What is leadership? This is one of the questions that regularly comes to the minds of thousands of professionals around the world when they have to face challenges and use a team to achieve their goals. There are perhaps as many definitions of leadership as there are inspired authors to define it, but for the case we are dealing with today, the Canadian economist John Kenneth Galbraith's definition is worthwhile: "All great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to face unequivocally the greatest anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership." Does this definition serve us well for today's corporate leaders? If we focus on those responsible for Digital Transformation decisions, it may be more than correct: all companies seem to be gripped by anxiety about the new times, and a large and "select" group of executives seems to be called upon to set the ships on a course for success.
This comes from the CIO survey conducted by Harvey Nash and KPMG, which in 2019 reaches its 21st edition. To this experience of more than two decades interpreting the data, we must add the scope of the same: 3,600 responses from Chief Information Officer (CIO) and other technology executives in 108 countries, a figure that leads them to boast of being "the world's largest IT leadership survey".
As such, this research provides direct insight into the priorities, strategies and careers of top technology leaders around the world, and raises probing questions in the face of contrasting phenomena. For example, in the face of evidence of IT budget increases at a faster rate than at any time in the last 15 years, the survey raises questions such as the purpose of those increases, or about managing the balance between disruptive technologies and associated risks. A case study of the latter question would be Artificial Intelligence: it brings great opportunities, but generates frictions in terms of cybersecurity, privacy and data regulation.
With the latest data in hand, the firms responsible for the study argue that digital leaders differentiate themselves from the rest with tangible results in almost all cases: better time to market, better Customer Experience, better employee experience and greater operational efficiency. Let's put it more definitively: higher revenue growth and greater profitability. That success is determined by a willingness to "put technology in the hands of value creators," as well as "clearly recognizing the power of data and having a relentless focus on speed and agility."
Another finding from the recent survey is that nearly half (44%) of organizations expect to change their product and/or service offering, or their fundamental business model, over the next three years. This is the law of the "disruption economy". What works today, works for today, but not for the immediate future. Survival thus becomes a symptom of the real capacity of companies to adapt quickly to changes in the market and the environment. The ability to be "liquid" and to flow with technological evolution, with increasingly affordable acquisition ratios in SaaS models or with codes that replicate and simplify complex solutions.
These changes are also determined by the estimate that at least 20% of professional roles will be supplanted by Artificial Intelligence and automation, although the majority (69%) of respondents believe that new job roles will emerge to compensate for those lost. Automation is not something new in industrial society, as it has been present since its early days as a cause of many labor and social conflicts. What is new, however, is the ability of machines to learn complex and elaborate mechanisms, in a field that until now was forbidden to them.
In terms of IT leadership management, this is reinforced by the tendency for spending to be oriented towards business decisions, which fosters a greater ability to detect opportunities and act on them. This is true for almost two-thirds (63%) of the organizations surveyed. However, this situation also causes misalignments where the IT team is not involved, as it increases the risks related to privacy and security. In other words, decisions in this area must be linked to business decisions, but require the support of managers and their teams to ensure that they work accordingly.
On the other hand, IT leaders continue to struggle to find professionals suited to the profiles they demand. "Skills shortages are at an all-time high," say the report's authors, "with 67% struggling to find the right talent." The three most scarce skills are those linked to the analysis of large amounts of data (Big Data and Analytics), the detection of risks and establishment of protocols to prevent cyber attacks (cybersecurity), and computer programs designed to perform operations that are considered to be typical of human intelligence (Artificial Intelligence, AI, or AI for its acronym in English).
When it comes to holding positions of responsibility, there is an apparent depreciation of CIOs, an issue that we have seen before in these pages: their ratio of presence at the board of directors has dropped from 71% two years ago to 58% today; however, where they are present, their influence remains intact according to the other members of the board: both two years ago and now, two thirds of board members support the management of the Chief Information Officer. Undoubtedly, those who want to continue to play a leading role must go for large-scale cloud adoption, and for investments in IoT, AI solutions and quantum computing, which are emerging as trends for the immediate future.
Lastly, the survey also reveals a possible piece of good news after years of cyber risks: cybercrime is still on the rise, but at least at a steady rate of around 33% per year. This means that although it is growing fast, it is no longer growing at a faster rate each year than the previous one, which suggests a certain "stabilization" in the relentless battle between hackers on the inside and hackers on the outside.
These are the anxieties that technology leaders must face if they are to be at the forefront of corporate leadership as well. Those who are able to do so, and to do so unequivocally, will have a safe passage to achieve their goals.
Photo by Levi Ventura on Unsplash
