This year on the Technovation podcast, Peter High asked technology and digital leaders about the books they read, TV shows they watched, and podcasts they listened to that fueled their leadership and personal growth. The answers ranged widely across genres and mediums, reflecting the diverse inspirations that leaders draw from. Here are a few highlights of their recommendations and reflections.
Rob Carter, CIO, FedEx
Nothing Like It in the World by Stephen Ambrose
“I like to read about military conflicts. I grew up in a military family, but innovations to me are fascinating to read about… The tycoons of the era weren’t the tech guys like we see them today. They were the railroad barons, and that’s why train stations were so opulent, because it’s where all the money was.”
David Burns, CIO, General Electric, GE Aerospace
The Fog of War (Documentary)
“It’s an incredible documentary about Robert McNamara—his time, his life, and his career. It’s his 11 lessons through his life. I won’t give away the secrets, but from his time as the CEO of Ford to the Secretary of Defense of the U.S. government, there are just a lot of valuable insights that I always take away from that documentary when I watch it.”
Diane Morais, President of Consumer and Commercial Banking, Ally Financial
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
“It’s all about how you spend your time on the things that matter the most and not get distracted by things that, quite frankly, are not going to move the needle or are not important. That mindset at the beginning of COVID really helped us clear the decks of things we might’ve been working on that weren’t really going to be big enough to matter.”
Brad Miller, CIO, Moderna
The Martian by Andy Weir
“You might say, ‘Wow, that’s really not a very insightful type of book or movie.’ However, when you look at what happened with someone being left on Mars, albeit fictional, what that person had to do was figure out how to survive and decompose problems to identify constraints. That resonated with me the most. I love sharing it with others to think about how you attack problems—how you start decomposing them to understand constraints and dependencies and how to unlock them. As a leader, our job is to bring results and operate and, for me, having that skillset has been very powerful in my career.”
Jason Strle, CIO, Discover Financial Services
Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight
“It’s really important for us to understand how the work we do impacts the company. It provides a lot of very important insight for me to understand how the work we do affects what our shareholders and the investment community see, as well as our employees and our community.”
Sesh Tirumala, CIO, Western Digital
Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
“One of the things in IT is always about how you tell the story with the end in mind and then work your plan backward. To me, I think that’s a good read, in general, to talk about a finished product in mind and launch. Work your way backward and iron out all the kinks.”
Shri Santhanam, CIO, Experian
The Hidden Brain by Shankar Vedantam (Podcast)
“It’s a podcast about human behavior and how we think and act, particularly in the context of artificial intelligence and understanding the behavior of AI. It’s quite interesting to compare and contrast how we as humans behave, as well as the choices we make.”
Carissa Rollins, Global CIO, Illumina
Wisdom at Work by Chip Conley
“[Conley] talks about those of us who are kind of in our elder stages of our careers. It’s about transitioning from being that person that’s executing and doing the day-to-day to also being this modern elder and helping other professionals through their careers, sharing your wisdom. Often, those of us who have been around for a long time bring a lot of emotional intelligence and perspective and opportunities to mentor others to the workplace.”
Greg Fancher, CIO, PetSmart
Super Communicators by Charles Duhigg
“The concepts laid out are truly about human connection and how driving the right kind of human connection will really allow you to communicate with other people and get through really tough decisions in really tough moments.”
Nand Mulchandani, CIO, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Spies, Lies, and Algorithms by Amy Zegart
“A perpetual favorite is Spies, Lies, and Algorithms by Amy Zegart from Stanford. She’s just an amazing thinker. I recommend that book heavily to folks who want to learn about the CIA, NSA, and other intel organizations. It’s just a great book. I have my son and kids reading it.”
Muneer Mirza, Head of End-User Computing, AWS
My Turn by Johan Cruyff
“The work that Johan Cruyff did was most fundamentally to create advantages for your team on the pitch. As a leader, I think that is one of the most important things you could be asking yourself regularly: ‘What advantages am I creating for my team to be super successful?’ There has to be some way to create that advantage to win in the moments that are super critical for you.”
