BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Technology Leadership Means No More Chiefs

Following
This article is more than 6 years old.

I’ve been a “Chief” several times in my career and while the title is nice, it often didn’t mean very much to the organizations I’ve “led.” Of course, this may be attributable to my own skills and competencies, but it may also be attributable to something else:  the falsely purposeful need to centralize expertise and authority in someone supremely responsible and accountable for achieving specific results. Put more simply, we love leaders (and especially leadership titles) because we can turn our lonely eyes to someone who can just make us feel better (and someone we can blame when things go wrong). Yes, we love leaders – and failures. They both serve corporate purposes.

Digital leadership is confused – again. Like you, I’ve recently seen calls for Chief Digital Marketing Officers, Chief Data Officers, Chief Analytics Officers, Chief Social Media Officers, Chief Content Officers, Chief Transformation Officers, Chief Cloud Officers and Chief Digital Strategy Officers, among lots of other chiefs including of course the existing ones, like CIOs, CTOs and CISOs – and their Deputies. Is there room for all of these Chiefs?  Who’s authorizing the creation of all these empires?

Specialization in a converging world is misguided. Horizontal management is better than vertical, “silo” management. The number of approved, licensed Chiefs you have explains your level of organizational complexity: the more chiefs, the more complex your business structures, rules and processes. Chiefs increase organization autonomy, atrophy and dysfunction. The more you have, the more confusion and conflict you will experience.

Lots of Chiefs also challenge your governance structures and processes. Let’s assume you have ten technology Chiefs with their own missions, teams and budgets. You assume they will coordinate and cooperate, but general incentive structures and competitive instincts make it impossible for Chiefs to love one another – or always stay in their mission swim lanes. Chief Data Officers will intrude upon Chief Digital Marketing Officers – who both need Chief Cloud Officers – while the CISO tells them all what they can and cannot do (with oversight from the Chief Transformation Officer).

How is organizational power distributed among the Chiefs Which Chief decides which Chief should be Chief? Trust me, no one really knows.

One answer is abstraction. Instead of technology chiefs of one kind or another, companies should find Chiefs that operate at a higher level of abstraction, such as Chief Innovation Officers or Chief Transformation Officers. Their missions are broader and therefore less invasive of existing business rules, processes and models. They constitute a smaller number of filters through which change can occur which enables speed and agility.

But even this approach – fewer Chiefs – still assumes the intrinsic value of “Chiefs.” What if there was another way to optimize digital technology? What if “digital” became a way of life?

The no-enterprise-Chiefs approach requires a different kind of investment. At first glance, it appears to take longer and cost more, but compared to multiple dysfunctional enterprise Chiefdoms, it’s much cheaper and more productive. The first step is a general education across the leadership about the trends and capabilities of digital technology. No single team – or even groups of teams – should exclusively own and dispense this knowledge. It’s not possible or desirable for knowledge that enables digital transformation to be leveraged hierarchically: it’s the combination of subject matter expertise and digital technology that identifies opportunities for digital transformation. Everyone should understand digital technologies, trends and trajectories and how business rules, processes and whole business models can be transformed for profitable advantage. The next step is the creation of a knowledge repository run by a corporate “digital librarian,” an internal Google search engine capable of answering questions about the intersection of company and industry processes and models, and digital technology. The third step is the creation of innovation labs in every business unit informed by the general education and the enterprise repository. Over time, entire business units will become transformation machines.

There’s no enterprise coordination necessary in this model. No convoluted governance processes and no turf battles across poorly-defined Chiefdoms. It’s a “state’s rights” approach to corporate governance, where business units are the states and the enterprise is the federal government. But let’s not go too far with the analogy. The approach does not favor strong governors, just strong mayors. But you get the idea: we don’t need any more technology Chiefs.