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What should the CIO mandate look like at today's enterprises? Are existing CIOs ready for the changes AI has wrought -- and if not, do they have time to become what their organizations need? 

These questions shaped my final article in a series on AI that began October 14th. 

In the first piece, I asked CIOs in my network about the urgent AI topics they most needed to understand. We have covered a great deal of ground since then. I

In this last installment, I examine how AI is changing the CIO role, what skills the next generation of CIOs need to have, and what the future of IT leadership looks like. A hint: the CIO must be the CEO’s partner to change the business.

There is no better person to address these questions to than David Bray. His credentials are remarkable -- and hard-won. A former Pentagon official, he ran into the building on September 11th to help save lives. He later became a MacArthur Fellow, recipient of the prestigious award commonly known as the "genius grant." As CIO of the FCC -- where I first met him -- he transformed the agency's IT operations, making it one of the first governmental agencies to move to the cloud and dismantling barriers between vendors and IT staff in order to enable real innovation.

Related:How CIOs run and rebuild the business at the same time in the AI era

But Bray's experience extends well beyond the FCC. He served at the CDC with a focus  on bioterrorism preparedness, advised NATO on global security through the Institute for Defense Analyses, and completed postdoctoral work at Harvard and MIT. He has counseled leaders across government, startups, and industry on navigating an increasingly networked, AI-driven world. Together with Vint Cerf -- widely credited as a father of the Internet -- he partnered with the World Bank and IEEE on projects harnessing connectivity to improve lives globally. The World Economic Forum has named him one of 24 people changing the world.

AI redefines the CIO role

So how does AI redefine and change the CIO role? And how does it reshape corporate expectations for CIOs? When I talked to Bray, it was clear that, like me, he believes this wave of change is different than the past and will require major change on the part of the CIOs. It seems like a truism, but it is essential that CIOs are able to work at the top of their organizations. The big difference today is that CIOs need to have a trusted advisor relationship versus an ad hoc or episodic relationship with their CEO. AI is a big part of this new partnership.

Bray put it this way:  “We've had multiple waves of AI over the years. GenAI is one wave in our present day and there certainly will be more. CIOs need to recognize that continuous disruption will happen in their organizations at a quickening pace.” 

Related:Where CIOs get stuck rebuilding the enterprise: What 'Rewired' reveals

"Unlike the shift from client-server architectures to web services, or web services to cloud-based solutions, we're not going to be in a period of 'end state achieved'. The new normal is CIOs helping their CEOs lead how the business embraces new capabilities to advance what the organization does more effectively, more efficiently, and more resiliently amidst all these disruptions,” he said. 

The new normal is fundamentally different. In a recent conversation with Columbia Business School Professor Rita McGrath, she echoed Bray by saying that most people still think about AI in terms of task accomplishment. 

"What they aren't recognizing is that it is a system-level phenomenon. Just as standardized shipping containers changed global commerce forever -- making truly global supply chains a reality and enabling the wholesale outsourcing of jobs -- AI will shift existing systems in new ways," she explained. "What we can be sure of is that the properties that allowed some firms to thrive in the mass marketing era are probably going to become liabilities in the digital era." 

Related:Leading an 'Octopus Organization' -- The CIO's new mandate

This means AI-ready CIOs are CIOs who look to solve problems with their CEOs that are at the business capability level rather than the discrete process.   

Skills for the next-gen CIO

Looking at CIO skills, I wanted to determine what new personal capabilities are required to lead in an AI-driven enterprise. 

Build a new CEO partnership. Thinking bigger is essential. To lead at the business level, CIOs need a different kind of relationship with the CEO.  

Develop deployment empathy. In addition, Bray says, "the next generation of CIOs, need 'deployment empathy'-- the ability to understand how AI affects the workforce and ensure technology helps people, including customers, clients, and employees, rather than alienate them." 

Look beyond immediate outcomes. Doing this well means change management needs to be more than change deployment. "Leaders need to go to the balcony and consider the 2nd and 3rd order impacts of a decision by gathering data to inform their decisions while simultaneously applying nuanced human judgment to strategic choices," Bray said. 

Leave legacy thinking behind. At the same time, he argues that success will hinge the CIO's willingness to shed legacy approaches and embrace continuous transformation at digital speed. "Those who cling to industrial-age governance models and procurement processes will struggle as threats evolve faster than their decision cycles allow," Bray said

Recognize converging risks. "Great CIOs will also partner with their general counsels to help boards and CEOs stay informed as to technological risks that increasingly converge with geopolitical risks as well," Bray said. As we have discussed in this series, failing to be explicit about the business problems AI is solving -- and the risks it introduces -- is a failure path all on its own. 

Impact on the C-Suite

Over the last 10 years, as information technology has become a driving force for businesses across industries, additional technology leadership roles have been created. Often these reflected shortcomings of the CIO -- either in education or experience. 

So as AI becomes core to business processes that IT manages, a logical question emerges. 

As CIOs take a larger role, how is AI reshaping roles such as the chief digital officer, chief data officer, and others.

According to Bray, AI will force executives to move from oversight to integrated orchestration across cybersecurity, operations, and strategy. 

"Every leader must now account for how geopolitical shifts and technology convergence impact their fiduciary duties and organizational resilience," Bray said.

AI is dissolving traditional C-suite silos, which means adjacent roles need to identify how they help their C-suite counterparts -- including the CEO -- lead how the business embraces new capabilities to advance what the organization does more effectively, more efficiently, and more resiliently amidst all these disruptions," he said. 

The future of IT leadership

So what is next for CIO leadership in an AI-first organization?

For Bray, leadership in an AI-first world is ultimately about helping organizations navigate continuous disruption. 

"Leadership in an AI-first world requires blending machine-speed capabilities with human wisdom and ensuring technology amplifies what is good in us rather than replacing human judgment," Bray said.

"We are building a world where augmented intelligence empowers communities to navigate constant disruption while maintaining the human agency that defines free societies," he said.  

This means that CIOs need to be masters of change and the CEO's right-hand person as CEOs move to pursue “dual strategies”-- in other words, running and changing the business concurrently. 

In this world, the CEO partners with the CMO and CFO to run the business but at the same time partners with the CIO to change the business. For that to work, however, CIOs need to help their CEOs become as familiar with the technology plan as the financial plan.

Are you ready? 

I began this series with many questions. I conclude with one. Are CEOs and CIOs together ready for a new kind of partnership? 

Bray argues that this is a change moment that demands change.

Town of Cary CIO, Nicole Coughlin described her mandate this way: “The CIO role is expanding from technology delivery to organizational enablement. Tomorrow’s IT teams will include data scientists, ethicists, storytellers, and policy experts working alongside engineers. We’ll move from building systems to building trust frameworks that make AI usable and accountable.” 

This requires a new kind of CIO, and not all will be ready for the change ahead.

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