Boards and CEOs are redefining what they want from their technology executives. Rather than technology stewards, CIOs are more commonly operating under a broader mandate that includes measurable business outcomes — and their titles are sometimes reflecting the shift.
Executive IT search experts said they are seeing an uptick in expanding CIO titles that include another function such as digital, data, transformation and even product. The hybrid roles can help break down internal silos while moving tech executives closer to customers and to the CEO for greater accountability.
“More than ever, technology and the CIO are at the intersection of everything aimed at delivering business value,” said Megan McCann, CEO and co-founder of McCann Partners, an IT staffing recruitment firm.
While a two-titled tech leader is not the only way enterprises are reshaping technology leadership, the consolidation of tech silos is happening at major businesses and across industries.
One of the clearest examples comes from Delta, which announced CIO Rahul Samant’s retirement in January. Amala Duggirala, Samant’s replacement, took over as chief digital and technology officer for the airline.
“At Delta, they didn’t just replace the CIO, they upgraded the role,” said Jason Pyle, president and managing director at Harvey Nash USA, a technology recruiting firm. “They combined all of these pieces … it wasn’t so much a replacement as it was recognition that the role needs to transform forward.”
Examples also appear in telecommunications firms such as Lumen Technologies, which brought in veteran IT executive Jim Fowler to oversee technology and product, taking over for the company’s outgoing CTO. In consumer goods, Kimberly-Clark tapped Francesco Tinto as its chief information and global business services officer in March while General Mills added transformation to its chief digital and technology officer’s title.
C-suite consolidation
Pyle, too, has observed a move from CIO roles to more hybrid titles; he attributed the shift to an urgency created by AI and pressure for tech leaders to create value. “It’s not just about tech strategy or infrastructure,” he said. “It’s about how the business is monetizing all that it’s doing across its products and digital space.”
An April report from Deloitte echoed Pyle’s observation. It found that 79% of the 660 tech leaders it surveyed cited driving business outcomes as their top priority, another data point underscoring the criticality of creating value for enterprise.
In a more recent report, IBM’s survey of 2,000 CEOs suggested that chief executives are reshaping the C-suite to capitalize on the technology, blurring the lines between business units and creating functional interdependencies.
While IBM documented an uptick in elevating or introducing a chief AI officer into the mix, it also noted role consolidation — including between talent and technology leadership — and highlighted the criticality for every member of the C-suite to work across their domains and become “cross-enterprise orchestrators.”
“The real difference won’t be the titles on the org chart but how those leaders work together — and how willing they are to challenge one another to evolve,” the report stated.
Plus, consolidating tech titles can create an opportunity to refresh the IT’s identity, signaling to employees, stakeholders and even potential job candidates that the company is thinking about technology differently.
“We are seeing a bit of evolution in the title construct that we’re encountering in the market,” said Craig Stephenson, senior client partner for the tech, ops, data/AI and information security officers practice at Korn Ferry. “And I do believe some of that is … a bit of a brand refresh internally for how stakeholders and/or the C-suite and/or the board might interpret the functional domain that we’re talking about.”
The change currently underway is part of a progression rather than a new development for CIOs, according to McCann. In recent decades, IT shifted out of the back office, shed its waterfall methodology in favor of agility, rolled into the cloud and is now changing again.
“Maybe at the heart of it all, the simplest way to think about it is they’re changing the communication pattern, which is impacting people’s roles,” she said. “I don’t know that it’s quite that simple, but a lot of it comes down to the value and understanding that you need to be … as astute at the business as you are with technology.”
