Leadership is more than knowing and showing the way. It’s sharing in the way.

Resistance to rollouts are common, and failure to overcome them is an agony of defeat in a class all by itself. The art of overcoming is anchored in three essentials often unknown or overlooked by CIOs and technology leaders.

Lists of priorities are merely voices competing for attention. Your CEO won't invest unless you show the real need behind four critical areas in 2024 that need buy-in.

When peak performers compete, it's not the skill in question but the equipment at play.

Transformation is a deep word being lost in translation. So what does it really mean to transform IT? It must be comprehensive, including eight key areas of development.

Sometimes good initiatives stall. That might be the case with you and generative AI. Don’t let your interest get distracted. Use this checklist to open incredible opportunities for you and your team.

Large Language Models are just that - large. Like much of our work with others, LLMs require a bit of mentoring and coaching. To draw out the best it has to give, we have to train it to think like the rest of our team thinks.

Generative AI has already proven to be beneficial; and it has already shown signs of concern. Your job is to ensure it is implemented and developed responsibly. What are your peers doing that you can't overlook?

You must lead the way for technology and business to communicate for a change. And for the change to mean anything, you are going to have to change the environment in which all this talking is taking place.

The number one issue for CIOs working within the C-Suite, according to your peers, is translating “technology speak” to business impact. It’s time to learn how to effectively connect, engage and align with lines of business to gain their commitment to technology by improving your communication skills and strategies.

Change efforts fail because the hard work is done in the wrong place, and because we avoid resistance as much as possible. To succeed at change, create and embrace friction as early as possible.

CIOs are in a unique position to lead the most critical conversations businesses now face in the wake of global AI. Three discussions - the philosophical, the practical and the positional are essential.

CEOs are quitting. A major reason cited is because they don’t have the skills to lead their company into transformation. The problem is, people misunderstand transformation. CIOs don’t. And that is why the CIO needs to help keep their CEO from quitting prematurely.

The use of ChatGPT and generative AI has flooded companies with questions and concerns. CIOs are being asked for their perspective and for policies. How do you lead both reactively and proactively while encouraging calm and confident ways forward?

Tech debt is a real cost. But there is a greater debt companies should fear, and on the flip side, it’s the one investment that must be made regardless of economic conditions.

CIOs typically shoulder responsibility for technology failure. But CEOs and Boards don’t get a pass. Lack of courage and loss of vision are at the heart of the failure, and CIOs can step up beforehand to change and focus the conversation around business and customer experience, not just bottom lines.

The answer to talent gaps, backlogs and shadow IT is Citizen Development. It’s not a fad, it’s a movement, and one you must lead and shape to resolve challenges you still face and will face more of in years ahead.

CIOs and CEOs need a cohesive strategy to counter the technology talent gap, backlog and shadow IT. Citizen Development is the framework that will get it done.

CIOs don’t need to understand the inner workings of data analytics, but they do need to see the value in it. But beyond that, it is not about the data but the decisions, which means CIOs need to approach data analytics not as a center, but as communities.

Stakeholders know the value of the CIO. The last thing they want is for their CIO to be led down a wrong path, distracted by the agenda of others, and misdirected by trends that lure them into waste.

Before telling the truth to others, tell it to yourself. An exercise in introspection will go a long way to turning hard-conversations into effective, watershed moments of change.

Transformation is not an overused word. If anything, it is underused. Leaders embrace it and keep it in front of everyone.

To lead wider, CIOs need to think better. They do so through assessment, inquiry, focus and engagement.

For years now, we have debated to whom the CIO should report. The options are few, but it doesn’t matter. The question was wrong. Fix the question, and the answer is obvious.

Data is the driver. Avoid these five pitfalls in order to stay on course: Style over substance, futile fighting, willful ignorance, chasing aberrations and lazy thinking.

The CIO is here to stay. They are the bridge for customer experience, business priority and technology solution. Most of all, they teach everyone how to think differently, not just to know more.

Adoption of technology is now in the fabric of how you operate. Best practices of leveraging technology require a shift: strategic initiative, high-impact outcomes, implementation wisdom, financial justification and training completeness.

This is why you have risen to the top of the pack. In particular, the CEO, CIO and C-Suite are hyper-sensitive to being distracted from what matters most. Especially, the CEO and CIO have moved into a working relationship different than before and more essential than ever.

Digital Transformations are not just about corporate change. Celebration at the end is appropriate: Change has been made. But celebrations along the way reinforce that people are the ones making the change. The end is a product of great minds and talents within the initiative.

Digital Transformation is more of a leadership challenge than a technology challenge. The demands of today have outpaced yesterday’s training. IT members need to exhibit a whole new skillset than what drew them into technology in the first place.

Companies get so buried in daily responsibilities they overlook what really matters. Digital Transformation matters, and the effort it takes to rally, craft and drive that initiative matters. In Part 1, we talked about rallying change through how you motivate, relate and connect.

Though most CEO’s and CFO’s didn’t rise through the ranks of tech mastery, they still see clearly the essential changes in front of them. They then enlist alongside them a whole new band of Chief technologists. Together, Digital Transformation is your shared vision.