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