Leo Bodden, CIO, New York Presbyterian
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
“Outliers is a phenomenal book because it really changes your perspective on just about everything that you do and know, and he does it in a data-driven way, which was life-changing for me.”
Dolores Mears, CIO, Hensel Phelps
The Singularity is Nearer by Ray Kurzweil
“You may agree with Kurzweil, you may not, but the knowledge that he has in that book and the data he provides are really good data points that you should consider and think about, especially if you’re thinking about long-term strategy. If you’re thinking ahead 10 or 15 years, pick up his book and pay attention to the data he has.”
Mike Clifton, Co-CEO, Alorica Inc.
CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest by Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra
“When I was told this is the job we’d like you and (co-CEO Max Schwendner) to do, the first thing I always do is turn to where I can ingest large amounts of data to put a plan together and get my head around the right kind of thinking. It had a lot of great examples of dimensional thinking—how problems were broken down and what you really need to do for your company to set the right path.”
Harry Folloder, CIO, Alorica Inc.
One Second After by William R. Forstchen
“It talks about a connected world where an EMP device goes off in the sub-atmosphere, and within a moment, everything that has a chip in it no longer works. What does society do that’s been so reliant on tech operating everything? If that tech goes away in a moment’s notice, what happens to society? How does it recover?”
Graeme Thompson, CIO, Informatica
Politics, Silos, and Turf Wars by Patrick Lencioni
“It’s a great one to remind us that we need to rally our people around a common objective, not just individual brilliance in their function. That’s one that I’ve read over and over again.”
Ajit Jagtap, CIO, MODE Global
Radical Candor by Kim Scott
“The theme of the book is how can you care personally while also challenging directly. It’s about empathy and action and how it leads to compassion, but it’s not a ruinous empathy where you’re just crying with the person as opposed to trying to help them get over the hump.”
Michael Lucas, CIO, Wilson Sonsini
Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella
“I find [Nadella] to be an extraordinarily insightful human being, not to mention a brave soul, someone who really cares about people. His ability to rally teams of all shapes and sizes and unify them under one vision in this big, huge, behemoth global company is truly outstanding.”
Saul Klein, Founder, Phoenix Court
Start-up Nation and The Genius of Israel by Saul Singer
“I would recommend Start-up Nation, which is probably 12 years old now. It tells the story of tech in Israel and how tech became 40% of GDP. I find Saul’s latest book, The Genius of Israel, even more interesting because it talks about how, at a societal level, Israel has remarkable resilience despite everything that’s going on there.”
Artificial intelligence (AI) has transitioned from a novelty to a cornerstone of modern business, driving productivity, enhancing customer engagement, and enabling operational innovation. Yet, as its influence expands, so do the complexities and risks associated with its adoption.
On the Technovation with Peter High podcast this year, technology and digital leaders across industries once again noted AI and generative AI as the topic occupying much of their time. Conversations in 2024 frequently explored the transformative potential of AI while addressing the hurdles that come with scaling it responsibly. As we look ahead to 2025, technology leaders continue to seek out the opportunities AI can unlock while adopting the appropriate guardrails and governance frameworks needed to to adopt it effectively.
AI has emerged as a game-changer across industries, enabling hyper-personalized customer experiences, enhancing operational efficiency, and powering innovation across a range of business functions. Sanjay Bhakta, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Condé Nast, highlights how AI is transforming user engagement: “We are now starting to also think about how we use our first-party data to provide a better experience to our users, whether it’s personalized newsletters, personalized recommendations, and a very personalized experience as you come to our site.”
Generative AI applications are also reshaping operations and customer service. Shankar Arumugavelu, Executive Vice President of Verizon Global Services, notes: “We’ve rolled out a generative AI-powered research assistant to over 40,000 agents globally, reducing hold times by 20% and enabling faster resolutions for customer queries.” These applications illustrate why AI/GenAI continues to top the trends chart, with 90% of the episodes mentioning it as a significant trend.
