Fear of technology and the CTO

In the last few months of my interaction with members from the healthcare community, i observe that technology is often viewed with fear and skepticism. It could be because of perceived risk or just by the virtue of being comfortable with a known devil. Either ways, in a world of pervasive applications and disruptive innovation, it is not uncommon to make technology decision on gut feel and personal preferences rather than on strength and merit of the solution.

New technology represents in some sense a "system of profound new knowledge", a game changer if you will and like every game there are strategies built on payoffs. Often strategies are built assuming that everything else remains same or predictable and nothing could be far away from truth than that. The moment the first step of strategy is pressed into action, it is very likely that the entire network of stakeholders re-align themselves; the reaction is sometimes intended but mostly unintended. The result is a crisis and the new technology suddenly overwhelms everyone in the RACI chart.

So how does the CTO ties up the innovation, technology and human factors together. My little reading tells me that the role of a CTO and CIO are markedly different but critically complementary. A CIO cabinet can rarely function without a good CTO. Perhaps it would be fair to say that a CTO works often at the intersection between business and technology feeding the other CxO with the information needed to out think technology. An interesting read I came across is The Role of the CTO: Four Models for Success by Tom Berray, Raj Sampath. 

According to the article mentioned above "It is difficult to measure the sphere of influence of this type of CTO.  On the one hand, he/she serves in a broad, advisory function, which may precipitate major decisions or changes in direction for the company.  On the other hand, there is no clear definition of this CTO with respect to some of the more traditional functions in the executive suite"

A research article titled “The role of Chief Technology Officer - Responsibilities, skills & qualification and organizational integration" reveals that the top 3 skills in a CTO's toolkit is 

• Broad based technical background and knowledge in business area
• Strong verbal/written communication skills
• Team/people leadership skill

In Summary, a CTO being a technologist can go a long way in allaying the fears of the decision makers in the organization. CTO becomes a catalyst in technology change management and provides inputs to CIO to ensure that the true power of technology is harnessed in managing information life cycle by the CIO for the organization