CIOs Need To Expand Their Mindset In The Digital Era, Says Gartner
Gartner says the CIO must be the culture change agent to enhance digital dexterity as a competency that applies to individuals, teams and the organization as a whole.
A digitally dexterous workforce is essential to foster agility, collaboration and the adoption of new digital technologies. According to analyst firm, Gartner, in the new digital era, the CIO must be the culture change agent to enhance digital dexterity as a competency that applies to individuals, teams and the organization as a whole.
“The digital component of most jobs is increasing. Technical skills are important, but are not enough to steer a successful digital business transformation,” said Helen Poitevin, research vice president at Gartner.
“Business and IT leaders need to employ the right talent with a specific set of mindsets, beliefs and behaviors — which we call digital dexterity — to launch, finish and capitalize on digital initiatives,” she stated.
Gartner analysts believe organizations can create a digital dexterity program to lead successful digital business initiatives. As Poitevin observes, “The payoff from digital dexterity can be significant. Employees with high levels of digital dexterity are more than three times more likely to gain value from digital initiatives than those with moderate digital dexterity. “They are quicker to launch, finish and obtain the outcomes they seek from digital initiatives.”
Today, CIOs in large enterprises are already viewing digital business as a top priority, and therefore improving digital dexterity throughout the organization is crucial. To help their employees to develop digital dexterity traits, business leaders need to build them up by enabling enterprise agility and developing digital competencies. Above all, business leaders need to make digital dexterity a C-suite priority, said the Gartner report.
“Mindsets and practices shape culture, and technology acts as an amplifier of that culture. Technology by itself seldomly changes an organization’s culture”, said Daniel Sanchez Reina, senior research director at Gartner. Technology is often the backbone of how work gets done and reinforces the company culture, which is why culture change is becoming an increasing responsibility of IT.“Increasingly, it’s the responsibility of the CIO to operationalize the enterprise culture and the prevalence of digital dexterity in the workplace,” added Sanchez Reina.
“The CIO will play a key role in supporting desired behaviors and changing the processes, procedures, policies and management practices that shape how work gets done to encourage desired behaviors.”
The CIO is the culture change leader and the chief HR officer (CHRO) is a key partner to the CIO in shifting the mindset of their own IT team members from “this is the way we have always done things” to “how can we do things better?”
According to him, however, this will only happen by applying a framework of culture change, which includes increasing the digital dexterity of the entire organization.
