CIOs need vision, not control

edisonApparently 76 percent of chief information officers (CIOs) in Europe have to develop vision and stop being control freaks.

A Gartner survey, according to VP Dave Aron shows that “command control leadership doesn’t suit this digital world. It can be an obstacle. Vision and inspiration are typically the most powerful attributes of digital leaders.”

Aron doesn’t say just how a CIO wedded to control can flip to being a visionary. Vision is generally innate rather than being a learned attribute.

A survey of thousands of CIOs worldwide, controlling over $397 billion in IT budgets, show that the average CIO spends five percent more time a month running the IT department.

Gartner recommends that CIOs turn over humdrum tasks to a deputy or deputies to run the “whole IT shop”.

CIOs also need to be aware of upcoming dital trends and should eschew backward looking reporting to forward looking experimentation.

Aron said: “To fully grasp the digital opportunity, businesses and CIOs need to flip long held behaviours and beliefs.”