Emerging technologies are also gaining traction alongside AI. Digital twins, for instance, were mentioned so frequently this year that they earned a dedicated category in the trends chart. Bala Subramanian, Chief Digital and Technology Officer of UPS, shares how digital twins are optimizing logistics: “We’re making significant investments in creating a digital twin of our network. This allows us to adapt to specific needs like temperature control for vaccines versus other products.” Similarly, AR/VR saw a notable rise in mentions, suggesting it’s further adoption in the enterprise. As CIO of Hensel Phelps Dolores Mears notes: “The ability to take a 3D drawing, get it in front of you on goggles, and see the ‘as-built’ in a facility allows us to walk job sites in real-time and catch errors before they cause rework.”
AI’s integration with advanced data analytics is another key trend. James Ross, CIO of Danaher, emphasizes, “The amount of data that we’re producing is growing, and the need to mine it and use data and analytics and AI to generate insights is going to be more and more critical.”
Despite its promise, scaling AI requires significant investments in infrastructure, data, governance, and workforce training. As Satya Jayadev, CIO of Skyworks, points out: “It’s one thing to put AI systems together; it’s a whole different ballgame to sustain them.” Governance frameworks and clean data are crucial to ensuring AI initiatives deliver their intended value.
Scaling AI effectively also requires businesses to address operational and infrastructure challenges. Prasanna Gopalakrishnan, now the Global Chief Product and AI Officer at ADP, shared during her time as Global CTO at Sky: “We need faster computing power to crunch the enormous datasets being created. Processing data closer to where it’s needed, through edge computing, is critical to solving these challenges.” As the scale and complexity of AI models continue to grow, quantum computing is increasingly seen as a necessary innovation to meet the demand for advanced computational power.
Cybersecurity, which continues to rise as a key focus area on the trends chart, also remains a top concern tied to these advancements. Jason Strle, CIO at Discover Financial, highlights the evolving threat landscape and the implications of quantum computing, noting that it “is going to reset how we think about encryption.” This underscores the urgent need for proactive defenses and a clear strategy to maintain enterprise resilience as these emerging technologies take hold.
Ethical considerations remain a cornerstone of AI adoption. Tilak Mandadi, Chief Data, Digital and Technology Officer of CVS, stresses the critical need for responsible AI: “Applied responsibly, AI has the power to transform industries while minimizing human errors. Without guardrails, the risks outweigh the rewards.” This aligns with a broader industry trend, as companies increasingly adopt ethical AI frameworks and establish internal councils to mitigate risk and guide effective implementation.
Finally, upskilling internal talent is critical to scaling AI effectively. Tim Dickson, CIDO of Regal Rexnord, shares how his organization is equipping its workforce: “We’ve trained over 100 team members in generative AI fundamentals. Upskilling is critical because internal teams understand our business and regulatory challenges, making them better equipped to manage risks.”
This year’s trends highlight AI’s expanding influence across sectors, with technologies like cybersecurity, AR/VR, and digital twins continuing to rise in prominence. These tools are increasingly viewed as essential complements to an AI-led operating model, enabling organizations to unlock the full potential of AI-driven innovation. As leaders on Technovation consistently emphasize, success with AI in 2025 and beyond will depend on how effectively organizations balance innovation with responsibility, ensuring that AI’s transformative power is harnessed sustainably and securely.
As digital strategies have accelerated in the wake of COVID, the relationship between the CFO and technology executives has shifted from a transactional exchange to one requiring deeper collaboration and understanding.
Two key trends—empowered product teams operating autonomously and rising cloud maturity—have altered the landscape of how finance and technology departments work together. This new environment creates both opportunities and challenges as CFOs seek greater financial oversight and CIOs/CTOs push for speed and innovation. Based on our work with Fortune 500 technology executives, we have identified five key areas of friction that characterize this evolving relationship and ways to mitigate the inevitable moments of tension. In future articles, we’ll explore each area in greater detail to show how finance and technology leaders can further enhance their collaboration.
As organizations embrace a product-oriented operating model, technology teams are more empowered than ever. These independent product teams, armed with the resources and freedom to experiment, often operate outside the traditional approval frameworks that once governed tech spending (For more on product funding models, see Metis Strategy Partner Mike Bertha’s article on CIO.com). From a finance perspective, this can feel like handing out a blank check. CFOs worry about losing control over budgets, particularly when spending scales unpredictably. CIOs/CTOs, on the other hand, argue that agile teams need the financial flexibility to drive innovation and respond to market shifts in real time.
