Where Next: Technology leadership in a world disrupted

Where we work, where we consume goods and services, where innovation happens, where business value is generated … it all has changed. This raises the question "where next?" During the opening keynote of Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2021 EMEA, which is held virtually from November 8 to 11, analysts shared how CIOs and technology executives should lead when their frame of reference, or the "where" of everything, has shifted and disruption and uncertainty continue. This means that tech leaders must reach beyond what they know today and completely rethink the roles of people, data and technology when creating value for tomorrow.

Gartner identifies three key focus areas for CIOs to drive value

To accelerate value creation, CIOs and IT executives should focus on three key areas, according to Gartner: leading from anywhere, nurturing connections and reaching beyond.

Opening the keynote, Mbula Schoen, Senior Research Director at Gartner, said that as organizations continue to emerge from the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic, CIOs and IT executives will need to seek to generate value in fundamentally new ways.

CIOs and IT executives should focus on leading anywhere by ensuring enterprise and talent readiness; nurture connections to ensure ecosystem readiness; and reach beyond by using technology and society readiness.

Leading and empowering anywhere

To explain how leaders need to shift their thinking about the where and when of work, Mbula Schoen used the ongoing return to the office debate and the Great Resignation phenomenon. She said Gartner research showed that 14% of staff members wanted to be back in the office full-time while 19% preferred to be remote full-time. "Both groups are in the minority, compared to the larger group that wants 'radical flexibility at scale' and the ability to work at the best place at any given time", she said. "Moving from on site to remote is not the destination. It's a starting place for CIOs to embrace radical flexibility and implement news ways of working, with supporting technology, across the enterprise", she added.