A few years ago every company was hiring a Chief Digital Officer. More recently, roles have been dropped or merged. Does the CDO role outlive its usefulness?
In the mid-2010s, news and consulting organizations heralded the emergence and importance of the Digital Chief role. The consulting firm McKinsey calls it “chief transformer“Like even mainstream media foreshadowing the role is important and lasting.
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Recently, instead of press releases constantly announcing newly minted CDOs, this role has been called “Chief Disappear Officer” when companies quietly combine or eliminate roles.
Is the disappearance of CDO a good thing?
One hypothesis regarding the growing scarcity of CDOs is by design. The CDO role is often seen as a transformative role, helping businesses understand and thrive in the digital age. The nature of a conversion implies an event with a beginning and an end, and many people assume that CDOs who actually convert succeed when they make their work obsolete.
This argument is somewhat worthy because the CDO role is often seen as the solution to the gap between technology, led by the CIO, and other business roles. CIOs are seen as being too technology-focused, an accusation that has come true based on the number of voices calling for alignment between the IT units and the business. CDOs are designed to communicate these disparate parts of the organization and help business leaders understand technology while leveraging IT first as a support capability and then as a partner.
The global pandemic seems to have spurred this fusion of technology, business, and transformation. We are all forced to endure months of change and rapidly adapt technology to business needs to keep our teams, organizations, and companies afloat.
When reading positively about the disappearance of CDOs, these individuals have basically done their job, maybe even hastening the game that ends with the pandemic forcing the transformation of even calcified organizations. best.
Or is losing CDO a good thing?
The less-than-philanthropic view of the demise of the CDO role in many organizations is that it is often created in response to market trends but is a role without a clearly defined mandate and without any ambiguity. any powers to exercise. There are certainly cases where organizations have hired a talented individual, awarded them a title, and then actively blocked any attempt they made to transform their organization.
In other cases, CDOs become enthralled by cool technology and shiny objects. Like sophisticated fashionistas, these people grow weary when their solution to every problem is an expensive and often untested technology investment that quickly goes out of fashion before proving itself. any measurement results.
An evolution rather than a revolution
CIOs and CTOs have also become more business savvy in most organizations, while their colleagues outside of IT have become more technically proficient. Gone are the days when executives could laugh at not reading their emails or not being able to join a video call. Technology-led transformation has become part of everyone’s job description, rather than a special task for a single C-level role.
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This development is a natural result of long-standing business trends. We’ll likely see the newest C-level roles, from Chief Sustainability to Chief Diversity, slowly fade as these considerations move from originality and new to the core of the business as usual. rate.
Could the CIO be next?
If technology is increasingly embedded in business as usual, is the Chief Information Officer the next role to go down in the history books? Trends like cloud computing and hybrid networking have made the CIO-style holders less and less relevant, at least in a C-level position.
However, the most influential CIOs often combine the ability to identify, understand, and apply emerging technology trends with the ability to manage a broad portfolio of often technology infrastructure and projects. project is underway. These two areas must be understood and applied in the context of how they benefit the broader business, a gap that has fueled the need for CDOs in many organizations.
If you’re not actively participating in these spaces, and most of your day is spent worrying about performance issues, it’s a good idea to reevaluate your priorities.