Bridging this gap requires balancing innovation with responsible cost management, transforming finance teams alongside product development, and improving how teams measure business value delivered (not just productivity metrics!). In short, product teams build trust by demonstrating continuous tangible business value. One CFO we worked with began by funding one or two empowered product teams. As trust grew and results emerged, the finance team became comfortable expanding the product funding model to the rest of the organization while the product teams spent less time on admin and more time on building products.
As cloud services mature, organizations increasingly rely on serverless infrastructure, microservices, and other cloud-native technologies. While these offer significant flexibility, they often lead to unpredictable operational costs (OpEx) as a percentage of total technology spend. The “pay-as-you-go” model works well for scalability, but it’s easy for teams to inadvertently build “chatty” applications—ones that generate high levels of inter-service communication and drive up usage costs as a result. This surge in OpEx often leaves little room in tech budgets for strategic initiatives. CIOs/CTOs now must focus not only on performance but also on optimizing cloud spend while CFOs demand greater transparency and predictability around operating costs. This challenge is exacerbated as AI demand reshapes the infrastructure landscape. Fortunately, FinOps strategies and capabilities offer a practical path to tackle these growing concerns. FinOps is a collaborative practice that leverages real-time visibility into cloud consumption and cost drivers, employs rightsizing and resource tagging strategies, and encourages aligned financial planning with engineering and operational teams to effectively manage cloud spending.
As organizations achieve greater data maturity, both finance and technology teams have better means to make informed capital allocation decisions. However, the challenge lies in effectively using this data to drive decision-making. CFOs now expect technology leaders to provide real-time insights into technology ROI, cloud spend, and operational efficiency. Conversely, CIOs/CTOs want finance to move beyond historical spending patterns and focus on forward-looking investments and innovation. While the data is there, friction arises in how to interpret and act on it. This can lead to disagreements around which metrics matter most and how capital should be allocated across the technology portfolio.
For organizations transitioning to a product operating model, it’s critical to avoid building entire product teams for products that do not or will not generate substantial ROI. CFOs and CIOs/CTOs can find common ground by clarifying which capabilities—not just technologies—each investment supports and ensuring the annual budget process goes beyond a simple “+X%” increase over last year. Technologists, in turn, should prioritize providing financial data visibility for new products and capabilities, enabling clear communication of ROI, and sharing insights into long-term operating costs from the start.
As organizations rush to adopt new technologies, a key question arises: when should investment levels stabilize? According to the 2024 State of Enterprise Tech report by Insight Partners, only 41% of cybersecurity executives expect increased budgets, down from 51% in 2023. This is a significant shift and suggests that after years of continuous spending to combat evolving threats, companies now face diminishing returns on further investment. While cybersecurity remains critical, over-investment without strategic need or commensurate ROI can lead to inefficiencies. Understanding when a technology has matured—and investment should plateau—requires close collaboration between CFOs and CIOs/CTOs to balance risk management with financial discipline. CFOs and technology leaders can start by jointly assessing current spending’s marginal value and identifying benchmarks for shifting to sustained operations.
As new AI capabilities evolve, measuring their value will remain an ongoing challenge. At our recent Metis Strategy Summit in October, Mastercard’s Ed McLaughlin noted that we do not yet fully know how to quantify AI’s impact and potential benefit, leading to headlines that suggest potential over-investment in the area. This uncertainty underscores the need for a governance model that balances technology teams’ need to innovate and explore, even when ROI is uncertain, with the guardrails that ensure financial accountability.
By establishing a framework for decentralized decision-making within product teams, combined with periodic (quarterly) financial and strategic reviews, CFOs and CIOs/CTOs can support innovation initiatives without compromising fiscal discipline. Matrixing finance partners to the appropriate level of product team structure enables responsible experimentation, helping to prevent reckless spending on high-risk technologies while advancing the organization’s long-term strategic goals.
