Tuning aspects of the CIO position into temporary, effective leadership

Looking back at a recent project, part of the analysis of the work came in the form of looking at what Avanceé has accomplish to date. In some respects, the strategy and organizational work can be boiled down to the activities of an information office. CIO definition via Wikipedia:

“The Chief Information Officer of an organization is responsible for a number of roles. First and most importantly, the CIO must fulfill the role of business leader. As a CIO must make executive decisions regarding things such as the purchase of IT equipment from suppliers or the creation of new systems, they are therefore responsible for leading and directing the workforce of their specific organization. In addition, the CIO is ‘required to have strong organizational skills’. This is particularly relevant for a Chief Information Officer of an organization who must balance roles in order to gain a competitive advantage and keep the best interests of the organization’s employees. CIOs also have the responsibility of recruiting, so it is important that they take on the best employees to complete the jobs the company needs fulfilling. In addition, CIOs are directly required to map out both the ICT strategy and ICT policy of an organization.”

Running away from the personnel aspects for a piece of the discussion, the challenge many organizations have simply boils down to “how does the best behaviors and tools of computer/connected technology enable my business to meet or exceed our current operations?” Notthing about this is a difficult statement, but it is one where those who might be better attached to sales or even product roles might fail to accurately contemplate. Suffice to say, being a sign of a compentience in information architectures has its advantages, it also shows a larger gap before the marketplace.

In the article Classroom Management: Simon Sinek, ClassDojo, and the Nostalgia Industry, there’s an acute understanding being brought forward: we cannot prepare groups for a world in where transactions and reputations are built in a seperate universe than the one in which tradition has called comfortable. If you will, running away from the most dangerous affects of connectivity has the indirect effect of also unaccounting for specifc skills utilized by those who do/will run the companies of the incoming information economy.

In the absence of such skills, Avanceé almost fits perfectly. Tuned to an educational gap —perhaps more a skills gap? Articulating systems seems to be the table stakes for any grappling with informational streams. Yes, there’s indeed something of an overload of information, yet the opportunity isn’t in reverting backwards but handing with a distinct acumen the information which is present. In our case that ends up also being the inevitability of designing better experiences or even re-engineering the structures to interpret experiences and their resulting systems. Which is more or less retuning the CIO into less of an office, and more of an opportunity.