Leading the Epic Revolution: How CIOs Drive Innovation and Create Value Across the Enterprise

Chapter 7

Why Credible Leadership Matters

Since innovation is a key driver of success in modern markets, all senior-level executives should consider themselves partners in the company's innovation efforts. As members of the C-suite, CIOs play crucial roles as both enablers and leaders of innovation.

It is important to remember that innovation begins and ends with people. If you want to become a leader of innovation, first you must become a leader of people.

People follow leaders they trust. That means you need to work on building trust with the people in your organization, and especially with your colleagues in the C-suite. CIOs who cannot build trusting relationships with their CEOs and CFOs simply will not have the resources or credibility required to support innovation strategies.

We have heard the term “people, process, and technology” so often that we tend to forget how relevant it is in today's business environments. Build those bridges to people first. If you do not get the people part right, the process and technology won't matter.

It is all about leadership—when you have trusting relationships with people, they will follow you to the ends of the earth. We relearn this simple lesson with every new era of technology development. People enable your success. Technology is important, but you cannot succeed without the loyalty and support of people who trust you.

Success in today's markets requires speed, agility, and flexibility. You need teams of people who can turn on a ...