In 2024, the CFO and CIO/CTO relationship was defined by both shared goals and inherent friction. As empowered product teams drive innovation and cloud costs rise, the need for a balanced, collaborative approach becomes increasingly critical. Updating the governance model, making data-driven decisions, and aligning on spend for emerging technology will be essential to maintaining strong relationships between finance and technology. Successfully navigating the sources of tension above will allow both sides to foster innovation and increase speed to market while ensuring responsible financial stewardship.
Advancements in artificial intelligence have opened the door for innovative ways companies can deliver unique and personalized customer experiences. Join us virtually on May 21 for our next Metis Strategy Digital Symposium where global business and technology executives describe how AI has improved their organizations, how they are continuing to foster a customer-centric mentality, and what the future of technology and digital looks like in the Age of AI.
C-level technology leaders, register here reserve your spot and stay tuned for agenda updates. We look forward to seeing you!
(Click here for highlights from our most recent Digital Symposium, and stay tuned to our YouTube channel for videos of our panel discussions.)
12:00 – 12:15 p.m.
Welcome and Introductions
Welcome and introduction to the Metis Strategy team
Peter High, President, Metis Strategy
12:15 – 12:40 p.m.
Customer Experience in the Age of AI
Marty Brodbeck, Chief Technology Officer, Priceline
Bala Subramanian, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, UPS
Moderated by Steven Norton; Co-Head Executive Networks, Research, and Media; Metis Strategy
12:40 – 1:05 p.m.
Driving Digital Innovation Ahead of Disruption
Greg Moore, Chief Information Officer, KB Home
Michael Lucas, Chief Information Officer, Wilson Sonsini
Moderated by Chris Davis, Partner & West Coast Office Lead, Metis Strategy
1:05 – 1:30 p.m.
Shaping the Story: Future-Oriented Talent and Innovation
Monica Caldas, Global Chief Information Officer, Liberty Mutual
Amir Kazmi, Chief Information & Digital Officer, WestRock
Moderated by Alex Kraus, Partner & East Coast Office Lead, Metis Strategy
1:30 – 1:45 p.m.
Entrepreneur Spotlight: CEO of Augment
Scott Dietzen, CEO, Augment
Moderated by Peter High, President, Metis Strategy
1:45 – 2:15 p.m.
Emerging AI Opportunities in Pharmaceuticals and Healthcare
Diogo Rau, Chief Information & Digital Officer, Eli Lilly
Cindy Hoots, Chief Digital Officer & Chief Information Officer, AstraZeneca
Greg Meyers, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Bristol Myers Squibb
2:15 – 2:40 p.m.
Blueprint for AI Organizational Readiness
Praveen Jonnala, Chief Information Officer, CommScope
Tim Dickson, Chief Digital & Information Officer, Regal Rexnord
Moderated by Michael Bertha, Partner & Central Office Lead, Metis Strategy
2:40 – 2:55 p.m.
Closing Remarks and Adjourn
Click here for highlights from our February Metis Strategy Digital Symposium, or watch the panels on our YouTube channel. We look forward to seeing you!
Thank you to everyone who attended and participated in the 14th Metis Strategy Digital Symposium. Highlights from the event are below. Stay tuned to the Metis Strategy Youtube channel and Technovation podcast in the coming weeks for recordings of individual panel discussions. We look forward to hosting the next Metis Strategy Digital Symposium in December – more details to come soon.
As generative AI continues to flood the headlines, technology and digital leaders are busy discerning hype from reality and exploring use cases that can deliver tangible value across their organizations.
While many companies have used AI in their operations for a while, the rapid rise of generative AI has drawn outsized attention from colleagues well outside the IT department. As a result, many CIOs and their peers have turned their focus toward the tools, processes, and skills needed to take advantage of the emerging technology at scale. Tech leaders are also honing their storytelling skills as they paint a picture for colleagues and customers of how AI-based technologies can drive growth and deliver new, value-added experiences.
In conversations with technology leaders across a variety of industries, we have found that those most successful in their AI endeavors so far are driving excellence across four overlapping workstreams: educate, explore, experiment, and expand. The speakers at this year’s Symposium were no exception. In order to prepare their organizations for an AI-driven future, they noted the following priorities:
Building cross-functional AI teams
Many organizations are taking an interdepartmental approach to developing AI strategies, bringing together stakeholders from across the business to prioritize use cases, build solutions and lead change management.
