Leadership orientation encompassing the entire C-Suite

JAIPUR, INDIA: The last few years have brought in a sea change in the way businesses operate. Amid these shifts, IT stands to play a bigger role. The bigger role of IT requires enterprises to adequately prepare the structural, cultural, behavioural and technological dimensions. It also needs a different leadership orientation, encompassing not only the CIOs, but the entire C-Suite.

Tapping from his research and consulting initiatives, Kapil Dev Singh founder of Coeus Age said, "We are all expecting a new growth cycle to happen. Will it be as the earlier growth cycle? Probably not!

He was addressing the delegates on a session: Looking Inward-New age perspectives for building business value from IT.

Till now businesses have looked at strategy from the aspect of looking out. Organisations need to be more givable to look outward. They need to continuously look involved. We need to talk about how IT can make businesses capable and what are those capabilities, felt Singh.

Highlighting on a survey by Coeus Age, Singh said, "We asked CIOs regarding their priorities. These are growth, efficiency and cash flow. There are factors such as moderate growth, rising costs, cash flow issues, margin pressures and fleeting opportunities."

Structural shifts have happened, such as moving from business growth to business agility, linear expansion to risk management, and slack organization to cost management, he pointed out.

"There is a need for businesses to be more capable. Business capability should be the new strategy."

Capability gets built over a period of time. When multiple processes are automated, they give a functional capability. This gives organizational capability, which will provide the competitive edge, he noted.

Adding views on Information leadership, Singh said, "It is different from IT leadership. The CEO provides administrative leadership. The CXO enables that. The CIO brings the adaptive leadership."

For each participant/ stakeholder, he advised, evaluate the current leadership roles with respect to information and IT and also debate, define the new or future leadership roles for each one of them. The new or future roles shall align the C-Suite with the exposed core purpose of IT in the organization.

According to Singh, there are three levers of business value. These are the core purpose of IT, the business IT alignment, and IT maturity. Adequacy of business IT alignment and IT maturity will lea

d to total adequacy. The IT purpose will transform at the organization or the industry level.

He said, "Four set of constructs were identified from the process of building business value from IT. These four constructs were measured in a survey of 305 large and medium Indian organizations (Rs. 100 Crores plus in revenue).

Four sets of constructs according to Singh are:

* Higher score on the three levers of business value.

* Higher impact of IT on business processes and competencies.

* Low IT spend (as percentage of revenue).

* Higher firm performance - revenue growth.

On the sidelines of the session, Prof Rajen Gupta also unveiled a book, "Looking Inward" authored by Kapil Dev Singh.