CEOs are counting on AI success. Can CIOs deliver?

CEOs’ top priorities for IT leaders today

From growing the business to weathering economic uncertainties to remaking enterprise operations, CEOs today rely on their CIOs to help solve the top business challenges they face as chief executives.

That essential remit includes improving the enterprise’s ability to engage customers, collaborating with line-of-business executives to deliver innovative solutions, and safeguarding the organization against a wide variety of risks.

4 goals to target when building AI skills

Having discovered the frightening costs of hiring AI experts from outside the organization, some CIOs have developed ways of building skills in house — not just within the IT department, but across the enterprise. Many of the early movers targeted four distinct methods that should now be considered for AI training programs in any organization.

Increase office productivity

Construction services company Arco set up its first AI training to help people use Microsoft Copilot to transcribe meetings, create action items, and insert them into Microsoft Planner. They started with a limited group of executives and executive assistants, and brought in experts from Microsoft to conduct the training. “Our intention was to make sure people understand how to use the tools and know how to set the privacy so none of the meeting transcripts go outside our company,” says Robin Patra, Arco’s director of data and AI.

How IT leaders can say yes without killing projects — or their careers

Last December, when discussing the hard truths of the CIO role with CIO.com’s Mary Pratt, West Monroe managing partner Marc Tanowitz observed: “The great CIOs always say yes. They say yes to what the business wants, but they say, ‘But here are the implications. … You have to be OK not doing these other things.”

It’s a conversation IT executives are all too familiar with, especially now, with technology moving at ever faster speeds and paradigms like citizen IT, low- and no-code apps, agile, and IoT taking center stage, often without guardrails and other IT quality assurance checks.

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