actual numbers, not mere emotion. You may confront some whose priorities are guided by self-interest and not in line with the broader imperative of the business. It is your responsibility to balance demands against the reality of how much time and resources are available.
Few roles offer the opportunity to have so much impact in so little time as the CIO and CTO. Getting started on the right foot is essential — and so is maintaining a focus on today’s enablement, tomorrow’s disruption and continuous improvement.
The views reflected in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization.
