CIOIN

Alok Kumar

VP & Global Head-Internal IT & Shared Services, TCS

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Alok Kumar is VP & Global Head-Internal IT & Shared Services, TCS.

Enabling growth in today's complex environment is a challenge for many organizations. To grow and compete in a global environment, we need leaders who can think globally, appreciate cultural diversity, and also create a participative environment besides being technology savvy. We need leaders who can understand the dynamic nature of business and have the knowledge and the skills to lead in the face of complexity and ambiguity.
Also, inducting young talent and grooming them as future leaders provides strategic advantage to organizations.  This helps to create a pool of trained resources, ready to embrace new technologies and step into leadership roles.

That’s why, besides being a business enabler and technology champion, a CIO’s role is increasingly being viewed as a mentor who helps build future leaders for the organization. CIOs must lead by example because they play a very important role in influencing and shaping young minds by sharing their vision and creating a business-technology focus. Initial interaction with a senior leadership team gives them the required confidence, motivation, focus and the knowledge foundation to jumpstart their careers. While working on the job, CIOs can facilitate the culture of learning and sharing among employees by providing platforms to enable innovation, ideation, and enterprisewide collaboration to maximize business value creation. This also helps them corroborate learning to solve real-life challenges and build required competencies.  

"Today, CIOs act as executive coaches for next generation leaders. Young leaders can learn from real life experiences that help to further sharpen their skills."

However, enabling this to a large and distributed workforce is a challenge. Once again, CIOs can be instrumental in creating e-learning platforms or learning portals having role-based learning modules, specific to the function, technology, or management streams that are efficient and cost effective.

Today, CIOs act as executive coaches for next generation leaders, and while interacting with them, young leaders can learn from real life experiences that help to further sharpen their skills. CIOs also bring to the table thought leadership ideas, best practices derived from external forums like workshops and conferences, and strategic inputs from various management interactions. CIOs can share their experiences and prepare the next generation to develop strong leadership skills and take their organizations to the next level.