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CIOs Go Bold
If “being bold” is a CIO career goal, what does it really mean? And how do you go about becoming bold?
5 Min Read
Tithi Luadthong via Alamy Stock
Many chief information officers now say they must learn to be “bold” in their business. This means learning the business, presenting ideas and plans, and executing IT projects that deliver tangible business impacts. Those CIOs need to be perceived as leaders in the organization.
Being bold can present new ground for many CIOs, and it’s not always easy to make the transition. Is there a way to be bold yet stay within your strengths and your comfort zone?
What Does it Mean to Be Bold?
In business, someone who is bold is an individual who exudes confidence and assertiveness and is business savvy. However, there is a fine line between being assertive and confident in a way that is admired and being perceived as overbearing and hard to work with. For those CIOs who tend to be introverted, being perceived as bold in a positive way can be a stretch because it might require behavior and personality traits that don’t come naturally.
The good news is that there are many ways that being bold can be recognized, such as being open and receptive to new ideas, having the courage to pursue a worthwhile but challenging goal, being an optimist with a positive mindset, and developing persuasive communication skills.
It’s also noteworthy that, “While boldness is often celebrated, it’s crucial to distinguish it from recklessness,” as noted by Transitions and Beginnings, a career development website. “A bold personality exhibits calculated risk-taking, strategic decision-making, and thoughtful consideration of consequences. On the other hand, recklessness entails impulsive actions, disregard for potential harm or negative outcomes, and a lack of foresight.”
Recognize Your Comfort Zone
If your personal CIO goals include being bolder, the first step is for you to self-assess. Then, look around. You probably already know individuals in the organization or colleagues in the C-suite who are perceived as being bold shakers and movers. What did they do to acquire this reputation?
This is an important question to answer, because there are organizations whose ideas of “bold” will never mesh with the idea of bold that you have or could accomplish for yourself. In these cases, it might be better to find an organization that values the type of boldness you can deliver.
In other cases, you might be a natural fit for boldness in your organization, so the next step would be to develop and produce the kinds of actions and perceptions that would make others perceive you as a bold and forward-thinking individual.
Most companies recognize individual boldness in the business results and breakthroughs that employees make. These individuals have been successful and are confident in what they do. Their companies believe in them. But it’s also true that you don’t necessarily have to be the loudest voice in the room to acquire a reputation for being bold. You just have to present great ideas, execute them, and get results.
Succeeding in the Business
To get results from the ideas you propose, the outcomes of your ideas must solve strategic goals and/or pain points in the business. Consequently, the first rule of thumb for CIOs is to think beyond the IT box. Instead, ask questions like how an IT solution can help solve a particular challenge for the business.
Digitalization is a prime example. Early digitalization projects started out with missions such as eliminating paper by digitalizing information and making it more searchable and accessible. Unfortunately, being able to search and access data was hard to quantify in terms of business results. If there were savings in paperwork, manual processes and floorspace, these would be quickly erased by the costs of digital systems and training.
These early efforts, joined by others that followed, have led to at least one 2024 survey where respondents said that 84% of digital transformation initiatives were failing, 70% of digital transformations weren’t delivering the expected results.
Plus, 75% of respondents said digital transformations settled for dilution of value and mediocre performance.
In contrast, when you have your pulse on the business, you can research opportunities and propose a more dynamic digitalization project. It can be one that could measurably shorten build-to-order cycles so revenue can be gained sooner, and that streamlines internal business processes so they can be done more efficiently while taking less time. In this way, you can show tangible results that impact the bottom line in both revenue increases and saved expenses.
Stretching Your Capabilities
Once you’ve identified impactful business needs that technology can solve, you can present and execute your ideas, get results, and grow your reputation as a bold -- but prudent -- risk taker. However, you must work within the comfort zone of your own personality with some degree of “stretch” that can build boldness.
Here are several areas of bold “stretch” that are commonly worked on:
Developing an integral understanding of the business, its financials and its competitors;
Mastering the ability to communicate, write and present persuasively;
Expanding flexibility and open-mindedness while learning about the business, its shortfalls and what IT can do about them;
Inspiring and encouraging others on your team.
This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but it highlights some of the major qualities that organizations look for.
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