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  "path": "/article/4168923/the-360-degree-cio-is-here-most-operating-models-have-not-caught-up.html",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-11T10:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.cio.com",
  "tags": [
    "IT Leadership, Roles",
    "what the role is expected to deliver and what the organization is actually designed to support.",
    "48% of digital initiatives meet or exceed business outcome targets",
    "35% of AI capabilities are being built within IT",
    "McKinsey’s 2025 technology research",
    "Want to join?"
  ],
  "textContent": "The idea of the “360° CIO” isn’t a future concept—it is already here.\n\nAs AI adoption accelerates and technology decisions spread across the business, this tension is becoming more visible—and more consequential.\n\nIn my experience and in conversations with other technology leaders, the CIO role now extends well beyond traditional IT boundaries. Today, CIOs are pulled into decisions spanning AI strategy, cybersecurity risk, digital platforms, operational resilience and capital allocation. What used to be separate conversations now converge at the CIO.\n\nBut while expectations have expanded, most operating models have not kept pace.\n\nWhat I see across organizations is a consistent tension: CIOs are operating with 360° accountability, but only 180° authority.\n\nWe are expected to deliver enterprise outcomes across functions we don’t fully control, with investments we do not fully own, under governance models designed for a different era.\n\nThis is not a capability issue—it is a structural one.\n\nThis has important implications for how CEOs and CFOs hire and position the CIO. Many organizations now expect the role to deliver enterprise outcomes across AI, data, risk and transformation—but without redesigning the operating model around that expectation. They want integration at scale, while authority, governance and decision rights remain fragmented. The real gap is not leadership capability. It is the gap between what the role is expected to deliver and what the organization is actually designed to support.\n\n## Where this shows up in practice\n\nThis dynamic does not show up in strategy presentations. It shows up in how decisions get made day to day.\n\nI’ve seen a business unit move forward with an AI tool to improve customer engagement while operations pilots automation with a different vendor and finance explores its own analytics platform. Each decision makes sense on its own. No one is doing anything wrong.\n\nBut over time, these decisions create fragmentation—different tools, data assumptions and ways of working.\n\nIn larger enterprises, this often results in parallel investments optimized locally but difficult to scale collectively. By the time integration becomes a priority, the organization is already managing overlapping platforms, inconsistent data definitions and competing architectures.\n\nAt that point, the expectation shifts to the CIO to connect the data, rationalize the tools, manage risk and scale it across the enterprise.\n\nBy then, the complexity is already embedded.\n\nThis is what 360° accountability–180° authority looks like in practice: Being responsible for outcomes shaped by decisions made across the enterprise.\n\nThis challenge is becoming more visible as organizations scale digital and AI initiatives. Gartner reports that only 48% of digital initiatives meet or exceed business outcome targets, and that only about 35% of AI capabilities are being built within IT, with the rest emerging across business functions. McKinsey’s 2025 technology research similarly shows that emerging technologies move from experimentation to piloting to scaling, with full enterprise integration occurring only at the most mature stage. The challenge is no longer generating ideas or pilots. It is integrating and scaling them across the enterprise.\n\n## Why the mismatch persists\n\nThe problem is not whether the role has changed. It has. The problem is that many operating models still assume technology can be managed within a single function.\n\nIn my work, I’ve seen the role shift from managing systems to shaping how the enterprise operates. Today, it sits at the intersection of how decisions are made through data and AI, how risk is understood and managed, how technology investments are prioritized and how execution actually happens across functions.\n\nIn effect, the CIO is now operating as an enterprise integrator.\n\nBut most organizations are still structured as if technology can be managed within a single function. Budgets are distributed, decision rights are fragmented and governance models are often tied to projects rather than products or platforms.\n\nThat mismatch is where friction begins.\n\nFrom my research on CIO leadership, one pattern stands out clearly: Success is increasingly tied not just to technical expertise but to the ability to operate across boundaries – aligning stakeholders, navigating timing and building coalitions across the enterprise. The role is less about control and more about coordination.\n\nThat shift is significant, and it’s still unfolding.\n\n## How CIOs are adapting in real time\n\nThe most effective CIOs I’ve worked with or observed are not trying to take control of everything. They are adapting how they operate within the system.\n\nOne of the biggest shifts is getting involved earlier in decisions. Not to slow things down, but to shape direction before fragmentation sets in. In practice, this often means building informal alignment with business leaders before initiatives become fully defined.\n\nThere is also a noticeable shift toward integration over ownership. Instead of asking who owns a system or a dataset, the more useful question becomes: How does this connect? How does it fit into the broader architecture, the data model and the operating processes of the enterprise?\n\nAnother critical capability is translation. Much of the CIO’s role today involves translating between business priorities and technical implications, between speed and risk and between local optimization and enterprise impact. This is not a one-time activity—it’s continuous.\n\nI have also seen strong CIOs make trade-offs more visible. Particularly with AI and emerging technologies, not everything needs to scale, and not everything should.\n\nAnd perhaps most importantly, leadership increasingly happens through alignment rather than authority. In most organizations, formal authority does not match enterprise expectations. Progress depends on the ability to influence across functions, not just within them.\n\n## What you can do now\n\nFor CIOs—and for the CEOs and CFOs who work closely with them—the challenge is structural, but there are practical steps that can make an immediate difference.\n\nStart by mapping where decisions are actually happening. Not based on the organizational chart, but in reality. Where are AI investments being approved? Where are data platforms being selected? Where are technology decisions being made outside of IT?\n\nFrom there, create lightweight alignment points. This does not require a full governance redesign. Even regular cross-functional check-ins on major initiatives can surface misalignment early and prevent downstream rework.\n\nIt is also helpful to define a small set of enterprise guardrails. These might include data standards, security expectations or platform principles. The goal is not to slow innovation but to reduce fragmentation as initiatives scale.\n\nAnother practical shift is to bring integration thinking earlier into the process. The earlier integration is considered, the less complexity needs to be unwound later. This is especially important in AI, where early decisions around data and models can have long-term implications.\n\nFinally, be explicit about trade-offs. Speed versus scale. Innovation versus risk. Local optimization versus enterprise value. These are not just technical decisions—they are leadership decisions.\n\n## The real risk is misalignment, not capability\n\nThere is no shortage of capable CIOs.\n\nIn many cases, the challenge is not the capability of the CIO, it is how the organization is structured around the role.\n\nWhen expectations expand without corresponding alignment, the symptoms are familiar. AI efforts scale unevenly. Technology investments multiply without coherence. Risk is managed inconsistently. Transformation slows despite strong leadership.\n\nNot because people are not capable, but because the system is not fully aligned.\n\nThis pattern is consistent with broader industry research showing that many digital initiatives still fall short of their intended business outcomes.\n\nThe issue is not vision. It is integration.\n\n## Closing the gap\n\nThe 360° CIO is already operating inside the enterprise.\n\nThe question is whether the organization is evolving with the role.\n\nThat evolution requires more than redefining responsibilities. It requires aligning how decisions are made, how investments are governed and how accountability is shared across the business.\n\nIt also means recognizing the CIO not just as a functional leader, but as a central integrator of strategy, technology and execution.\n\nUntil the gap between 360° accountability and 180° authority is addressed, organizations will continue to experience unnecessary friction in transformation.\n\nNot because the ambition is not there, but because the organization has not yet caught up to what it now expects from the role.\n\nFor CEOs and CFOs, that means the CIO’s success increasingly depends not just on who is hired, but on how intentionally the role is designed.\n\n**This article is published as part of the Foundry Expert Contributor Network.**\n**Want to join?**",
  "title": "The 360° CIO is here. Most operating models have not caught up"
}