By Thornton May
Futurist, Senior Advisor with GP, Executive Director & Dean - IT Leadership Academy

Modern CEOs are charged with taking their organizations from where they are today to where they have never been. Successfully completing this journey requires the courage to face complexity, the character to act when the outcome is clouded in ambiguity and the capacity to decide where to invest and where not to invest. If you are a modern executive, you are going to have to make some technology bets. The ONE Thing CEOs really have to work on is improving their ability to make technology investments.

Rapid Technology Change
Technology change has an environmental truth since the invention of fire. What is new is the pace of “the-device-in-your-hand-brands-you-a-dinosaur” technology adoption and extinction. Every five years your technology infrastructure obsolesces. Seniors at elite technical colleges admit that they are “very confused” regarding the technology devices and behaviors of entering freshmen.

At one of the great land grant universities in the Midwest 100 senior executives convened to answer two questions:

[1] Enumerate THE Two places where you think
your “next” IT investment would matter the most

[2] “Grade” your organization’s
IT investment making process
[F=dysfunctional A=Perfect]

Your Next IT Dollar
Not surprisingly, the conversation surfaced that there is infinite choice in where IT dollars can and should be spent. The top two spending categories coalesced around two apparently diametrically opposed [or at least not traditionally aligned] spending options.

On the top of just about everybody’s spending bucket list was “cyber security”. In President Obama’s 2017 budget, cyber security spending in the federal government is anticipated to grow by 36% to $19 billion.

The second most listed IT spend category was “innovation.” IT is increasingly being asked to assist in growing the business. Money organizations are looking to IT to create new digital revenue streams. Companies are experimenting with data monetarization initiatives. IT is increasingly being embedded inside product and service development and design teams.

IT Investment Competence
EVERYONE knows that digital will be a big part of the future. EVERYONE knows that digital requires technology investment. EVERYONE is less than pleased with their organization’s current IT investment decision making process. The highest grade the assembled executives were willing to grant IT investment processes was a B-.

Getting better at making technology investments has to be near the top of every CEO’s agenda.