COMMENT
CIOs must
challenge their
core beliefs
CIOs should get others to challenge their
entrenched beliefs, says Graham Waller of
Gartner, and develop a mindset that’s in tune
with the changing market realities.
I
Reframe your perspective and adopt
proven digital leaders’ traits
t’s 2020. A CIO walks into a meeting
and announces the company
is going out of business. What
happened? Now, imagine if the CIO had
asked what could go wrong in 2016,
instead of what went wrong in 2020.
Mindsets that are not in tune with the
changing market realities can derail
even high digital acuity leaders.
Your mind may be wired with deeply
entrenched beliefs, but they are just
in your mind and you can change
your mind. All leaders should regularly
challenge and invite challenge
from others to evolve their mindset
assumptions, beliefs and paradigms to
ensure they remain matched to their
particular marketplace reality.
Challenge your existing mindset
with pre-mortems
The CIO from the above scenario could
have helped his executive team avoid
problems by maintaining a healthy
paranoia and running pre-mortems.
During these sessions, the team would
have looked at what might affect the
company, and what needs to shift in
the current mindset in the face of digital
disruption. If the company was going
out of business in a few years, what could
have made the company successful?
Imagine scenarios where well-funded
digital companies enter the market
or specific trends become digital
business must-haves and the best way
to respond. During this process, apply
the same concept specifically to the
IT organisation to ensure it remains
relevant, vibrant and valued.
Truly challenging core beliefs requires
the injection of external and brutally
honest perspectives. Find digitally savvy
mentors or ‘challenge partners’ and give
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INTELLIGENTCIO
Graham Waller,
Research VP, Gartner
“Mindsets
that are not
in tune with
the changing
market realities
can derail even
high digital
acuity leaders.”
them unbridled permission to challenge
your thinking and whether it is attuned
to future market realities.
Be open to them making you feel
uncomfortable and not ‘letting you off
the hook’ as we can all be seduced by
what we know. What has served us well
in the past can lead to an unconscious
bias to repeat past behaviours and find
others that agree with us, known as
confirmation bias.
A challenge partner should be someone
who is not an obvious choice, so be
aware of biases in selecting this partner.
By changing the conceptual and/or
emotional viewpoint with which you
view a situation and placing it in a
new frame of reference that fits the
‘facts’ of your future market reality,
you can create the new context for the
needed change. One CIO changed his
perspective on shadow IT based on the
new reality of digital disruption, which
blurred traditional boundaries and
market demands for greater innovation
and speed.
He reframed shadow IT from something
to stamp out to a viewpoint of seeing
a business partner with ideas to drive
the business forward with technology,
backed by a willingness to invest both
money and talent.
Finally, reserve two hours per week to
read or study how successful leaders
digitally disrupt, with the intent of
applying that thought process to your
own situation.
Once a month, meet with venture
capitalists or entrepreneurial leaders and
use these opportunities to understand
“All leaders
should regularly
challenge and
invite challenge
from others
to evolve
their mindset
assumptions.”
www.intelligentcio.com