Even the most effective CIOs can’t transform a business on their own. They need a best-in-class team with different backgrounds and skill sets behind them.
Putting this together isn’t easy. IDG's 2020 State of the CIO report noted that “the struggle to find the right talent remains an ongoing issue as CIOs hunt for employees with skill sets in areas like artificial intelligence, cloud, analytics, and cybersecurity.”
“I think skills are more than just a cloud challenge, but rather a global one,” says Daniel Baker, a technical evangelist for Microsoft.
“Currently, we see a disconnect between supply and demand.” Without urgent effort on training and reskilling, he feels, competition for talent will remain a barrier.
“I worry about talent and making sure that we have the right staff,” says Cynthia Stoddard, CIO for Adobe. “It’s a very competitive world.”
Microsoft CDO Andrew Wilson believes CIOs must “lead a talent transformation, because many of the skills needed to drive technological change have changed.” For this, CIOs need “the ability to diagnose that and build the right type and shape, and pace of team.”
What qualities should they look for? Obviously, technical expertise is important, but it’s just as vital that teams reflect the changing role of IT.
Soft skills and personal qualities are growing more relevant, including being inquisitive, self-motivated, adaptable, and collaborative.
What’s more, IT’s place within the workforce is changing. Hybrid working models are here to stay, and The Living Enterprise is as much about supporting a distributed workforce as it is about managing in-house systems. And as IT functions increasingly align with the line of business, staff may need to integrate, and even become embedded within business teams.
Find out how leading CIOs are preparing for the future and building more diverse and inclusive teams in episode seven of The Living Enterprise podcast.
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This makes diversity essential. “Diverse teams are the best teams. We know this,” says ERT CIO, Jay Ferro. Beatriz Copelli, formerly Global Functional CIO, British American Tobacco agrees, particularly when it comes to global organizations.
“I’m not talking only gender diversity,” she says. “A technology function usually works without boundaries worldwide, so being culturally diverse is an important capability.”
Experian’s Aline Hayes feels that while diversity is improving, there’s still work to do. “I think where we’re doing really poorly is around ethnicity,” she says. “It does feel really odd that we’ve got a high-profile career area where it’s still so white and doesn’t feel like it’s representative.” There’s more work to be done, but CIOs are responding. According to IDG’s 2021 State of the CIO study, nearly three-quarters of CIOs are making diversity and inclusion a priority during the IT hiring process.
Of course, recruitment is only half the story. Staff also need to be retained. “The right technology is actually the easy part,” says Cynthia Stoddard. “The hard part is keeping staff engaged and motivated — and on the edge to keep innovating.”
This is a continual process, as Jason Oliver of the University of Sussex explains. “It isn’t about sending people on training courses,” he argues, “it’s about the sharing of knowledge, it’s about the building of relationships. It’s about the team ethos and building in an understanding that we have a common cause. And you don’t do that through implementing new technology. You do that by building outstanding teams and outstanding people.”