Note to CEOs: You want your CIOs to best support digital transformation? Then, freedom is the word.

One of the most memorable speeches I remember, was delivered some years ago by the Group CIO of a bank. It was just before the term Digital Transformation made its appearance, and I remember it for two reasons:

1. This guy was talking for 20 minutes straight, without using any slides, and he kept his audience totally engaged,
2. He concluded his presentation by saying, “If there is one thing that a CIO is, then he surely is *Under Pressure*”.

Nowadays, there’s quite a lot of talk in the marketplace about digital transformation and what CIOs need to do to make that happen. But one thing is sure, CIO remain or may be even under more pressure. You see, Forrester estimates that up to 85% of the typical CIOs budget is tied up in maintaining the legacy systems that are already in place. In parallel, BoDs and CEOs are pushing for more innovation and of course for the so-called digital transformation.

As Mike Hendrickson from O'Reilly Media, put it in one of our discussions, “it’s like asking someone to change tires to a car that goes 60 miles per hour, how’s that possible?”. Or as my good colleague Maureen Blandford asked me, “What’s the one thing you wish CEOs would do for their CIOs in order to best support digital transformation?”. I think both questions are related, and they kept tantalising me some time now.

Until I had this “Eureka” moment just by reflecting the stories and experiences I heard from our clients, whom we are advising together with their teams on how to prioritise their IT budgets.

So, what a CIO needs from his/her CEO is independence, freedom to act. And by freedom I don’t mean that the CIO needs to be a loose cannon trying to change everything, but that he needs to be able to freely:

• Deploy their vision on the essential elements of a digital transformation initiative. I still remember a software achitect telling me how they managed to implement successfuly their new e-banking platform upon the arrival of their new CIO: “He is the first CIO we had that stopped talking about systems, networks and servers, and instead started asking about applications”.
• Select/hire the talent that will help him change those tires in that car that goes 60 miles per hour; Just think of this pit stop perfection in changing tires in F1 race. It wouldn’t be possible if a team of really talented engineers wasn’t in position,
• Manage his vendors in a way that reflects the needs and particularities of his task (digital transformation) at hand. I just hear these stories from organisations that CEO asks for digital transformation and then he bypasses his/her CIO and negotiates with vendors according to his own liking and not the one of his CIO,
• Level with his business counterparts. Within a digital transformation initiative, business is not the “client”. Instead, they need to work together with the IT to produce the expected value for their organisation.

So, if your company is on the path towards digital transformation, make sure you can change that tires at 60 miles per hour by assuring independence and freedom to act. And start realising that software is the enabler for your company’s digital transformation, not the infrastructure.