At Total Quality Logistics, CIO Ryan Kean built a Center of Excellence with 12 people across business units to evaluate new automation use cases, assessing whether or not to develop them based on expected value, tangible benchmarks, and reusability across the enterprise. Kean noted that while a decentralized approach may work for some organizations, it could lead to chaos in others if citizen development happens in silos. At TQL, the CoE model has helped to ensure proper governance, monitoring and development of new solutions.
Similarly, at real estate giant Cushman & Wakefield, Chief Digital and Information Officer Salumeh Companieh’s team has developed an AI task force that includes members from departments including cybersecurity, legal and procurement, to name a few. The task force has developed a standardized process that is helping CBRE actively review 200 use cases globally, delivering necessary governance while focusing on driving client value, market differentiation, and delivering unique insights.
Measuring customer and employee experiences
Speakers noted the critical role advanced AI tools can play in enhancing the digital experience for customers, but emphasized the need for a quality data foundation and clear measures to ensure progress is made.
Keeping customers and employees front and center will be key to enabling increased value and competitive differentiation with AI. To do that, technology leaders must continue to measure and assess progress on these initiatives regularly. DXC Technology CIO Kristie Grinnell conducts both employee NPS and external NPS surveys to measure whether her department is providing the tools and data that create frictionless experiences across the board, noting that both of those measurements should go up as the digitization journey continues. Grinnell also uses sentiment analysis to understand how employees are feeling and uses that feedback to guide employee experience initiatives. She noted that embracing accountability and ownership for specific services over the past years has helped push internal NPS scores from the low 20s to the mid 30s.
The most insightful methods that leaders use to gauge internal and external customer satisfaction and experience are Net Promoter Score (NPS/eNPS) and Customer Sentiment Analysis
At the Home Depot, CIO Fahim Siddiqui noted the virtuous cycle between great employee experience and customer experience: “If you take care of your associates, they will take care of your customers, and everything else takes care of itself.” To ensure that he is providing the right digital features and capabilities, Siddiqui provided all 400,000 customer-facing associates with a handheld device that connects them to the data and insights they need to help customers throughout the network. He also noted that this process sometimes involves interacting with a generative AI model that provides natural language responses to associate queries. Siddiqui noted that employee engagement has reached its highest level, and positive leadership behaviors are also on the rise.
Driving strategic automation
Generative AI tools have created new opportunities to automate and enhance a range of business processes. It is shifting the conversation around automation from one solely of efficiency to one of organizational effectiveness and growth.
One of the quickest ways that technology leaders have unlocked value for their customers and employees is training chatbots on company knowledge bases, ultimately reducing the time it takes to access critical information, answering queries in an easy to understand way, summarizing documents, and enhancing internal search and support. During peak tax season, Intuit employs 20,000 employees to provide advice to customers, resulting in 25 million conversations between customer agents and customers. To extract insights from these conversations and increase agent productivity, CIO Rajan Kumar has been employing AI/ML to provide automatic responses. Kumar’s team is now exploring and implementing a similar chatbot and user interface to provide support for internal employees around IT help desk, HR and procurement questions related to the employee experience.
The top generative AI use cases that MSDS attendees are prioritizing are answering customer queries, summarizing documents, and enhanced internal search/support
Driven by accelerated customer expectations, KeyBank developed a virtual assistant, called MyKey, to connect customers to the contact center and intelligently route support questions to staff faster and more intuitively. CIO Amy Brady has already seen value realized from these digitization efforts, including improved revenue, delivering more to clients with self-service, and improving the job of support agents while reducing turnover in support centers. She shared how improving the agent experience reduced uncertainty around automation. “We can be aspirational and get people engaged, driven by the impact,” she said.
Evolving their approaches to talent development
The rapid rise of generative AI has reignited conversations about how technology will change the way we work. It’s early days, but it’s becoming clearer that successful enterprise adoption will require not just new tools and processes, but also new skills and mindsets. Because generative AI doesn’t require users to know how to code, and doesn’t always require technical experts to drive these applications, the talent paradigm is changing. The shift is prompting technology leaders to reassess talent strategies and the skillsets required to prepare companies to be future ready.
