娇色导航

Like most modern CIOs, Sathish Muthukrishnan has seen the list of responsibilities for the top IT position expand; his title 鈥� 鈥� reflects that expansion.

As the IT chief at Ally Financial, and one of this year鈥檚 , Muthukrishnan says the position has evolved into one that is now 鈥渁 strategic partner for the enterprise.鈥�

鈥淩eporting to the CEO and a member of the company鈥檚 executive committee, my role is deep and broad 鈥� product, user experience, data, digital, tech delivery, security, network, and operations,鈥� he says.

The ongoing expansion of 娇色导航duties also has changed what constitutes success for the role. Measures of success are shifting away from operational metrics such as uptime to those focused on organizational goals.

鈥淢y professional journey has instilled in me the importance of driving value for the business. It鈥檚 not merely about adopting technology for its own sake but rather making a meaningful difference for your organization,鈥� Muthukrishnan says.

An increasingly business-centric role

惭耻迟丑耻办谤颈蝉丑苍补苍鈥檚 career highlights demonstrate that shift.

As chief digital and information officer at Honeywell Aerospace, he helped transform the company鈥檚 10,000-plus global engineering organization and its used serviceable airline parts into a blockchain-powered digital business. As 娇色导航of enterprise digital at American Express, he helped pioneer digital transformation and launched several industry-first digital products. He and his colleagues have generated more than 30 patents in the manufacturing, payments, and digital technology categories.

Muthukrishnan says the chance to make such marks for the business is what attracted him to the 娇色导航job.

鈥淭his role ignites a superpower to see around corners for emerging tech and identify opportunities to amplify delivery. It offers the responsibility and ability to impact the entire company, and positively influence both internal and external customers. In short, connecting dots,鈥� he says.

For CIOs who like that, there鈥檚 good news, as the Hall of Famers see much more of that work on the horizon.

鈥淎s technology has advanced, the opportunity has increased, too,鈥� he says, adding that moving forward 鈥渢he best candidates [for 娇色导航jobs] will be technologists who can connect the dots, understand businesses, as well as appreciate and articulate customer needs.

惭耻迟丑耻办谤颈蝉丑苍补苍鈥檚 IT career, which started some three decades ago as a software engineer, overlaps with the rise of the 娇色导航position and its evolution from a job focused almost exclusively on making sure the technology runs to an executive-level post responsible for ensuring that the business runs.

Of course, the responsibility for efficiently and effectively running IT will continue as a bedrock of the 娇色导航role as it moves into the future; in fact, it鈥檚 a responsibility that has become increasingly critical as digital organizations cannot operate without technology 鈥� they can鈥檛 revert back to manual operations in an emergency, as none exist.

That said, however, the members of the 2024 Hall of Fame cohort believe CIOs will continue accumulating both more business responsibilities and more business power in the upcoming years.

And those changes will shape the dominant skills that CIOs will need, the tasks they鈥檒l have, possibly their place in the org chart and, as Muthukrishnan shows, their titles.

Visionaries driving the business agenda

鈥淚t is clear that as IT has become a critical driver and as every company now sees itself as a technology company, the 娇色导航has to be more strategic, understand how technology changes [existing] strategy, interact more with customers and drive revenue,鈥� says Lori Beer, global 娇色导航of JPMorgan Chase.

CIOs will have ramped-up expectations on their ability to deliver 鈥渋nnovation in many forms,鈥� she explains. That means CIOs will be innovating on how and what the organization delivers for products and services as well as innovating on how it operates and how its employees do their day-to-day work.

Beer says CIOs also will face increasing expectations around managing risk and .

And CIOs can expect expanding duties around talent management, Beer says; she predicts that CIOs will spend more time helping colleagues understand emerging technologies and upskilling all employees (and not only those in IT) so all can collaborate on swiftly seizing business opportunities that new tech enables.

鈥淎ll of this is here in various degrees today, but the importance of all this will become more important in the future as the world becomes more complex and more complicated,鈥� Beer adds.

Len O鈥橬eill, who in April retired from his position as senior vice president and 娇色导航at The Suddath Companies after a decades-long IT career, had a similar take on the 娇色导航of the future.

鈥淵ou鈥檝e got to be the visionary. You鈥檙e the one who has to see the opportunities and press your [colleagues] on seizing those opportunities,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e finding ways to differentiate and drive change. You have to read the landscape, have a vision, communicate that vision. You鈥檝e got to be out in front. You have to be a pioneer.鈥�

That means CIOs will have more opportunities 鈥� and responsibilities 鈥� for contributing to their organization鈥檚 revenue generation through the commercialization of digital products and services, O鈥橬eill says.

