The future of IT leadership: 5 new roles CIOs must master

If you think technology leaders’ jobs have changed a lot over the past few years, just wait. Here are five new roles all CIOs must take on in the years ahead.

It’s more than an understatement to say the role of technology leaders has changed over the past few years.

The widespread adoption of cloud computing and process automation has reduced the demands for IT departments to keep the lights on. Large-scale capital expenditures on infrastructure are being replaced by increased operating expenses on services. Meanwhile, the pressure to take an active leadership role in the business’s digital transformation is greater than ever.

“If you looked at CIOs ten years ago, they spent an inordinate amount of time in the lower parts of the stack and in the data center,” says Archana Rao, CIO for Atlassian, makers of collaboration tools like Trello and Jira. “The emergence of cloud and business process automation have shifted us away from old-school operational CIOs and into business enablers.”

In a few years we’ll see the emergence of “the Bionic CIO,” predicts Jay Venkat, senior partner and managing director for Boston Consulting Group.

“They’ll transcend what’s traditionally been called information technology and teach the business how to become more digitally enabled,” he says. “They’ll need to understand not only technology but also its impact on the workforce. And if they want to become the ‘Bionic CIO,’ they’ll have to upskill themselves.”

What will the CIO job look like in five years? Technology leaders will need to be equally adept at five new roles. 

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