The CIO’s Digital Agenda: Close the Gaps in IT Digital Transformation Oct. 2016

With the increasing speed of changes, many organizations are inundated with tactical tasks and daily operational duties, they don’t spend enough time on scrutinizing the long term strategy and identify disastrous blind spots in order to make a smooth business transformation. Indeed, there are both blind spots in strategy formulation and execution. So how to identify and close those blind spots in order to accelerate digital transformation.         Close the Gaps in IT Digital Transformation Is Business & IT Gap ‘Artificial’? The “gap” between business and IT is always a hot debate, and the conclusion is also controversial, some say, the gap is definitely shrinking, as IT is gradually becoming engrained into every aspect of business these days due to internet, technology developments etc. The clear cut divide that used to be there between IT and business in the olden days is vanishing fast; the opposite opinion is that indeed the gap is deepened  because the “shadow IT”-business bypassing IT oversight to order SAAS service on their own, causes serious governance issue and communication gaps.?
Is CIO the leader to mind the gap between the Age of Industry and the Era of Digitalization Most of the C-level executives including CIOs are transactional leaders who keep the light on and focus on the short term quarterly result. Now we are approaching the inflection point in which businesses are facing accelerating changes and can be disrupted even overnight, which CIO shall you become, the transactional CIO to keep your hands busy, or the senior advisor style to spend more time on leveraging business strategy? Are you a gatekeeper to control the legacy IT system and continue to live in industrial silos, or are you the digital pioneer and Chief Innovation Officer to bridge the age of industry and the era of digitalization?Three Gaps Digital IT Can Bridge Although forward-looking businesses nowadays intend to catch up with digital speed in order to adapt to the pace of changes. Still, the majority of organizations get stuck in the lower level of maturity due to static mentality, silo processes, culture inertia, undifferentiated capabilities, and ineffective Change Management. Digital IT plays an omnipresent role in catalyzing business digital transformation via leveraging internal and external resources, integrating business processes, enabling, innovating, and optimizing the consumer-driven technology that’s going viral in the enterprise. In order to speed up digital transformation, which gaps digital IT can help to bridge, in order to become a strategic business partner and improve business effectiveness and agility more specifically?
Three Principles to Follow for Bridging IT-Business Gaps? Technology is permeating into every corner of the organization, and the information is the lifeblood of the business. However, many IT organizations still get stuck in the lower level of maturity, with the reputation as a cost center, support desk, controller only, or even the bottleneck to slow the business speed. So how can IT leaders reimagine IT potential, reinvent IT brand, overcome culture inertia, and numerous digital barriers to bridge the gaps between IT and business, and run a frictionless IT to achieve the high-level business result?
Three Digital Mentalities to Bridge Digital Gaps? Digital is the age of explosive information, hyperconnectivity, fierce competition, although the physical obstacles can not separate people from communication, but still, there are walls at people’s heart and gaps in their minds. But what are mentalities to bridge digital gaps?

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