By Alexis Wierenga | 3-minute read | October 18, 2023
Executive Insights from Day 3 of the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo
AS CEO priorities for 2024 take shape, Gartner Distinguished VP Analysts Kristin Moyer and Mark Raskino recommend CIOs focus on two key areas: finding the foundations of a postcrisis future business strategy and framing the AI future to enable bold bets among the executive team.
Here are 4 CIO leadership actions to meet CEO concerns about growth in 2024:
Discover your CEO and board’s timing for long-range strategy rebuilding.
Assert your right to offer input, garner influence and gain visibility.
Establish how fresh AI-enabled ideas and insights can change the rules of competition in your industry.
Offer bigger potential business returns with lower risk and moderately longer payback periods.
These 4 CIO leadership actions help frame the AI future for other executives:
Identify the top three critical business capabilities on which the business strategy will depend.
Brainstorm how AI could make the biggest difference to those specific capabilities.
Challenge “AI washing” behavior. Do not permit the “brand” of AI to be diluted and diminished.
"CEOs must start making their big moves soon. Investors won’t accept the ‘uncertainty’ inaction excuse for long."
Kristin Moyer, Distinguished VP Analyst, Gartner
Ninety-three percent of CEOs want their organizational culture to change in some way, and it falls on CIOs to help make this shift happen. Christie Struckman, VP Analyst at Gartner, shared three case studies that show Gartner's 5-step model for culture change in action — and how you can apply it within your organization.
"Culture serves strategy. So, take your strategy and define how you need your organization to behave to make that strategy work.”
Christie Struckman, VP Analyst at Gartner
Use this 5-step framework to enable organizational culture change:
Understand your culture. To change something, you must understand it first.
Define your desired culture. Identify how your organization needs to behave to make the strategy work.
Map the journey to get there. Describe how your team needs to change to embody each of the attributes you defined in the previous step.
Operationalize your change journey. Alter the systems, processes and practices that tell employees what is expected, accepted and respected.
Generative AI continues to develop at a rapid pace, making it challenging for most enterprises to keep up. While nobody can credibly predict GenAI’s future, Leigh McMullen, Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst, breaks downs four categories of evolving threats and developing opportunities generative AI, cybersecurity and digital risk.
"There is an infinite list of new and potential threats. The main question is whether the organization needs to address, postpone or ignore these low-signal threats, which can be emerging and dangerous, or overhyped and a distraction.”
Leigh McMullen, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner
There are eight scenarios of evolving threats and developing opportunities based on the time horizon, speed of evolution and potential impact:
Fast and Close - Offensive: Threats like deep fake fraud and spear fishing at scale are close and evolving rapidly. Your reaction time is limited.
Fast and Close - Defensive: There are great opportunities for defender communications and security awareness.
Fast and Far - Offensive: With evolving malware, high-value targets need to prioritize agile R&D.
Fast and Far - Defensive: Focus on tool interoperability to support strong signal detection and use AI to put your enterprise in a strong position.
Slow and Close - Offensive: With the susceptibility of AI to malinformation, automate the kill chain and scale these tools.
Slow and Close - Defensive: Use of AI will require greater tool integration/interoperability.
Slow and Far - Offensive: In the wake of uncertainty about the most novel, slowly evolving and far-out AI-based attacks, simply observe — for now.
Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, The World’s Most Important Gathering of CIOs and IT Executives™, brings together thousands of executives every year to address the strategic needs of enterprise CIOs and their leadership teams.
Learn more about the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo event and what's in store for 2024.
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Kristin Moyer is a Distinguished VP, Analyst in Gartner's CEO and Digital Business Leader practice.
Mark Raskino is a Gartner Fellow in the CEO and Digital Business Leadership research team. Mark works primarily with CIOs and their business executive colleagues. He covers business and technology trends and their implications for business strategy, innovation, business models, leadership and executive relationships. Mr. Raskino's research includes Gartner's annual CEO survey and CIO resolutions. He co-authored the books "Digital to the Core" (Gartner, 2015) and "Mastering the Hype Cycle" (Harvard Business Press, 2008). He is a frequent keynote speaker and keynote interviewer.
Christie Struckman is a Vice President in Gartner's CIO research team. She helps CIOs and other C-level executives with aligning the organizational building blocks needed to succeed in the digital-era. Topics include: culture and organizational change; leadership development, leadership transitions and development; management practices; diversity, equity and inclusion; and conflict management practices. She is currently working on supporting clients developing themselves as executive leaders, re-imagining the role of managers in the future of work, and thriving as the role of the CIO continues to evolve.
Leigh C. McMullen is a Distinguished Vice President, Analyst and Gartner Fellow in Gartner's CISO, Security & Risk Management team. Mr. McMullen leverages his experience as both a line-of-business manager and IT leader to provide CISOs with insight on navigating and making a difference within the C-suite. Additionally, he provides clients with a holistic view of executive management leadership research, specializing on the topics of politics, influence, culture, business engagement, internal selling, marketing & communications. Mr. McMullen's Fellows work, the Delta Business Operating System examines business operating models which are designed to change and adapt rather than just scale.
