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.

Yet, business itself is also moving increasingly fast today — and technology organizations must not only move with the business, but lead it through digital transformation.

How do you produce the new solutions that business initiatives that come seemingly out of nowhere demand, without falling behind on your own IT strategic plan? Here are a few approaches to accommodating new urgent asks, starting with turning them into an opportunity to advance foundational IT work.

Best choice: Make the most of a bundling opportunity

I’ve always found “bundling” to be a great operating strategy when unforeseen projects with screamingly high priorities come out of nowhere. In fact, by bundling, I found it was possible to accomplish longstanding IT wish-list items that never gained approval in annual budget meetings.

Here’s how it works using three examples:

Product or feature? A key AI debate could leave CIO strategies in limbo

The rapidly evolving AI ecosystem, where new products and services seem to appear daily, presents CIOs and IT purchasing leaders with increasingly challenging decisions, in part because of uncertainty about where the AI market may ultimately be headed.

One major debate, with implications for CIOs and IT buyers, is whether AI will primarily be a product or a feature after the AI market sorts itself out.

On the one side are AI pure-plays offering niche and often task- or industry-specific point solutions, as well as AI generalists such as OpenAI, Meta, and Google, whose standalone large language models (LLMs) can be integrated with other IT systems. On the other side, IT vendors such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and many cybersecurity providers are rapidly adding AI features to enhance and transform their core products.

A third option, where end-user companies build their own AI tools, seems to be seems to be imperiled, at least for now, by a huge majority of AI proof-of-concept projects failing.

Finding value from AI

The challenge for CIOs and other IT leaders is to determine what type of AI will best benefit their organization with so many options and possible paths currently available. Over the long term, many experts see the market consolidating, with a small number of LLM vendors or a small number of IT platform providers dominating the market.

CIOs and CAIOs looking at AI products need to understand what they’re buying and how they can get value from it, says Andreas Welsch, chief AI strategist at IT consulting firm Intelligence Briefing.

The false narrative of shifting from project to product — and why you need both

The intentions behind the project-to-product shift itself are valid, but too many organizations make the move without fixing the underlying problems, and set themselves up for the same challenges they’re trying to solve.

Getting the results you want from your strategy isn’t actually about choosing between project or product. It’s about making sure you have the right approach, people, and alignment to get your strategy delivered in a way that actually moves the needle. So don’t abandon project thinking altogether. Rather, ensure whatever delivery approach you choose is actually set up for success. That’s where most organizations fail, not because they’re managing projects vs. products, but because they never fixed the broken systems that prevent execution from working in the first place.

Strategy execution is like chess. Every piece has a role, and every move matters. If there isn’t focus on achieving the business goals, you won’t win — you’ll just move pieces around until you lose. If everyone in your organization isn’t aligned and strategically moving toward the final outcome, strategy execution turns into a disjointed effort with no real progress.

Shift the mindset and the right operating model will follow

The biggest misconception about the project to product shift is you have to choose one over the other. Success requires both. Product managers own the vision, ensure alignment with business goals, and focus on long-term value creation. Project managers, on the other hand, ensure the right people do the right work in the right way to drive the intended business outcomes, maximizing the worth it factor and ROI.

The best results come when you have both groups playing to their strengths instead of trying to have one role do it all. The natural tension between setting the vision and executing it efficiently is where the magic happens. That push and pull is what keeps organizations moving forward at the right speed and focused on the outcomes.

Many companies jumped on the Agile transformation bandwagon as a way to escape traditional project management, but Agile won’t save you if your strategy and execution aren’t aligned. That’s why Agile transformations fail just as often as any other approach, as many leaders now see in their own organizations. It’s not about the framework but rather ensuring the entire delivery system is working toward the same goal.

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