People will sit in pain for a long time and do nothing about it; people will hold onto a dream and not move towards it. You are thinking about people you know, for whom this is true, even as you read this.

What causes someone to do something about resolving their pain or pursuing their dream?

A trigger.

Loss of a job becomes the catalyst to start that business; a friend found a solution so you have confidence it will work for you; the room gets finished and furnished because the mother-in-law is coming to stay.

CEOs are no different. Situations can remain the same until something happens, something that demands their attention.

There are ten major issues that trigger a CEO to take a better and closer look at technology and those leading it.

The Top Ten Triggers

1. IT’s misalignment with business goals.
2. Budget overruns.
3. Delayed projects that slow business initiatives
4. Risk to the company
5. IT resistance to CEO direction
6. Lack of proactive innovation
7. End user frustration with technology solutions
8. Inadequate training and support of technology
9. Failure to scale
10. Losing competitive advantage

I work with CEOs who are triggered into action. I help them work with their IT leadership to assess issues and resolve needs. IT is a different animal than most they have had to tame. Operations and Finance are typically more their habitat. Markets and competition are usually in their view.

I am calling CEOs to not wait for a trigger event. It’s not your fault that you haven’t taken initiative to take a better and closer look at IT. IT has felt familiar but not knowable. IT has typically been a cost center (finance), and then beyond that, a solution coordinator (operations). Now, as IT is becoming more of a business partner for your competition, it’s time to overcome the enemy of familiarity. 

It’s time for you as a CEO to know what you haven’t been told, to see what you haven’t been shown, and to lead where you have not gone. 

You won’t do it alone. It’s why your technology leaders are happy I am writing about this. They want to lead the company strongly, but they can only lead as strongly as you are confidently in pace with them.

The Top Ten Turning Points

The top triggers above are reactive, that’s the nature of a trigger. But you can just as easily see them as CEO turning points for your business technology team.

You will be more informed and more involved (in ways valuable to you), because you are giving charge and leadership to IT to:

1. Understand the business better so as to align consistently
2. Focus budget on mission criticals 
3. Improve planning practices around business need and not just popular models
4. Raise the stakes of security by understanding the disaster of laxity
5. Partner with you to see ahead
6. Be proactive on purpose and not just on popular developments
7. Simplify without losing substance
8. Train and support toward actionable change
9. Know the scale to scale towards
10. Think competitive advantage

You know these ten. These turning points are why you are CEO. You have experience with them. You are not just familiar with them.

Don’t wait for the triggers. Beat the monster of familiarity to the punch. Get inside IT enough to know what you need to know so that IT knows what you already know.

I’m committing 2024 to you. I want to be the catalyst to your proactive leadership, not just the consultant to triggers that now demand your attention.

More is coming on this. But if you want to get 2024 to the right start, reply or message me. Let me help you answer the question, “How can I be more proactive in working with my IT leaders to turn technology into a competitive advantage even if I don’t know technology like they do and they don’t know business as I do?”