To succeed in this future that O鈥橬eill and others envision, these Hall of Fame inductees say CIOs will need all the skills required to do the job now; the ability to collaborate, communicate, and negotiate will remain must-have skills. Ditto for change management skills and the ability to influence without authority.

The CIOs of tomorrow

However, each inductee stresses that the CIOs of tomorrow will need new competencies, too.

Beer says they鈥檒l 鈥渉ave to be very good at context switching based on the role they鈥檙e playing at any given time.鈥� They may need to move from being the visionary at one meeting to educator at the next, for example.

CIOs also may need to learn how to manage an intellectual property portfolio as they commercialize more digital products and services, O鈥橬eill adds.

Bryan Muehlberger, 娇色导航and CTO of Lumiyo, says CIOs, whose view across the organization has fueled much of the growing importance of the position, will have to develop a deeper understanding for each of the parts within the enterprise 鈥� and the pressures and changes impacting each one 鈥� so they can successfully innovate, transform, and grow the business as expected.

And, not surprisingly, the CIOs of tomorrow will have to be continuous learners 鈥� just as they are today, he says, although the expectation is that they鈥檒l have to learn even faster in the future than they do now (thanks to the ever-increasing pace of change).

There are practical reasons for considering what the 娇色导航job will entail in the future, Beer notes. Current CIOs themselves must prepare, as do up-and-coming executives and the rest of the C-suite. 鈥淚t has lots of implications for succession planning,鈥� Beer says.

Sue Kozik, who retired in July from her role as senior vice president and 娇色导航of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana after 45 years in IT, says CIOs now and even more so in the future 鈥渉ave to be willing to solve real-world problems.鈥�

鈥淭he 娇色导航has evolved from run the railroad smoothly to tell me where technology can enable us to be the easiest, most intuitive, cost-effective organization,鈥� Kozik says, adding that the 娇色导航is the contender for this work because 鈥渢he IT function is one of few in an organization that can look across enterprise.鈥�

She adds: 鈥淜nitting together technology and business, that鈥檚 where you鈥檙e going to be transformational, that鈥檚 where you add value.鈥�

鈥業t always come back to the CIO鈥�

Already, the evolution of the top IT job has brought changes in the job鈥檚 title, these Hall of Fame inductees point out. They say those changes will continue.

Similarly, they say the job鈥檚 evolution is changing and will continue to grow the career opportunities that IT leaders themselves can readily seek.

Kozik, for one, says the 娇色导航and COO roles may blur in more and more organizations in the future, given how much technology has become part and parcel of operations.

鈥淵ou can鈥檛 have operations without technology, so it makes sense to me to bring those two positions together, and I think the 娇色导航is better positioned for the role because of the CIO鈥檚 technology literacy,鈥� she says.

Kozik says the title of EVP or SVP of operations and technology is a good fit for the combined role.

Others see more CIOs expanding their titles in the future to accurately reflect the expanding domains they oversee.

Like 惭耻迟丑耻办谤颈蝉丑苍补苍鈥檚 chief information, data, and digital officer, CIOs may find they have longer titles to reflect their increasing work on customer-facing digital products. So, they say, expect the 娇色导航title to increasingly be combined with the chief technology officer or the chief digital officer titles, too.

At the same time, CIOs may see a proliferation of new titles that would likely answer to them, Muehlberger says. For example, organizations may create more and more chief AI officer positions and other such roles as new disruptive technologies come along and have those new jobs report to the CIO.

Muehlberger says he doesn鈥檛 expect the CAIO and other such new titles to displace the CIO, however. He says they might also be relatively short-lived positions in many organizations, as they get created to seize on learning and adopting the new technology before all of that gets folded back into routine IT operations and, thus, the list of 娇色导航responsibilities.

鈥淚t always comes back to the CIO,鈥� Muehlberger adds.

Meanwhile, the CIOs of tomorrow can expect to see their career options expand, too, with the position becoming a step to the CEO spot and board membership.

This year鈥檚 Hall of Famer inductees are on that path already.

O鈥橬eill, for example, remains on retainer with Suddath to ensure a smooth transition between him and his successor. He鈥檚 also a principal at RedHands Partners, which offers advisory and other services. He says he is interested in more advisory work and board positions.

Kozik, who works with a nonprofit that builds workforce development programs in IT for unemployed or underemployed youth, is interested in board work, too.