Today’s tech leader could become tomorrow’s CEO
The pandemic catapulted technology leaders to become viable contenders for the CEO role
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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from a Deloitte Consulting colleague, sharing their own field notes from the future on the NExT team’s Substack. This week, we dive into the business of technology: the leaders and leadership needed to put the technology of our Now, New, and Next to work. Onward, together.
The ubiquity of technology across the business feels reminiscent of a movie we’ve seen before. Twenty years ago, CFOs began rising through the ranks to the CEO role, symbolizing the influence their position could have when executed effectively. During this time, the finance function became a multi-dimensional domain, requiring specific finance leaders to take on roles with specific competencies, such as controller, accountant, or financial planning and analysis.
Finance was everywhere.
Similarly, technology has also spread to every corner of the business, serving as the main differentiator for companies today. Thanks to the role technology plays, tech leaders now have a similar opportunity to lead entire organizations—if they desire.
Just last week, we wrote about how important data monetization will be for organizations—and that tech leaders need to lead the charge.
This is just one example of how the role of tech leaders has changed. It's no longer enough to be an expert or specialist or independent operator. Instead, technology leadership is now a team sport—and that places an emphasis on the abilities of leaders to collaborate, communicate, and co-create.
The evolving tech leader
Tech leaders in our survey reported an overall expansion in their role—they are expected to drive organization-wide initiatives as varied as tech fluency (43%), innovation (37%), and even strategic planning (13%). Even when they don’t lead a specific initiative, respondents indicated that the expectation is still that the tech function will provide tools and analysis on areas ranging from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) efforts.
With all these responsibilities, how can tech leaders effectively create value? First, they can develop and nurture a comprehensive set of 5 competencies that their organization demands:
Engineer. This competency requires deep expertise, technical acumen, and a commitment to creating operational value. Their primary responsibility is to build, operate, and maintain technology applications and infrastructure to be efficient, effective, and secure.
Architect. Architects can envision, design, and oversee technology environments to help ensure resilience and scalability while maintaining agility. These leaders should also stay ahead of emerging technologies and continually explore what’s new to keep their organizations competitive.
Data scientist. These leaders are expected to collect, manage, and analyze data while delivering insights and identifying opportunities to drive business growth (e.g., through monetizing tech assets).
Change agent. Tech leaders with this competency are experts at instigating, managing, and delivering large complex digital transformations across the enterprise. They deliver value by transforming business processes, operations, and employee and customer experiences.
Owner. These business-unit leaders should have deep business acumen and stakeholder relationships so they can preemptively identify business challenges and create innovative solutions.
After establishing these competencies, the next step is coordinating them. In some organizations, these competencies may be reporting into separate parts of the organization, or they may not exist at all yet. Irrespective of your operating model or ownership, these five roles should be closely integrated to march toward the same tune of enterprise value.
Elevating an “uber tech leader” may be the answer to achieving that level of coordination. But it is unlikely that a single person will have the depth necessary to oversee all of these competencies. So, it may be time to share and disperse these roles and responsibilities among a team of coordinated leaders, perhaps reporting to a tech subcommittee on the board. When successful, this approach could create immense value—with the possibility of opening up multiple career pathways for talented technology leaders.
Looking forward
As I mentioned at the onset, we have seen this movie before. Similar to finance in the 1990s, the technology function is likely to be elevated and organized around the five competencies described above. In turn, future tech leaders may have three potential paths:
Become a specialist tech leader like a chief data officer or chief technology officer
Elevate to the “uber tech leader” role, overseeing all five competencies and focusing on coordination and integration
Lead a business area or even the whole company
As emerging technologies like generative AI become more ubiquitous, changing the way we work and provide products and services, the technology function is poised to become more central than ever.
Technology teams are no longer just enablers of the business but are actively monetizing their own expertise to generate revenue. And as more companies adopt a digital-native or digital-first approach to business, these trends could compound. Current or aspiring tech leaders who can recognize this and rise to the challenge are likely to be well ahead of the pack in the future.
- Khalid Kark, Global CIO Research Director, Deloitte LLP
Special thanks to Erika Maguire and Megan Turchi for their contributions to this post!