CEOs "unwilling to be judged" on digital projects, claim CIOs at Computing IT Leaders Club

"How many would stand-up and tell their shareholders how important digital is?"

While chief executives have become increasingly keen on digital transformation projects, very few are still willing to stand up publicly and back them.

That was one of the claims made at Computing's IT Leaders' Clubevent this week, held at the Duck & Waffle at 110 Bishopsgate, the highest restaurant in London, in an event sponsored by IT services giant Fujitsu.

Because IT Leaders' Club events are held under Chatham House rules, the attendees cannot be directly quoted.

While endorsing and pushing digital transformation projects hard, CEOs nevertheless seem reluctant to stand up and declare unambiguously how important such projects are, suggested one CIO working in financial services.

"How many group CEOs are willing to be judged on digital - willing to stand up and tell shareholders how important it is and are willing to be judged accordingly?" asked the CIO at a major insurance company.

"My bet is that very few would," he added.

Often, organisations take the wrong approach to digital, treating it as if it were something separate and alien, instead of a process intricately tied-up in the way in which an organisation operates - indeed, often transformational of business processes themselves.

One company in financial services, noted one of the CIOs, set-up its own "digital garage" in a renovated warehouse miles away from any of the company's offices.

Stuffed with some 300 designers, developers and technicians, it quickly became apparent that, separate from the business, it served no useful purpose. "It wasn't connected to the business and is now being dismantled," he said.

Digital transformation - something that used to be called simply "business transformation" - needs to be integrated with the business and its operations in order to succeed, he added.

The next Computing IT Leaders' Club will be on Tuesday 31 January at City Social at Tower 42, with similar events planned in February and March. Membership is free to all qualifying IT leaders (CIOs, IT managers, IT directors and equivalent).