Frustrated with many existing corporate education tools, Mars Global Vice President Shubham Mehrish and his team set about rewriting the playbook to create a more digitally savvy workforce. Mehrish is focused on education at every level of the organization, both top-down and bottom-up, and uses a range of educational and storytelling approaches to communicate with different stakeholders. The rise of AI is also prompting him to think differently about what he is looking for in technologists. Some of the key traits that he believes will mark successful candidates moving forward include curiosity, collaboration, and experimentation.
About one third of MSDS participants said that they are focused on general awareness and basic education in their AI talent development programs
Paramount CIO Lakshman Nathan reflected on the possibility that many companies won’t necessarily need data science or machine learning experts to drive AI applications, changing the way he approaches talent strategy. He is also working to increase general awareness of AI across the organization, including re-educating teams on technologies and processes that already exist inside the organization. “Business users are technologists now,” Nathan said. To increase general AI awareness, Nathan’s team set up a central site for everyone at the company to understand the AI process and get on the same page. The effort is collaborative across security, privacy, and technology teams to evaluate and expedite best use cases.
Aligning AI initiatives to business strategies
In order to generate the best value out of AI, technology leaders have to take a strategic approach aligned to business strategy. While there are many potential use cases for AI, technology departments are in a key position to assess the current and future state of AI-enhanced organizations tailored to specific business goals and industry requirements.
Assessing the best AI strategies to generate value requires thinking about the overall ecosystem and value chain. At NRG Energy, Chief Data and Technology Officer Dak Liyanearachchi is having the Data organization and the IT organization pull data together to focus more on the cost-benefit analysis: “will it generate the value we want?” At the same time, Liyanearachchi is evaluating the role that AI and generative AI will play in shaping the energy industry. He said that AI and technology enables his teams to focus more on the demand side of the energy grid and drives services to create better transparency around energy consumption for customers and households.
CIOs have to make sure they have the basics down before investing in new transformation. To prepare for tackling generative AI strategy and change management, Western Digital’s CIO Sesh Tirumala is looking at two buckets: perform and transform. He emphasized that leaders “get the keys to have a transformational agenda only if you are doing a good job in your perform.” After aligning on the fundamentals and the forecasting view, leaders can prepare their organization to be data-driven with action- and decision-making moving forward. “We don’t just manage for today and yesterday, but align on where we need to be [in terms of] talent strategy, outsourcing strategy, and IP […] to think about the problems of the future. How do you prepare and inspire the organization to look 3-5 years out?”
The majority of respondents at the Metis Strategy Digital Symposium indicated that they are either developing/defining AI strategy or implementing AI strategy across some teams
Rising to the C-Suite sits atop the list of career aspirations for many professionals, both inside and outside technology. No two career journeys are exactly the same, and those who have reached the level of the CIO, COO, and the like all have a unique story to tell.
On the Technovation podcast, Peter High, President of Metis Strategy and author of Getting to Nimble, interviews C-level technology executives across industries on a number of topics, including how they got to where they are today and what they see as difference-makers in their careers.
In this video, the following executives share their “secrets to success:”
See below for the full video and a list of key takeaways.
Mentors and coaches provide many benefits to professionals during their careers, providing candid advice while also keeping them grounded and on track. Michelle Greene, Chief Information Officer of Cardinal Health, says she has been intentional about having a mentor to guide her in her leadership role and help create a support system for her development and well-being. She notes that we pay for trainers when we want to get in shape, so why not invest in a coach to guide professional development? “If you’re serious about your career development, you have to embrace that.”
Similarly, among many things, mentorship has taught Rahul Jalali, Chief Information Officer of Union Pacific, to set “impossible goals” and work to develop his career beyond what you might have seen for yourself on your own.
“Jump and trust that the safety net will appear,” says Cindy Hoots, Chief Digital Officer & Chief Information Officer of AstraZeneca. She attributes her success in part to being open to the opportunities that were presented to her and saying yes to different roles she was asked to do, even if they weren’t something she “wanted” to do at the time. As she reflects on these roles, they now serve as some of the most pivotal ones in her career.
