Dear CIO,

We all know AI is here, so let's cut to the chase. Businesses are scrambling to deploy AI tools, but many are tripping over the most critical element: leadership that truly understands how to navigate the human side of this tech revolution. Ignoring this is costing companies dearly. Are you ready for what's required? In this article, I am going to cover how leadership needs to evolve to survive.

Best Regards,
John, Your Enterprise AI Advisor

AI Is Reshaping Your Business. Is Your Leadership Keeping Pace?

CIOs, you're in the hot seat. The 2024 State of the CIO survey shows 85% of you are driving change, but only 28% list transformation leadership as a top priority. Just from my own experience, more and more leaders in organizations that I have talked to say that they are drowning in operational fires, losing strategic thinking time, and being pressured to "just implement AI".

The hard truth is that the biggest AI roadblock isn't the tech itself, but rather the organization's resistance to change. At the end of the day, we are demanding miracles from machines while neglecting the people and culture needed to make them work.

Think it doesn't matter? Ask Zillow how their $300 million AI home-buying bet went wrong. Ask California State University about the chaos after announcing an AI overhaul without enough human groundwork. Ask Air Canada about the PR nightmare when their chatbot gave incorrect bereavement fare info. While all these situations involve AI, these weren't tech glitches. They were leadership failures due to a lack of focus on trust, transparency, and the people impacted.

However, smart companies are waking up. They're creating a new role: the Chief Innovation and Transformation Officer (CITO). This position is a dedicated leader laser-focused on making AI transformation succeed holistically. CITOs tackle the messy stuff such as navigating AI ethics, retraining the workforce, making humans and AI play well together, smashing silos, managing citizen developers, and keeping innovation accountable.

It is important to note, though, that this role doesn't push the CIO aside. I would argue that it superpowers the entire C-suite. If you're a CIO already juggling innovation, IT, data, and operations, the CITO model might finally give you the dedicated bandwidth needed for real transformation.

Looking around at large organizations, we can see the shift starting to happen. PepsiCo and Standard Chartered already have CITO-like leaders driving integrated strategy, and JPMorgan Chase has already connected AI directly to ethics via its data leadership. What’s more, the job market is screaming for this skillset. State Street recently advertised for a Chief Transformation Officer to lead AI, cloud, and cultural change. This is the new scope of leadership.

While we are at it, we need to get ready for the next wave of managing AI personas. As generative AI gets smarter, you'll have digital "employees" with their roles and priorities. Who's managing them? This demands cross-functional oversight, steered by someone like a CITO, bringing together HR, ethics, data, and tech experts. For example, we can take a look at Salesforce, which is already doing this internally. 

The bottom line is that AI demands a new leadership playbook. Sticking to old structures while deploying revolutionary tech is a recipe for failure. The CITO represents the necessary evolution from managing technology to truly leading transformation. CIOs and other leaders need to ask themselves: Are we ready to adapt our leadership model, or will we become another cautionary tale?

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