Similarly, Rima Qureshi, Chief Strategy Officer of Verizon, suggests not rigidly planning out a career trajectory, but rather seeing and taking opportunities as they come. “They take you in a direction that you may not have expected.”
It may sound obvious, but it bears repeating: leadership requires an ability to constantly listen and learn. In that spirit, Ramon Richards, Chief Information Officer of Fannie Mae, encourages leaders not to hesitate to ask questions. “If there’s something you don’t understand,” says Ramon, “you’re probably not the only one.”
Ashok Srivastava, Chief Data Officer of Intuit, suggests that the ability to listen to each other is a critical way of learning. “We have to be able to accommodate other points of view, and we have to be able to grow from those interactions.”
Within an organization, the single most important asset is talent. People build solutions, interact with customers, and drive the business. Leaders have a responsibility to develop talent and foster a collaborative culture. “Ultimately, 90% of my job is people,” says Teddy Bekele, Chief Technology Officer of Land O’Lakes, “It’s unleashing that power in the people who then can go do the work.”
To be successful in a leadership role, it’s critical that you understand your team and prepare them to operate in a dynamic environment. Rob Mills, Chief Technology, Digital Commerce, and Strategy Officer of Tractor Supply Company emphasizes this point. “That’s what makes a great leader,” says Rob. “Understand the team and how they’re willing to embrace and accept change.”
The success you find in your career will be easier to attain once you find your passion. “Figure out what elements of your job are not just a job,” suggests Neal Sample, former CIO of Northwestern Mutual. “Figure out what it is that makes you excited about it.” A role that ignites that internal drive will inevitably generate commitment and keep you on pace for success.
Kevin Vasconi, CIO of Wendy’s, agrees, noting that passion comes through in the work product. “If you get up too many days and you’re not enjoying what you’re doing,” he says, “you probably should try to find something else to do, because life’s too short, right?”
For more insights into the secrets to technology leaders’ success and other anecdotes from their career journeys, be sure to check out the full podcast episodes and YouTube channel.
Metis Strategy President Peter High joined Joel Beasley on the Modern CTO Podcast to discuss why the winning strategies in the future of work aren’t clear yet; why tech leaders should never commit to one-way doors; and how Domino’s avoided becoming the next Blockbuster.
Listen to the episode here:
Check out the Modern CTO Podcast here.
Produced by ProSeries Media
Marta Zarraga is a seasoned chief information officer, having held the post at Aviva, Vodafone, and British Telecom. In February 2021, Zarraga joined Capital Group, a 90 year old financial services company that manages more than $2.3 trillion in equity and fixed income assets for millions of individual and institutional investors around the world. As others who have taken on new posts in the past year during the global pandemic, this has been an unusual experience for Zarraga, as she is operating in quarantine, unable to meet in person with her new colleagues. The situation is even more unusual in that she is, for the time being, based in London, whereas Capital Group’s headquarters is in Los Angeles.
When asked how her priorities changed during the pandemic, Cathy Bessant, the Chief Operations and Technology Officer of Bank of America said, “It’s hard to remember where we were prior to the pandemic!” Much has changed for everyone, but for a technologist who leads a team that numbers nearly 100,000, there are silver linings to the crisis. “We were used to trite sayings, like, ‘We are living in a digital world,’ but it has played out,” she noted. “Now we are.”
Technology has been a savior of sorts. Companies have leaned on their digital revenue streams as physical revenue streams have dried up and leveraged technology to collaborate and remain productive. But it has not been a panacea. “Technology is the path forward, but we have a keener understanding of its limitations, as well,” Bessant said.
In a recent poll of multiple hundred CIOs to understand how many of them anticipated spending levels on “digital transformation” on a par with, higher, or lower than 2019, nearly 80% of responses indicated that they would have a higher spending level in 2020 on digital transformation initiatives. This is remarkable given the need for cost containment in light of the pandemic and the economic crisis that it has created, but it is driven by the fact that those companies that transformed their operations and their ability to derive digital revenue streams earlier are the companies that have done best during this time of crisis. Executive teams of most companies now realize that this needs to be a priority. Cut costs elsewhere but use some portion of that savings to invest back into further digital transformation.
